WASHINGTON - A former US spy at the center of the CIA leak case said at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Friday that she felt "hurt and betrayed" by members of the Bush administration.

Former CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson testifies at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington March 16, 2007. [Xinhua]

Speaking in public for the first time about the episode that touched off a scandal in the administration, Valerie Plame Wilson said she felt as though she had been "hit in the gut" when her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, dropped a newspaper on their bed on a July morning in 2003 and she saw that the columnist Robert D. Novak had mentioned her CIA status in passing.

Plame, who has been accusing members of the administration of leaking her identity to the press to avenge her husband's anti-war comments, said the administration knocked her off a career path she was so proud of.

Her husband, a former diplomat with considerable experience in Africa, traveled to the continent in 2002 to investigate rumors that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire uranium from Niger to build Iraq's nuclear arsenal.

In July 2003, an essay by Wilson in The New York Times expressed deep skepticism about Iraq's arsenal, and by implication skepticism about US President George W. Bush's justification for the Iraq war.

Soon afterward, Plame was unmasked by columnist Novak. That incident led to an investigation to find who had leaked her name, possibly in violation of the law.

While no one was prosecuted for the leak itself, I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, was recently found guilty of lying to grand jurors and FBI agents during the investigation.

Critics have long asserted that Plame's name was leaked to intimidate others who differed with the White House.

With her covert life ended, Plame now plans to move with her husband to Santa Fe, N.M. and hopes to write a book about her life in the CIA and what happened after her cover was blown.