(Recasts with fresh quotes)

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) - The ex-CIA spy whose unmasking led to the conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide broke her silence on Friday to accuse the Bush administration of destroying her career for political reasons.

Speaking publicly for the first time, Valerie Plame Wilson told a congressional committee that she felt betrayed when her name appeared in a newspaper column in July 2003, shortly after her husband emerged as an Iraq war critic.

"I felt like I had been hit in the gut," Plame said at the hearing, which drew dozens of reporters and photographers and was shown live on cable TV news channels. "I could no longer do the work which I had been trained to do."

The leak of Plame's identity to reporters prompted an investigation to determine if government officials had broken any laws.

Nobody was charged with blowing her cover, but Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, was found guilty earlier this month of lying and obstructing the investigation.

Evidence at that trial showed Libby and several other White House and State Department officials leaked her identity to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had accused the administration of twisting intelligence to build a case for invading Iraq.

The CIA sent Wilson to Niger in 2002 to examine Iraq's nuclear ambitions. His 2003 account of that trip put the White House on the defensive over whether it had misled the public about Iraq's nuclear capabilities, a key reason for starting the war.

The narrow focus of the Libby trial left unanswered many questions about the significance of the disclosure of Plame's identity.

Plame made no public statements during the nearly four years of investigation and trial, though the striking blonde did pose for a photo spread in Vanity Fair magazine.

Allies of the Bush administration have stated that it did little damage because she worked a desk job at CIA headquarters.

She used her highly anticipated appearance before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to warn against political interference in the intelligence community and make clear that her identity had been a closely guarded secret.

"My exposure arose from purely political motives," Plame said.

'NOT COMMON KNOWLEDGE'

Plame, 43, told the committee that she held covert status at the time and few people knew she worked at the CIA.

"It was not common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit," she said, referring to the upscale Washington neighborhood.

Plame, who has left the CIA, said the disclosure effectively ended her ability to go on secret missions overseas, as she had done just prior to the leak, and would make it more difficult for the CIA to recruit spies in the future.

"My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in the White House and State Department," she said. "Having signed oaths to protect national security secrets, they should have been diligent in protecting me, and every CIA officer."

Plame also said she was not responsible for sending her husband on the Niger trip, as White House officials had implied.

Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said Congress would further investigate if White House officials abused classified information.

"It's not about Scooter Libby and it's not about Valerie Plame Wilson," Waxman said. "It's about the integrity of our national security."

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