I’m a little behind on this one, but it’s a story that deserves all the attention it’s been getting. “Bizarre” doesn’t quite do the controversy justice.
NBC’s Andrea Mitchell was interviewing New York Times reporter James Risen yesterday, discussing Bush’s warrantless-search program, which Risen helped expose. Mitchell, mid-way through the interview, asked, “You don’t have any information, for instance, that a very prominent journalist, Christiane Amanpour, might have been eavesdropped upon?”
It seemed like an odd question, the kind she wouldn’t have asked unless she had some reason to believe CNN’s Amanpour had been spied on. (For what it’s worth, Risen replied that he knew nothing about Amanpour’s role.)
The notion that the Bush administration may have spied on a respected journalist — again, without a warrant — raised a series of disconcerting questions about the scope of the president’s spying program. The story got even more intriguing when the MSNBC website edited the transcript of the Mitchell/Risen interview, removing only the exchange about Amanpour, while leaving the rest of the interview in tact.
The network explained the edit late yesterday.
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.
The statement, obviously, suggests NBC takes the possibility seriously and is hardly done exploring whether Amanpour was the subject of an administration wiretap or not. In other words, as for why the transcript was changed, this wasn’t an instance in which Mitchell made a mistake by raising a baseless claim; this was a situation in which Mitchell inadvertently hinted at a major scoop.
The next question, of course, is considering why the administration would want to spy on Christiane Amanpour.
Aravosis, who drove this story from the start, raised the specter of Amanpour’s contacts, including the fact that she’s married to Jamie Rubin, chief spokesperson for Clinton’s State Department and a chief advisor to Wesley Clark’s and John Kerry’s presidential campaigns.
That’s interesting, but I’m also reminded of a post I wrote way back in September 2003.
In a CNBC interview with Tina Brown, Amanpour was asked if the administration effectively rolled over the media in advance of the war, as journalists accepted the White House’s rhetoric blindly and without skepticism.
“I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled,” Amanpour said. “I’m sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did.”
Amanpour is right on both counts. CNN saw that Fox News became the administration’s cheerleaders. This put the respectable network in the untenable position of being “unpatriotic” if it dared to question if the war was necessary, or worse, wise.
“All of the entire body politic in my view, whether it’s the administration, the intelligence, the journalists, whoever, did not ask enough questions, for instance, about weapons of mass destruction,” Amanpour added. “I mean, it looks like this was disinformation at the highest levels.”
It’s about six months too late for Amanpour to be admitting this publicly, but better late than never.
Equally interesting for me was the response from Fox News Channel when it was asked for its reaction to Amanpour’s analysis. FNC never fails to amaze me and this was no exception.
Fox News spokeswoman Irena Briganti said of Amanpour’s comments: “Given the choice, it’s better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda.”
If the administration did spy on Amanpour, did it start right around this time? Could the Nixon parallels be this similar?
Stay tuned.