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COOPER: Good afternoon. I just testified before the grand jury for about two and a half hours. I testified openly and honestly. I have no idea whether a crime was committed or not. That's something the special counsel's going to have to determine.

What I do hope is that the special counsel can conclude his investigation as quickly as possible. I think, today, we should all remember is Judith Miller's eighth day in jail. And the sooner this grand jury recesses, the sooner she can get home.

Now, today I testified -- and agreed to testify -- solely because of a waiver I received from a source last Wednesday. I'd like to explain a little bit about that waiver. We're going to hand out copies of the waiver agreement in a little bit.

I believe that once a journalist makes a commitment to protect the confidentiality of a source, only the source can end that
commitment -- not a court, not a corporation. That's the principle I've upheld for two years now. Now, when the U.S. District Court and then the Court of Appeals, and subsequently the Supreme Court, ordered me to testify, I refused to break my commitment.

And even when Time Incorporated, over my objections, handed my notes, my e-mails to the grand jury, when some of those materials began to leak into the public domain revealing my source, many people, including my good friend and lawyer here, Richard Sauber, urged me to testify. They said there was absolutely no confidentiality left to protect. I considered that at the time, but I disagreed.

Once a journalist makes the commitment of confidentiality to a
source, only the source can end that commitment.

So I'd like now to turn this over to my lawyer, Dick Sauber, here
and he can explain to you how we worked out this waiver agreement with Karl Rove's attorney last week.

SAUBER: I just want to go through some of the particulars about
why Matt came to testify today before the grand jury. And I'm going to give you some chapter and verse and maybe even more detail than you're interested in. I do want to make sure that everyone understands the basis on which Matt responded to the subpoena and came to the grand jury today.

Last Friday, July 1st actually, Time magazine turned over to the
special prosecutor the notes, which included Matt's notes and included the identity of his source and the substance of the source's conversation with Matt that were the basis of the online article that was eventually published.

We asked Mr. Fitzgerald if he would review the documents and give some thought to not calling Matt based on the availability of the documents. I was in Alaska on vacation at this time. I called Mr. Fitzgerald on Sunday, July 3rd, and he told me at that point that despite having received the documents from Time magazine, he wanted Matt to appear in the grand jury.

I immediately called Matt. Matt informed me that he was going to go into contempt and go to jail. And I made plans to come back to Washington.

I did come back on a red-eye flight from Alaska Tuesday night. I
stopped in Chicago to change planes on Wednesday morning, 6:00 a.m. Chicago time, and I picked up the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

And, on my plane flight from Chicago into Washington, I read the account in the Wall Street Journal. I picked up a copy of the Wall Street Journal. And in there, right at the end of the article about this matter is the following statement: "Mr. Rove hasn't asked any reporter to treat him as a confidential source in the matter," Mr. Luskin said, who I understand is Mr. Rove's lawyer. "So if Matt Cooper is going to jail to protect a source, it's not Karl he's protecting."

I immediately called Matt from the plane and said, "You ought to take a look at this comment. I think it is interesting and I think we should give a shot of calling Mr. Luskin and seeing if we could get a specific waiver," which Matt authorized me to do.

I arrived in Washington early Wednesday morning. I put in a call to Mr. Luskin and asked him for a specific waiver. He called me back close to 12:30 that morning, an hour and a half before we were due back in court, which was scheduled for 2:00 o'clock, and he dictated to me a letter that he would be willing to agree to, which I typed up and sent to him.

He initialed it and sent it back to me probably around 1:00 o'clock, and we came to court.

We are going to pass out copies of the letter, but I just want to make clear the specificity that Matt especially wanted in the letter. If you recall, Matt has made the point that the general waivers were things that he could not and did not want to rely on.

So I asked Mr. Luskin if he would agree to the following language, which he did, that: "Consistent with his written waiver of confidentiality he previously executed, Mr. Rove affirms his waiver of any claim of confidentiality he may have concerning any conversation he may have had with Matthew Cooper of Time magazine during the month of July 2003."

Matt and I discussed that once we got this letter. We felt that this was sufficiently personal to Matt. It was sufficient, in Matt's estimation, to cover precisely the conversation that he and Mr. Rove had concerning the article that he published.

And we subsequently came into court. Matt made his statement. In the reliance of this express and personal waiver from Mr. Rove through his attorney, Matt went and testified in the grand jury today.

We're happy to try to answer any questions. Just to clarify, we're not going to answer any questions about the substance of Matt's testimony today, but we're happy to try to answer any other questions that people have.

Q: Does the waiver limit it only to testimony before the grand jury?

COOPER: Yes, absolutely. I am free to talk about what happened in the grand jury room today. And it is my hope to get back to being a normal journalist on the other side of the microphones. I hope to go back to Time magazine and write up an account of what took place here today and my story. But that's something (inaudible) to try to do in the coming hours and days. But I'm not going to do it here, right now.

Just to clarify, for those of you who are not familiar with grand jury rules...all that goes on in the grand jury room is secret, but the witness, him or herself, is free to talk about it. I'm free to talk about it. And I fully plan to. I'm going to talk about it in the pages of Time magazine where I still work.

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