USA

Financial Times: Naming of agent 'was aimed at discrediting CIA'

In a rare hearing called by Senate Democratic leaders... Vince
Cannistraro, former CIA operations chief, [testified that Valerie Plame]: 'was outed
as a vindictive act because the agency was not providing support for
policy statements that Saddam Hussein was reviving his nuclear programme.' The
leak was a way to 'demonstrate an underlying contempt for the
intelligence community, the CIA in particular'. He said that in the run-up to the
Iraq war, the White House had exerted unprecedented pressure on the CIA and
other intelligence agencies to find evidence that Iraq had links to
Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and that Baghdad was trying to build a nuclear
bomb... [He testified that] Dick Cheney and his top aide Lewis Libby
went to CIA headquarters to press mid-level analysts to provide support for
the claim... Mr Cannistraro said his information came from current agency
analysts.