Their request, outlined in a letter on Tuesday to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and others, reflects discontent and unrest within the intelligence services about the affair, along with concern that a four-month-old Justice Department investigation into the matter may never identify who was behind the disclosure. The syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who first identified Ms. Plame as a C.I.A. officer in a column last July, has identified his sources only as Bush administration officials, and the Justice Department inquiry has not yet produced any public findings.
It is unusual for former intelligence officers to petition Congress on a matter like this. The unmasking of Ms. Plame is viewed within spy circles as an unforgivable breach of secrecy that must be exhaustively investigated and prosecuted, current and former intelligence officials say. Anger over the matter is especially acute because of the suspicion, under investigation by the Justice Department, that the disclosure may have been made by someone in the White House to punish Ms. Plames's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, for opposing administration policy on Iraq.
Attorney General John Ashcroft disqualified himself last month from any involvement in the inquiry, and Justice Department officials have named Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago, as a special prosecutor in the case. Mr. Ashcroft's decision to step aside came after months of criticism from Democrats in the Senate who complained that the attorney general could not impartially lead an investigation that focused in part on his political patrons and friends at the White House.
Justice Department officials have said almost nothing in public about the status of the investigation. But they have said they are focusing on conversations between White House officials and reporters that both sides might try to cast as private.
Critics of the White House, including Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, have said they fear that the administration may eventually call a halt to the inquiry by announcing that investigators have found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Mr. Holt and several other Democrats introduced legislation on Wednesday that would authorize an independent inquiry by the House.
The 10 former intelligence officers who signed the letter include respected intelligence analysts and retired case officers, including at least two, John McCavitt and William Wagner, who were C.I.A. station chiefs overseas. The former analysts include Larry C. Johnson, a former analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department's intelligence branch, and Ray Close and Ray McGovern, former C.I.A. analysts in the agency's Near East division.
"The disclosure of Ms. Plame's name was an unprecedented and shameful event in American history and, in our professional judgment, has damaged U.S. national security, specifically the effectiveness of U.S. intelligence-gathering using human sources," the group wrote in the two-page letter.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Johnson, who described himself as a registered Republican who voted for President Bush, said he and other former intelligence officers had been discussing the idea of a letter for months and decided to go forward with it because of a lack of evidence of progress in the Justice Department investigation.
"For this administration to run on a security platform and allow people in the administration to compromise the security of intelligence assets, I think is unconscionable," Mr. Johnson said.
In addition to Mr. Hastert, the letter was sent to Representatives Tom DeLay, the House Republican leader; Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader; Porter J. Goss, a Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee; and Jane Harman, the top Democrat on the panel. A copy was made available to The New York Times by a Congressional official who received one.
Current and former intelligence officials have felt particularly bruised in recent months as the C.I.A. and other agencies have come under criticism from some in Congress and the public as having underestimated the danger of attacks on the United States like those on Sept. 11, 2001, and having overestimated the dangers posed by Iraq's alleged stockpiles of illicit weapons.
In the letter, the former officers called on Congress to act "for the good of the country" and said it was time to "send an unambiguous message that the intelligence officers tasked with collecting or analyzing intelligence must never be turned into political punching bags."
The request for a Justice Department investigation into the matter was made last summer by the C.I.A.'s general counsel, as part of what intelligence officials have described as an automatic response to the disclosure of classified material. Asked to describe the current sentiment within the community about the affair, an intelligence official said that "people within the agency obviously don't like it when classified information appears in the press, and they especially don't like it when the names of intelligence officers get into the press."
The intelligence official added, however: "There's an investigation under way at the Justice Department, and that's appropriate. If Congress gets involved, there's always the risk of turning this into a political football, and that would make it even worse."
The officials who identified Ms. Plame as a C.I.A. officer to Mr. Novak were apparently trying to cast doubt on the credibility of Mr. Wilson, who emerged as a prominent critic of the administration after being enlisted by the C.I.A. to investigate a claim related to Iraq's reported nuclear weapons program.
In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Holt said it was time to "put the heat on the Justice Department" and compel investigators to share with members of Congress the information they had gathered.
"Congress needs to make a statement that whoever was behind this is going to be held accountable," he said.
The "resolution of inquiry" that Mr. Holt introduced Friday followed a model that the House has previously used to begin investigations of the Iran-contra affair and other matters that were independent of any inquiries conducted by the Senate.
Among Democrats who joined Mr. Holt in introducing the resolution were Representatives Anna G. Eshoo of California and Silvestre Reyes of Texas, who like Mr. Holt are members of the Intelligence Committee, which oversees the C.I.A.
Ms. Harman, the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, said in a separate interview that Justice Department investigators "should be given time to complete their work" and that Congress should "not meddle in the investigation." But she said she would consider joining the call for a Congressional inquiry if the leaker was not identified by next month.