Miller's Time

Cooper, who has worked for all three newsweeklies, is a soft-spoken politics junkie and a dead-on impressionist who has worked the comedy-club circuit. He is married to Democratic consultant Mandy Grunwald, whose father, former Time Inc. boss Henry Grunwald, died in February. Cooper said he bid goodbye to his 6-year-old son, Benjamin, yesterday morning on the presumption he would be heading to jail.

In an interview earlier this year, Cooper said: "The same law that could force a journalist to betray a confidence about a 'bad' leaker could be used to cudgel a reporter into outing a 'good' leaker."

Carlson, who wrote a letter to the judge on Cooper's behalf, called him "a Mr. Mom," adding: "People make fun of him because he's a stand-up comic, but he's actually very funny."

After the Supreme Court's refusal last week to hear an appeal of the contempt finding, Time Inc. Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine explained his decision to surrender Cooper's notes and e-mails by telling the Times: "If presidents are not above the law, how is it that journalists are?"

But some media commentators have denounced Time's capitulation in the face of threatened fines, with the Salt Lake Tribune saying it now bears "the stain of corporate cowardice." Keller said Pearlstine's decision "gave the special prosecutor one more club with which to beat up Judy and Matt. It also sends a message that big media companies can't necessarily be counted on to protect their sources."

The stakes are equally high for the White House and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove.President Bush, who was deposed in the case, has said he wants to find the leakers, but lawyers and spokesmen in the case have parsed their language carefully.

Rove, who has testified before a grand jury, denied again through his lawyer last week that he had leaked Plame's identity after Newsweek reported that Cooper's e-mails identify Rove as one of his sources.

Newsweek, which has had its own problems with unnamed sources -- the magazine retracted a report in May on U.S. prison guards abusing the Koran -- reported that there is growing concern in the White House that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is interested in Rove. That was attributed to one of "two lawyers representing a witness sympathetic to the White House" -- demonstrating that despite the Plame case, leaking is alive and well in Washington.

A New York Times piece on the matter, while citing some backing for Judy, notes: "Not all journalists have applauded Ms. Miller for her hard-line stance.

"Col Allan, editor in chief of The New York Post, said in an interview yesterday that whatever principle Ms. Miller believed she was standing on had been taken from under her by the Supreme Court, which refused to hear her appeal in the case. 'I can understand the concern journalists would have,' Mr. Allan said. 'Somebody has lost their liberty. And in the eyes of many, no crime has been committed.'

" 'The problem is, however, that we here at The Post believe that reporters are not above the law,' he added. Frank Sesno, a special correspondent for CNN and former Washington bureau chief for the network, said journalists should probably expect the case to affect their daily working lives - though maybe not as profoundly as some have suggested.

" 'Will it have a chilling effect? Yes,' said Mr. Sesno, whose network, like Time, is owned by Time Warner. 'Is it going to take anonymous sources out of our orbit and blast them into a distant galaxy? No.'