GLAM BLONDE SPY BREAKS SILENCE

WASHINGTON - It's hard to remember the last time a live blonde got this much attention, and even the Republicans on the House oversight committee that heard from Valerie Plame Wilson today seemed in awe of the glam spy outed by the Bush administration.

"If I seem a little nervous," drawled Georgia Republican Lynn Westmoreland, "I've never questioned a spy before." Why, baseball players on steroids hadn't rated this kind of coverage, he noted.

That's because, in the nearly four years since 20 different administration officials had leaked Wilson's name to various reporters -- and columnist Bob Novak finally took the bait and revealed it -- she had maintained public silence.

She'd said nothing about the campaign of retribution that came after her husband corrected the president's story about Saddam's Iraq trying to buy uranium for a nuclear bomb in Africa.

She'd made no comment on the abrupt end of her career as an undercover CIA operative, and none, either, on the cost to her colleagues of a security breach orchestrated by her own government.

Because life rarely imitates art quite so attractively -- in Washington, at any rate -- it was hard not to be distracted by the aesthetics of Wilson's debut in a speaking role: Wow, great colorist. What a well-made jacket. Sharon Stone or Laura Linney? In the movie, of course.

Yet when she did spill today, with the cool and control that must have gotten her the job in the first place, even those panel members who normally like asking questions better than they do listening to the answers were attentive.

During committee chairman Henry Waxman's opening statement, Wilson heightened the sense of expectation with just a nod here and there: At the time Novak disclosed her identity to the world, "Ms. Wilson's CIA employment status was covert." (Emphatic nod.) "She took on serious risk on behalf of our country." (Slight nod.) Compared to the American heroes mistreated at Walter Reed, "she faces much more favorable circumstances now than some of the soldiers we met last week." (Nod, nod, nod.) "But she, too, had been one of those anonymous people fighting to preserve our freedom." Until, of course, she wasn't.

Waxman took pains to explain that the CIA had cleared every word he spoke, and confirmed every word of this statement: "Ms. Wilson was undercover...Ms. Wilson's employment status was covert...Ms. Wilson worked on some of the most sensitive and highly secretive matters handled by the CIA...Ms. Wilson served at various times overseas for the CIA...It is accurate to say that she worked on the prevention of the development and use of Weapons of Mass Destruction against the United States."

Clearly, the central purpose of the hearing was to knock down persistent Republican claims that she was not undercover, and had never been placed in any danger. And when at last she spoke for herself, she could not have been clearer:

"In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the counter-proliferation division of the CIA, still as a covert official, whose affiliation with the CIA was classified." She developed "solid intelligence for senior policy makers on Iraq's presumed WMD programs. I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence. I loved my career because I loved my country."

"It was not common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit that everyone knew where I worked," she said, refuting that particular claim with a rather remarkable absence of attitude. "But all of my efforts on behalf of our national security, all of my training, all of my years of service were abruptly ended when my name and identity were exposed irresponsibly."

Though even now she cannot provide details, she said, "the harm that is done is grave...lives are literally at stake. We in the CIA always know that we might be exposed and threatened by foreign enemies. It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover."

And contrary to the story put out by the White House, Wilson said, it was not she who had suggested her husband go to Niger to investigate the claim that the Iraqis had tried to purchase uranium there.

After a colleague proposed his name, "I'll be honest, I was somewhat ambivalent; at the time, we had two-year-old twins at home." All she could think of, she said, was what bedtime would be like with Daddy in Africa.