Posted on 08/24/2004 7:03:33 PM PDT by ambrose
Matthew Cooper Off the Hook, Gives Deposition in Plame Probe
By E&P Staff
Published: August 24, 2004
NEW YORK 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.
very interesting...
ping
Wow........he blinked!
Scooter alert!
Pinch me if I ever wake up to the following headline:
"Richard Clarke, Joseph Wilson Indicted in CIA Probe; Plame Named Unindicted Co-conspirator"
"Investigators are trying to find out who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame"
It really scorches my butt that they're spending large amounts of taxpayer money on this partisan witchhunt.
"The CIA had sent Wilson to Niger to investigate that claim, which he concluded was unfounded."
He concluded. Snort. And later it came out that he didn't even conduct a serious investigation, and that the conclusion he reached (for purely partisan political reasons) was dead wrong.
But the dirty rotten scoundrels in the filthstream media wouldn't want to mention things like that, would they? Unhung traitors, the lot of them.
Yup. I read it earlier.
And you know that these reporters let a good year go by blathering about how Joe Wilson thinks it was Scooter Libby who "leaked" the name.
Yuk Yuk
Oh, they were all smirking away, I'm quite sure. Isn't is just too too and just so fun to go after these Bushies?! Why let's put on our most serious frownie faces and lecture everyone how the Bush administration may have done something very bad here. Who will ever know who really told us, they assured themselves.
They knew all along---as we knew all along and once again have been vindicated---that Scooter Libby had done no such thing.
I would really like to confront that idiot, Chris Matthews, for many reasons. The Scooter business being chief among them.
When you do see him, will you ask him how he feels now that the Kerry campaign has admitted that Kerry's first PH "just might" have been self-inflicted?
Pinch you? Heck, I'd fly out there and we'd dance in the street!
Since the depo was yesterday, it would be all over the news if he did actually leak it, and that's what was testified to yesterday.
Is Novak untouchable? He's the columnist who first published the "leak" from "two senior administration officials."
Novak did us a great service by writing his story exposing the perfidious Wilson duo.
IMO he has done nothing wrong. I've heard he's cooperating with the grand jury, which may or may not be true.
But my position has always been there was no "leak" as the Wilsons and media have portrayed it. I don't think Plame was undercover or that a crime was committed by the revealing of her employer or role in sending her husband off to sip tea.
I do not know if the grand jury is documenting the Plame business thoroughly to demonstrate no wrongdoing or, as I hope, they are really looking into matters surrounding the trip and attempts to frame the Bush administration for wrongdoing.
Time will tell.
For one thing, there's a glaring error: ...had waived a confidentially agreement...
You're asking the right person about the "Plame affair."
Cyncooper wrote the book on this one.......LOL.
Ask cyncooper; she's the resident expert on this story!
Libby signed off long ago releasing the reporters from confidentiality. This article makes it sound like he recently agreed to do it, but when Russert was called we learned these reporters were called at Libby's request and he had already authorized them to talk.
Notice they did not want to exonerate him and had to be threatened with contempt.
We do know via NBC that Russert told the grand jury that when he spoke with Libby Valerie Plame did not come up in the conversation.
I am positive Mandy Grunewald's husband, Matt Cooper, said the same.
Oh, that would be the very next issue I have with the fool.
Ack!
LOL
Thanks for the info. I was not well informed on this deal.
I still don't understand what all these various reporters have to do with anything. I was under the impression that Bob Novak's column was what started this nonsense.
For a year reporters have let Joe Wilson's charge that his wife's name had been leaked by someone in the Bush administration in retaliation for his "whistle blowing" and that person was likely Scooter Libby, from Cheney's office, go with smirks and reporting as if Wilson was right.
Libby could not have (the facts long ago demonstrated) and did not and now the reporters have admitted as much under oath before a grand jury.
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