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. "

Not long after news of the bizzarre (and, if true, stunning) revelation began to percolate across the web, Americablog and prominent liberal blogger Atrios noticed that the key question had dissappeared. "Well this is getting interesting," wrote Americablog. "NBC just delete[d] two paragraphs from its Andrea Mitchell interview, the paragraphs that talked about whether Bush was wiretapping ace CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour." The transcript on the MSNBC site now reads:

"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 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."

As Atrios noted, "The first Q&A is there, the second has been disappeared. Why?"

With a bit of Lexis-Nexis searching, I managed to uncover what I think was the edited story of which the Mitchell-Risen interview was a part. You see, the interview never actually appeared in full on TV as far as I can tell. Or at least, here's what NBC is sending to Lexis-Nexis as its official transcript (which I repost here in full for the record):

----

BRIAN WILLIAMS, anchor:

NBC News IN DEPTH, new details about the government's program of spying without warrants on Americans. From The New York Times reporter who broke the story, a story that has now triggered a Justice Department investigation into who leaked what was behind one of the Bush administration's best-kept secrets in the war on terror. Tonight, the man who has been called a traitor by some for the story he broke, journalist James Risen, tells NBC News many more Americans may have been targets of eavesdropping than the president has so far acknowledged. Here is NBC's News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell.

ANDREA MITCHELL reporting:

Did the administration secretly eavesdrop without warrants on only a few "enemies" as the president claimed on Sunday?

President GEORGE W. BUSH: The NSA program is one that listens to a few numbers.

MITCHELL: But The New York Times reporter who first broke the story two weeks ago says in a book out today it was a lot bigger than that.

Mr. JAMES RISEN: They were eavesdropping on roughly 500 people in the United States every day for the past three or four years. That adds up to potentially thousands of people.

MITCHELL: James Risen writes that after 9/11, the administration got companies to route more international calls through the US to make it easier for the NSA to spy on terrorists.

Mr. RISEN: You could listen to all 250 million Americans, and that would be a very effective counterterrorism tool. The question is, where is the balance between security and civil liberties?

MITCHELL: Today, the White House again defended the spying.

Mr. SCOTT McCLELLAN (White House Press Secretary): What we're talking about is looking at international calls involving known al-Qaeda members or affiliated organizations.

MITCHELL: In "State of War," Risen also claims that before the Iraq war, the CIA recruited Iraqi-Americans to go home and question relatives--all scientists--about Iraq's suspected weapons. All reported no evidence of WMD. Risen says the CIA ignored their findings.

Mr. RISEN: They believed anybody who told them there wasn't any WMD had to be lying.

MITCHELL: Even more startling, Risen says the CIA had a major foul-up in Iran in 2004, when a CIA officer mistakenly exposed America's entire spy network inside Iran to a double agent. US officials deny that the spies were arrested or killed. Now, the Justice Department is investigating the leaks to Risen.

Would you go to jail to protect sources?

Mr. RISEN: Well, I'd rather not have to think about that right now.

MITCHELL: Tonight, the CIA says there are serious enact accuracies in every chapter of the book, and it demonstrates a, quote, "unfathomable and sad disregard for US national security." Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, New York.

WILLIAMS: Still to come here tonight, our series, THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. Tonight the science behind something we all experience.

----

And indeed, the quotes of Risen's in the NBC transcript match up with the now not-quite-complete interview transcript appearing on the MSNBC website.

By the late evening of January 4, the brief mention of the possible bugging of a prominent CNN reporter looked to be turning into a full-fledged Internet scandal. Within a matter of hours, NBC released this convoluted statement to the TVNewser website:

"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."

Or as an Atrios reader translated the NBC statement: "Unfortunately this transcript was released prematurely accurate. It was a topic on which our management had not approved of reporting, and since it was only posted here we can pretend it never existed. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain..."

So, it appears that NBC got burned by releasing a complete transcript of an interview in which a very odd question was asked that later had to, for one reason or another, be hidden. Many questions remain:
- Will NBC really be "continu[ing] its inquiry"?
-Has Christan Amanpour been spied on by NSA? If not, why did Andrea Mitchell ask such a bizzare question?
-Has anyone else in the news media been tapped or spied on?

Aravosis finishes the day with a good roundup of the fast-moving story. "NBC confirms it's investigating whether Bush spied on CNN's Christiane Amanpour," they note hopefully. "That is the only way to read NBC's just-issued statement on why they deleted key portions of Andrea Mitchell's interview after we reported on it here earlier today."

As the recent Times article on the internet's impact on news noted: "reporters say that these [online] developments are forcing them to change how they do their jobs; some are asking themselves if they can justify how they are filtering information. 'We've got to be more transparent about the news-gathering process,' said Craig Crawford, a columnist for Congressional Quarterly and author of "Attack the Messenger: How Politicians Turn You Against the Media." 'We've pretended to be like priests turning water to wine, like it's a secret process. Those days are gone.'"

Well said . Perhaps NBC will keep that in mind next time they run a story and post a transcript.