Reporter held in contempt for refusing to testify in CIA probe

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge held a reporter for Time magazine in contempt of court Monday for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating the leak of the identity of a covert CIA officer.

In an order issued July 20 but not made public until Monday, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled that Time's Matthew Cooper and "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert were required to testify "regarding alleged conversations they had with a specified executive branch official."

NBC News issued a statement saying that Russert already had been interviewed under oath by prosecutors on Saturday under an agreement to avoid a protracted court fight. The interview concerned a July 2003 phone conversation he had with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Time and Cooper, however, did not agree to be interviewed and intend to appeal the judge's ruling, said managing editor Jim Kelly. If Time loses those appeals, Cooper could be jailed under Hogan's order until he agrees to appear and the magazine could be fined $1,000 a day.

Neal Shapiro, president of NBC News, said the network agreed that forcing reporters to testify about their sources is "contrary to the First Amendment's guarantee of a free press." Shapiro said Russert answered "only limited questions" about the conversation with Libby "without revealing any information he learned in confidence."

The subpoenas of Russert and Cooper were issued by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago, who was appointed as a special prosecutor in the leak case.

Hogan denied the claims by the two journalists that they were protected by the Constitution from having to testify.

The investigation concerns the leak last summer to syndicated columnist Robert Novak of the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame. Disclosure of an undercover official's identity can be a felony.

Plame's name appeared in Novak's column on July 14 last year, about a week after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, published a newspaper opinion piece criticizing President Bush's claim in the 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger.