Andrea Mitchell Lets Her Slip Show

A very weird story broke inadvertently yesterday when NBC released, and then redacted, a transcript of Andrea Mitchell's interview with James Risen, co-author of the New York Times illegal wiretapping story. John at AmericaBlog was the first to notice it:

Mitchell: Do you have any information about reporters being swept up in this 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.

Mitchell led the witness better than most prosecutors I've seen. She obviously knows something and isn't telling us. The name "Christiane Amanpour" came completely out of the blue. The story got weirder when NBC abruptly changed the transcript of the interview, deleting the Amanpour reference. Then, forced by us darn bloggers and our citizen journalism, the network made a statement:

Unfortunately this transcript was released prematurely. 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.

So basically, NBC is saying that they tipped their hand too soon, that they're working on a story about the illegal wiretapping extending from terrorists to journalists, but it's not confirmed enough yet and everyone's going to have to wait. Seems pretty dumb for a reporter like Andrea Mitchell to go blabbing about the story in an interview before they have it nailed, then.

For all we know, we may never hear about this again. It might end up as one of those things tossed around Washington cocktail parties, one of the open secrets that we hoi polloi are never privileged to be trusted with. But I hope we do hear more about this, because we need to. The reason so many are upset about the President overturning federal statutes and illegally wiretapping people, aside from the fact that it's unconstitutional, is that it's a slippery slope. If you're using the wiretaps to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists, that's one thing. You still should use the FISA courts and get a warrant, but there's at least more of an argument that this is within Presidential power. But if you're using the program to wiretap jounalists it's an entirely different matter. I've given up trusting this Administration that they won't go down the slippery slope, that they won't violate civil liberties, that they'll police themselves, that they'll limit the program. They never have. And Andrea Mitchell is insinuating that they haven't in this case either.

Now, why wiretap Christiane Amanpour? Well, aside from the fact that she's one a' them librul media members, she happens to be married to a guy named Jamie Rubin. Jamie Rubin worked in the State Department under President Clinton, and it turns out he was a high ranking official in the 2004 Kerry campaign. Let the rampant speculation run wild.

Whether you're using these wiretaps to ensnare terrorists or spy on your political enemies, it's still illegal and we can't have Presidents thinking they're above and beyond the law. But spying on journalists, spying on political enemies... that really is a throwback to the Nixon era of the "enemies list" (and I think Kerry was on that one too). It's completely out of bounds and inexcusable. If proven true, I would probably have to change my opinion on impeachment. We can't have a police state in our own country.