Way back in January, NBC’s [tag]Andrea Mitchell[/tag] was interviewing New York Times reporter [tag]James Risen[/tag], 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, [tag]Christiane Amanpour[/tag], 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. 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 intact.
Eventually, the NSA denied the whole thing, NBC never reported on any follow up, and the political world moved on. But Faiz at Think Progress noted today that that the question is worth asking again in light of recent revelations.
The response [CNN’s David] Ensor received from the [tag]NSA[/tag] related specifically to eavesdropping — i.e., the monitoring of the contents of a [tag]phone call[/tag]. According to a report today from ABC’s Brian Ross the NSA is tracking [tag]reporters[/tag]’ phone records — but not the contents of their phone calls — in an effort to root out confidential sources. If the ABC story is true, it raises the question of whether Amanpour’s — or any other journalist’s — phone records were monitored by the NSA.
There may have been a time, perhaps a couple of years ago, this would fit in the “tin-foil hat” category. Given what we’ve learned of late, the question seems completely reasonable.
For that matter, Josh Marshall (via ET in comments) helps pull it all together.
I think part of the issue for many people on the administration’s various forms of surveillance is not just that some of activities seem to be illegal or unconstitutional on their face. I think many people are probably willing to be open-minded, for better or worse, on pushing the constitutional envelope. But given the people in charge of the executive branch today, you just can’t have any confidence that these tools will be restricted to targeting terrorists.
Start grabbing up phone records to data-mine for terrorists and then the tools are just too tempting for your leak investigations. Once you do that, why not just keep an eye on your critics too? After all, they’re the ones most likely to get the leaks, right? So, same difference. The folks around the president don’t recognize any real distinctions among those they consider enemies. So we’d be foolish to think they wouldn’t bring these tools to bear on all of them. Once you set aside the law as your guide for action and view the president’s will as a source of legitimacy in itself, then everything becomes possible and justifiable.
Exactly.