Time hands over notes

WASHINGTON – Time magazine and New York Times reporters, held in contempt for refusing to name sources, tried Friday to stay out of jail by arguing for home detention instead after Time Inc. surrendered its reporter’s notes to a prosecutor.

Producing the documents makes it unnecessary for Time reporter Matthew Cooper to testify to the federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA officer’s identity, Cooper’s attorneys argued in papers filed with a federal judge.

“The decision of Time Inc. to comply with the special counsel’s demand should obviate the need to enforce the subpoena served on Mr. Cooper and the contempt citation against him,” the court papers stated. “Mr. Cooper submits that his testimony would be duplicative and unnecessary.”

New York Times reporter Judith Miller will never reveal her sources and depriving her of her freedom “offers absolutely no realistic likelihood” that she will tell the prosecutor what she knows, her attorneys wrote.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan found the two reporters and Time Inc. in contempt for refusing to cooperate in the investigation of who in the Bush administration disclosed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Plame’s name was first published in a 2003 column by Robert Novak, who cited two unidentified senior Bush administration officials as his sources.