WASHINGTON, March 16 (UPI) -- Former CIA agent Valerie Plame told a U.S. House committee Friday that she was not the one who suggested that her husband travel to Niger.
"I did not recommend him, I did not suggest him, there was no nepotism involved -- I didn't have the authority," Plame said in testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
She said that another CIA employee, after learning of a demand from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney for an investigation into a report that Saddam Hussein had been buying yellowcake uranium from Niger, said "Why don't we send Joe?" That was her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Plame also told the committee that when she learned that columnist Robert Novak had revealed her identity it was like "being hit in the gut." She denied that her employment with the CIA was "common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit" and said she knew she would have to leave the agency.
"It was over in an instant," she said. "That career path was terminated."
