The prosecution leads Time Magazine’s Matthew Cooper through events leading up to his conversation with Libby—the ‘sixteen words “controversy, the uranium in Niger allegations, etc.

Then Libby asks to set up a meeting with Cooper. Cooper was at the Chevy Chase Country Club and couldn’t use his cel phone or Blackberry there, so he kept running out to make calls. He has a vivid memory of the day.

Finally he spoke with Libby later that day while back at home.

Libby read him an on-the-record statement that the Vice President didn’t know about the Wilson trip, had made inquiries about it, and determined it had happened without his knowledge.

Cooper took notes of the conversation on his laptop.

Libby then went off the record and answered questions on background.

“Was the Vice President’s office involved in the controversy about the ‘sixteen words” in the SOTU address?”

No, said Libby

Had Wilson or the Niger trip come up in visits to CIA?

Toward the end of the conversation, Cooper asked about Wilson’s wife being involved in sending him to Niger. Cooper had heard she was in CIA.

Libby said, “Yes, I’ve heard that too.”

“That was pretty much it,” says Cooper.

Libby didn’t mention the covert status of Wilson’s wife.

The cover story of Time came out the next week. It had nothing in it about Plame’s CIA employment. On July 15, Cooper got a call from Libby complaining about the cover story, which had truncated a long quotation from Libby.

Cooper discussed Libby’s complaint with his bosses and editors.

In response, Time online then inserted the full quotation with a notation that it had not been in the original print edition. Cooper then wrote another piece for Time’s web site called “A War on Wilson?” which also included the entire statement.

After break, Cooper says he spoke with Libby on August 4, 2004 after having received a subpoena. He and his lawyers at Time were seeking a waiver of confidentiality allowing Cooper to avoid being held in contempt of court for not testifying. Cooper told Libby he would tell the truth, that what he said would probably be “exculpatory,” and Libby then told him that it would be “okay by me” if Cooper identified him and spoke of their conversation.

Cooper had three sources for his knowledge: Libby, Rove and one other.

“Was the third source John Dickerson of Time?” asks the defense.

Bench conference!

Dickerson, now of Slate, was on the Africa trip in July 2003 that Ari Fleischer described in great detail yesterday. Fleischer says he told Dickerson and David Gregory of NBC News that Valerie Plame was in CIA. Dickerson has a different recollection, which he wrote about in Slate in February, 2006:

“An hour later, as Bush spoke at an AIDS treatment center, I chatted with a different senior administration official, also on background. We talked about many different aspects of the story—the fight with the CIA, the political implications for the president, and the administration’s shoddy damage control. This official also pointed out a few times that Wilson had been sent by a low-level CIA employee and encouraged me to follow that angle. I thought I got the point: He’d been sent by someone around the rank of deputy assistant undersecretary or janitor.

At the end of the two conversations I wrote down in my notebook: “look who sent.”

Back from conferring, Jeffress asks about the Time article “A War On Wilson?”

In it, Cooper wrote “Some government officials” had indicated to Time that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.

Jeffress then asked about an email to Dickerson from Cooper asking him to call on a landline. Cooper had heard that morning (July 11) from Karl Rove that Plame was CIA. He wanted to speak to Dickerson about that conversation.

Jeffress then ran Cooper thru a discussion of what on and off the record, background and deep background mean to reporters. Rove had spoken to him on “deep background.”

Cooper called it, jocularly, “double super secret background” in a now-famous reference to the movie “Animal House.” Cooper looks a little like John Belushi, come to think of it…

In any event, Rove told him Plame was CIA. John Dickerson had told him about at least one other government official–presumably Fleischer—saying the same thing.

Cooper next spoke to Libby, and asked him about Plame being in the CIA. Libby said, “Yeah, I heard something like that.” Cooper took that as confirmation.

The sequence, Cooper believes, was first Rove, then Dickerson and his source, and then Libby all spoke of Plame being in CIA.

Email from Cooper to bosses says ”Dickerson reports dissing of Wilson at his end.”

Does this mean it all may depend on what the meaning of the word ‘dis’ is?

Jeffress then asks the question!

Cooper says it refers to ‘disparaging comments’ that pointed Time to Wilson’s wife. He says Libby kept trying to distance the White House from Wilson and the Niger trip. Libby was also ‘disparaging’ about Wilson’s methodology employed in investigating the Niger/uranium story.

Defense then refers to Cooper’s notes of his conversation with Libby. First, Libby gave him the full on the record statement about the Niger/uranium story. It noted that the VP was unaware of Wilson’s trip until long after it happened.

The notes then reflected that they discussed the ‘sixteen words’ controversy again. “We were not involved in that part of the speech process,’ Libby told Cooper, according to the notes.

Having reviewed the notes, is there anything disparaging Wilson?

Yes, says Cooper. “They were criticizing Wilson’s methodology during the trip to Niger.”