Was Christiane Amanpour Eavesdropped Upon? (Why Did NBC Edit Its Transcript?)

In an interview with NYT reporter and author James Risen recently, NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell asked this very pointed question about the Bush administration’s domestic spying program:

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.

After AMERICAblog highlighted the excerpt this afternoon, the reference to Amanpour was removed from the transcript. (Here is the edited version.)

Here are questions that deserve answers tonight:

> Why did Mitchell ask specifically about Amanpour?

> Does Amanpour believe she was eavesdropped upon? Does she have any evidence of this?

> Why did MSNBC.com remove the reference to Amanpour from the transcript?

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