2nd reporter: Libby told me

WASHINGTON - Reporter Matt Cooper testified yesterday he thought I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby had confirmed that a prominent war critic's wife worked at the CIA but acknowledged he never asked the White House aide where he'd heard that.

Cooper, Time magazine's White House reporter at the time, became the second reporter to testify at the CIA leak trial that Libby was a source for their learning that Valerie Plame, wife of ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson, was a CIA operative. Libby claims he only told reporters he had heard that information from other reporters.

Libby, ex-chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, is on trial on charges he lied to the FBI and a grand jury about his conversations with reporters about Plame and obstructed the investigation into how her identity leaked to the public in 2003. He is not charged with the actual leak.

Cooper identified President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, as the first official to tell him about Plame's job at CIA. *