Plame: CIA outing ‘colossally stupid’

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame called the recent outing of the agency’s top spy in Afghanistan a “colossally stupid” mistake and said the agent’s covert career, like her own, was over.

“What an error of huge proportions with tremendous consequences,” said Plame, whose own name was revealed during President George W. Bush’s administration, in an interview Wednesday on CNN.

{mosads}She said the CIA officer’s “covert career, as mine was, is finished.”

Plame, though, said that the outing of the Kabul station chief was not similar to her own case, saying that she believed the recent disclosure was inadvertent.

“But no way is it equivalent to what happened to me, the leaking of my name,” she said.

While President Obama was in Afghanistan on Sunday, the White House released a list of names, including the station chief, who attended a briefing with him. The list was eventually distributed to reporters. 

The White House later corrected the error and The Hill and other news organizations have refrained from publishing the name. 

On Tuesday, the White House asked its chief counsel, Neil Eggleston, to investigate how the name was inadvertently disclosed and provide recommendations to prevent it from happening again. 

Unlike the current case, Plame said her name was leaked in order to discredit her. 

“It’s a false equivalency that’s being put out there,” Plame said. “And what — it all comes down to intent.

“What happened with me, I — my name was intended to be leaked in retaliation against my husband, who was a fierce critic of the Bush administration and the Iraq war,” she continued.

Plame’s name was disclosed in a column in 2003, a week after her husband Joseph Wilson, then a diplomat, publicly questioned the validity of evidence the administration used in its rationale for invading Iraq.