Well this is getting interesting. NBC just delete two paragraphs from its Andrea Mitchell interview, the paragraphs that talked about whether Bush was wiretapping ace CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour (kudos to Atrios for spotting this).
Here's what the NBC "official" transcript used to say (I copied this text from NBC's own page only 2 hours ago):
Mitchell: Do you have any information about reporters being swept up in this net?Here's what it says now:
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: Do you have any information about reporters being swept up in this net?Since when is NBC in the business of deleting entire paragraphs from their official transcripts? What's going on here?
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 are very, very tough on the CIA and the administration in general in both the war on terror and the run up to the war and the war itself Â? the post-war operation. Let's talk about the war on terror. Why do you think they missed so many signals and what do you think caused the CIA to have this sort of break down as you describe it?
Risen: I think that, you know, to me, the greater break down was really on Iraq. It's very difficult to have known ahead of time about these 19 hijackers. They were, you know, probably lucky that they got through and they did something that no one really assumed anybody would ever do. And I think that made 9/11 a lot like Pearl Harbor. That even when you see all the clues in front of you that it's very difficult to put it together.
More on why this matters here.
