Kathy Griffin: Why I Never Outed My Pal Anderson Cooper

Kathy Griffin may be an outspoken comedian, but she's a loyal friend.

Anderson Cooper made a long-anticipated announcement Monday in an open letter on The Daily Beast: "The fact is, I'm gay." His close friends immediately tweeted how "proud" they were of the award-winning CNN journalist -- including his CNN New Year's Eve co-host and good friend Kathy Griffin.

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On Tuesday, Griffin, 51, wrote her own letter on The Daily Beast explaining why she never commented on her friend's sexuality.

"For years, I talked around it," the famously gay-friendly comic admitted. "Believe it or not, I don't 'out' people. It is neither my business nor my desire. Remember, folks, I am a comedian, not a journalist."

"And quite frankly," she added, "he never gave me permission to speak about something that represented the one part of his life he was not comfortable having confirmed in the media."

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Cooper, 45, explained in his own letter that he wanted to maintain his privacy partially because of his profession as a journalist. "Since I started as a reporter in war zones 20 years ago, I've often found myself in some very dangerous places," he wrote. "For my safety and the safety of those I work with, I try to blend in as much as possible, and prefer to stick to my job of telling other people's stories, and not my own."

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And Griffin felt the same way. "I don't pretend to understand the complexities of the worlds Anderson moves in," she said. "But I do know that I don't want my friend to face that part of the world, where he might die a very different kind of death than someone who isn't quite so honest."

"Here's the thing: I love my friend Anderson and remain immensely proud of him," Griffin concluded. "And I'm honored, truly, that he considers me a friend. But I just want him to be careful. Of course he wouldn't be doing his job if he really were being careful. And he wouldn't be who he is."

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