Cooper Agrees to Testify to Plame Grand Jury, Avoids Jail

By: (AP) Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper agreed Wednesday to testify about his sources in a government leak of a CIA agent's identity, a dramatic about-face which came as he faced going to jail. Judith Miller continued to refuse to testify, and was sentenced to jail.

Miller said she did want to go to jail but had no choice but to protect her sources. "If journalists cannot be trusted to keep confidences, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press," she said.

Cooper, on the other hand, said, "I am prepared to testify. I will comply" with the court's order, as he told U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan.

Cooper's turnaround came at a hearing at which Hogan was to consider whether to jail Cooper and New York Times reporter Miller for defying his order to testify about their confidential sources in the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.

Cooper took the podium in the court and told the judge, "Last night I hugged my son good-bye and told him it might be a long time before I see him again."

"I went to bed ready to accept the sanctions" for not testifying, Cooper said. But he told the judge that not long before his early afternoon appearance, he had received "in somewhat dramatic fashion" a direct personal communication from his source freeing him from his commitment to keep the source's identity secret.

Cooper said he had been told earlier that his source had signed a general waiver of confidentiality but that he did not trust such waivers because he thought they had been gained from executive branch employees under duress. He told the court that he needed not a general waiver but a specific waiver from his source, which he did not get until Wednesday.

"I received express personal consent" from the source, Cooper told the judge.

Hogan and Fitzgerald accepted Cooper's offer.

The prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald responded to Miller's refusal to name her source by saying "we can't have 50,000 journalists" each making their own decision about whether to reveal sources.

"We cannot tolerate that," he said. "We are trying to get to the bottom of whether a crime was committed and by whom."

Miller attorney Robert Bennett said prosecutors traditionally have shown great respect for journalists and "have had the good judgment not to push these cases very often."

"The interests of justice are often served with a bit of humility and respect for people in the position Judy Miller is in and with a heavy dose of compassion and understanding," he said.