Snooping on Christiane?

Andrea Mitchell of NBC News apparently is thisclose to breaking a story that CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour was a target of President Bush's warrantless National Security Agency (NSA) domestic surveillance sweeps.

John Aravosis of AmericaBlog.com first got wind of that from an NBC transcript of an interview Mitchell did with New York Times reporter James Risen that apparently has not been aired. Risen co-authored the Times' NSA scoop and wrote "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration." The pertinent excerpt:

Mitchell: Do you have any information about reporters being swept up in this [surveillance] net?

Risen: No, I don't. It's not clear to me. That's one of the questions we'll have to look into the future. Were there abuses of this program or not? I don't know the answer to that

Mitchell: You don't have any information, for instance, that a very prominent journalist, Christiane Amanpour, might have been eavesdropped upon?

Risen: No, no I hadn't heard that.

NBC later redacted the transcript to remove the Amanpour reference, and issued a statement saying that

It was a topic on which we had not completed our reporting, and it was not broadcast on 'NBC Nightly News' nor on any other NBC News program. We removed that section of the transcript so that we may further continue our inquiry.

Why should we care if some news media big got bugged by the government? No more or less than we should care if you or I did. But you gotta admit that it's an interesting story.

Josh Marshall thinks so. This is his take on his Talking Points Memo:

Okay, so someone at NBC screwed up. Mistakes happen. But the bell can't be unrung.

In their response NBC confirms that they not only were but are in fact continuing to investigate whether Amanpour was in fact a target of one of these 'wiretaps'.

Now, that really puts this into altogether different territory.

ou wouldn't just pull this Amanpour story out of your hat (this is a family website). To be even remotely credible, a claim like that would have to come from within the government.

Wouldn't it? I know I'm speculating. But think about it: who would be able to make such a claim and have enough credibility to make a major news organization take the suggestion seriously?

To which I add: If the NSA was indeed spying on Amanpour, why?

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News blog Attytood, speculates that it may be because she recently interviewed Al Qaeda operatives and has been accused in the past of being sympathetic to them. Or because she is Iranian. Or because her husband, Jamie Rubin, a State Department aide in the Clinton administration, worked for the Kerry campaign in 1994. Or . . .

* * * *

Is it just a coincidence?

James Moore, co-author of "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential," was told that he is on the Transportation Safety Agency's "No Fly Watch List" when he tried to board a flight this week. The list is maintained to look out for people whom the government believes may have terrorist connections.