SNOOPGATE: Those Dangerous Divas

SNOOPGATE: Those Dangerous Divas

THOSE DANGEROUS DIVAS Christiane Amanpour, Andrea Mitchell and Jane Harman

It started innocently enough. One network diva asking a question of the reporter
who broke the Snoopgate story, after his newspaper held on to it for a year.
A year that included a presidential election. But that's all water under Bush's bridge, right?

But pretty quickly, the NBC diva asked a question about the foreign affairs
diva at CNN that was enough to snap your garters right off.

New York Times reporter James Risen first broke the
story two weeks ago that the National Security Agency began spying on domestic
communications soon after 9/11. In a new book out Tuesday, “State of
War,” he says it was a lot bigger than that. Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Andrea Mitchell sat down with Risen to talk about the NSA, and the run-up
to the war in Iraq….

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.

AMERICAblog

Wha? Bush is spying on the CNN diva? Is that what NBC's gal was hinting? Hurry, get to the transcripts and read it, post it.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the posts. Atrios noticed something odd about the diva transcript and John
Aravosis of AMERICAblog jumped all over it. A replay, oh, but with one minor, itsy, bitsy, teeny weeny omission.

Mitchell: Will you resist revealing sources?

Risen: Well, I don't want to get into what I'll plan to do, because it's
not something I have to think about right now.

Mitchell: Couldn't some people call your sources traitors?

Risen: People can call them anything they want. It's a free country. You
can call something anything and people today call people all kinds of things.
I know what they are and I know what they did and I believe they're patriots.

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

- WHERE IS THE QUESTION ON
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR? -

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 —
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?

Salon's
War Room takes John's pertinent question and runs with it: Does
NBC's Andrea Mitchell know something about the Bush administration's domestic
spying program that the rest of us don't? As AMERICAblog's John Aravosis notes,
Mitchell put a question to the New York Times' James Risen Tuesday that suggests
that she might.

Now we learn the bottom line from an NBC statement, because a couple of bloggers
were all over the MSM.

“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.” MediaBistro

NBC is investigating whether Terror Guy's snoopgate program through
the NSA had targeted one of the most dangerous divas in the world, Christiane
Amanpour? She's dangerous because this lady is not scared of anyone and she talks
to everyone. That's the point.

Ms. Amanpour is also married to Jamie
Rubin, who used to be assistant secretary of state for public affairs, who
also obviously worked for the Clinton/Gore campaign, as well as Secretary Madeleine
Albright, who made Rubin the State department spokesperson. He also just so
happened to have worked for the Kerry campaign. Need I go on?

It makes you wonder about all the foreign correspondents, especially
the few still working in Iraq, like John Burns, and Tom Aspell and Richard Engel of NBC, as well as others. Sources lead to conversations
with people that could be on Terror Guy's list of evil doers.

It makes what one of my favorite Democrats, Representative Jane
Harman, who is also one of the most respected and serious people our party has
got, said yesterday even more important to note.

The top Democrat on the House
Intelligence Committee told President Bush Wednesday that the White House
broke the law by withholding information from the full congressional oversight
committees about a new domestic surveillance program.

In a letter to Bush, Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif.,
said the National Security Act requires the heads of the various intelligence
agencies to keep the entire House and Senate intelligence committees “fully
and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States.”

Only in the case of a highly classified covert
action can the president choose to inform a narrower group of Congress members
about his decision, Harman said. That action is defined in the law as an operation
to influence political, economic or military conditions of another country.

“The NSA program does not qualify as a
'covert action,'” Harman wrote. …

White
House Told NSA Briefings Broke Law

President Bush going after a dangerous diva, ending up with two other dangerous divas on his trail. You know, it used to be that this whole Snoopgate business would likely play out between the executive branch and the legislative. But if NBC gets dirt that W. was spying on CNN's Christiane Amanpour, well, she could end up suing his ass. Now that would indeed be dangerous, for George W. Bush, that is.