Rewarded for Truth

Former CIA officer Valerie Wilson (nee Plame) made her first public appearance among journalists yesterday as she watched her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, receive the first Ron Ridenhour Award for Truth-Telling.

In their remarks, Wilson and Ellsberg leveled blistering criticism at the Bush administration.

The decision to go to war, Wilson said, "ought to be based on a commonly accepted body of facts, and if the commonly accepted facts aren't based on facts at all, then we have poorly served our country and our men and women in uniform."

Thirty years after the Nixon administration, Ellsberg compared the Wilson scandal to the Nixon era. "I believe this situation is exactly parallel," Ellsberg said. "By trying to punish him and his wife, they're trying to intimidate those who might be thinking about coming forward."

Nixon administration operatives broke into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist looking for a way to discredit him, Ellsberg recalled.

"Hopefully the trajectory of this episode will end very similarly," he said, "with indictments, resignations."

Wilson was most emotional when addressing his wife's exposure. "I'm sorry for that," he said, looking at her and fighting back tears. "If I could give you back your anonymity . . . I would do it in a minute."

She sat quietly, wiping away a tear, as her husband added, "Frankly, frog-marching is too good for those who decided that their political agenda was more important than either American national security or your life."

He also directly criticized Bush for the first time, saying he was "appalled by the apparent nonchalance of the president of the United States. . . . His attitude toward this simply cannot stand."

Valerie Wilson would not talk to reporters and attended the event only after receiving assurance that she would not be photographed.