The NYT talks to the two reporters -- including one from its own shop -- at the heart of an ongoing sourcing controversy over the public identification of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

An excerpt:

he two reporters at the center of the case involving disclosure of the identity of Valerie Plame, a C.I.A. operative, said yesterday that they were disappointed with the decision upholding a lower court's ruling that found them in contempt for refusing to name sources. But they vowed to fight to the last appeal.

One of the two, Judith Miller, a veteran reporter for The New York Times, said: "A case like mine is a warning to people not to talk because the government will come after you, and that's what we're fighting. That's what the press ought to be concentrating on: the threats to the First Amendment and the free press."

Ms. Miller was among a group of Times journalists who won a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for reporting they did on Al Qaeda, and much of her work has focused on national security and government secrecy. Most recently, she has written about the controversy surrounding the United Nations oil-for-food program.

The other reporter involved in the contempt case, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, has a side career doing stand-up comedy, including dead-on impersonations of politicians. He writes about politics and politicians, and was the first to disclose, in June, that President Bush had been given Saddam Hussein's pistol and kept it in a small room off the Oval Office.