Cooper says conversation with Rove changed his life

Time Magazine reporter Matt Cooper spoke Monday evening about his role in an ongoing investigation of the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity, saying that the scandal has changed his life.

Cooper refused to reveal the identity of a confidential source — later revealed to be senior Bush adviser Karl Rove — who allegedly leaked Plame's identity, despite being held in contempt of the federal court and threatened with jail time.

He only testified before a federal grand jury investigating the leak when he received a last-minute waiver from Rove's lawyer, relieving him of the obligation to protect his source's identity.

"I spoke to [Rove] for only about two minutes," Cooper said of the conversation where Rove mentioned that Joseph Wilson's wife — who is Valerie Plame, though Rove did not explicitly name her — works for the CIA. "Little did I know and little did he know that that phone call would do a lot to change both our lives."

At the end of their conversation, "[Rove] said, 'I've already said too much,' " Cooper added.

The conversation later raised accusations that Rove deliberately leaked Plame's identity to retaliate against Wilson, a former diplomat, for criticizing the Bush administration's claim that Saddam Hussein was attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction, considered one of Bush's central argument for waging a war in Iraq.

Cooper's lecture related the details of his conversation with Rove, as well as a conversation with Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby that contributed to Libby's resignation amidst charges of obstruction of justice.

The two-year investigation has also seen the 85-day imprisonment, the release and the recent retirement of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, another journalist who refused to testify until granted a waiver from her confidential source, later revealed to be Libby.

"I had only a vague understanding of what the rights of journalists are when it comes to avoiding testimony in a grand jury setting," Cooper said. "While most states — 49 in fact — have some kind of protection for journalists, there's no such protection at the federal level."

Courts have ruled in the past that the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press does not protect journalists from testifying in a criminal investigation. Because knowingly revealing the identity of an active-duty CIA officer can be a felony, the federal court in Washington, D.C., demanded that Cooper reveal his source, the individual who may have committed a crime.

Even though his employer leaked correspondence between Cooper and Rove, revealing Rove as Cooper's likely source, the journalist still refused to testify before the grand jury.

"I thought the principle was important," Rove said. "It's cliche, but I had to do what I thought was right and had to live with my decision."

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Cooper also addressed the effect of "Plamegate" on journalism.

"We're left as a profession wondering what our obligations are and what are the use of anonymous sources," he said. "I do worry about where journalists are in terms of confidential sources, in terms of protection in the courts."

He referred to a "good leak" that helped the Washington Post publish a story about conditions in CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and other foreign sites.

The story is "clearly in the public interest," Cooper said, but "we're seeing the call for another leak investigation."

Nonetheless, he also noted a bipartisan effort "to create a kind of shield law for journalists."

"There needs to be some kind of symmetry between the federal law and the state law," the latter of which protects journalists, Cooper said. "When journalists have to testify, and sometimes they do, it ought to be rare and it ought to be for a good reason."