Just hours before Time Magazine’s Matt Cooper was to be sentenced to jail for not revealing his source to a grand jury in the Plame case, the source gives Matt permission to reveal his name – but only to the grand jury.

If Cooper’s source is the same as Judith Miller’s at the New York Times, then why didn’t he or she (or Karl) give Judy permission to spill the beans too? As it is, Miller refused to budge and is either in prison now or headed that way.

Doubly odd – Judy Miller was a notorious White House stenographer during the run-up to the war.

And where is Bob Novak? The speculation is, he already turned over the identity of the person at the White House who told him Plame’s identity. The White House reportedly unmasked Plame as a CIA secret agent in order to punish Wilson for calling them on their lie that Saddam had acquired nuclear ingredients from Niger – and as a shot across the bow at other CIA agents who weren’t toeing the Administration line on the war.