Matthew Cooper Off the Hook, Gives Deposition in Plame Probe

By: E&P Staff Matthew Cooper has skirted the threat of jail by agreeing to be interviewed Monday by Justice Department prosecutors investigating whether White House officials illegally leaked the identity of a covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Time magazine said in a statement today that Cooper agreed to give a deposition "because the one source the special counsel asked about," Lewis I. "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, had waived a confidentially agreement he had with the reporter.

Libby also has agreed to allow the magazine to disclose its agreement with him.

"The deposition, which took place yesterday in the Washington, D.C., office of Mr. Cooper's attorney, Floyd Abrams, focused entirely on conversations Mr. Cooper had with Mr. Libby, one of Mr. Cooper's sources for the articles he helped author about the leak in July 2003," the Time statement said. "Following the deposition, the contempt orders against both Time Inc. and Mr. Cooper were vacated."

An order relesed today, but signed yesterday by U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan, cleared Cooper of the civil contempt citation the judge had issued two weeks ago.

Cooper had faced up to 18 months in jail and the magazine could have been forced to pay $1,000 a day under the contempt order, which has now been vacated.

Investigators are trying to find out who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose name was published by syndicated columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak cited two "senior administration officials" as his sources. It can be a felony to leak the name of an undercover officer.

The column came out about a week after Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, was critical in a newspaper opinion piece about President Bush's claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq sought to obtain uranium in Niger. The CIA had sent Wilson to Niger to investigate that claim, which he concluded was unfounded.

Glenn Kessler, a Washington Post reporter, also agreed to an interview in June after Libby agreed to release him from a similar promise.