Word: coopered
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...journalists, confidential sources can be as essential as ink. That's why so many were surprised last week when Norman Pearlstine, editor-in-chief of Time Inc., said he would reveal some confidential information about a big story. In a case involving TIME magazine White House correspondent Matthew Cooper, Pearlstine agreed to comply with a federal subpoena and surrender Cooper's notes and files relating to a story he had written that is part of an investigation into the disclosure of a CIA operative's identity. Time Inc. had appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court...
...Cooper case evolved from an investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who set out to identify the unnamed Bush Administration sources cited by journalist Robert Novak in a July 2003 column that outed CIA officer Valerie Plame. Cooper subsequently wrote a piece for TIME's website saying that "some government officials" had provided him with information similar to what Novak had reported. Cooper suggested in his article that the sources were seeking to discredit Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who found evidence contradicting the Administration's prewar claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons...
After Time Inc. agreed to turn over the requested materials to Fitzgerald's office, speculation quickly surfaced over whose names would be identified. Much of that focused on Karl Rove, senior adviser to President George W. Bush. Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said Cooper called Rove during the week before Novak's story appeared but declined to say what they discussed. Luskin said Rove "has never knowingly disclosed classified information." The lawyer said he has received repeated assurances from Fitzgerald's office that Rove is not a target in the case...
...whether any laws were broken in the Plame revelation. (Deliberately disclosing an operative's name is illegal but only if the government is actively trying to conceal its relationship with that person.) Yet Fitzgerald's wide-ranging investigation has involved subpoenas of at least five journalists, and several, including Cooper, NBC's Tim Russert and the Washington Post's Walter Pincus, have testified on at least a limited basis. The courts have repeatedly denied Cooper and Miller privilege to protect their sources. After the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, Pearlstine says he concluded that Time...
...handing over the requested materials, Pearlstine and Time Inc. made the argument that there was now no need for Cooper to testify because Cooper's files contain at least some of the information Fitzgerald has been seeking. In the interim, Cooper and Miller have asked Judge Thomas F. Hogan to sentence them, if it comes to that, to home confinement or, barring that, to federal prison camps, as opposed to maximum-security prisons or the notorious Washington jails...