Was Christiane Amanpour Wire-Tapped?

In an interview with James Risen - the man who broke the story on the illegal NSA wiretapping - Andrea Mitchell asks if he'd heard or knew anything about CNN's Christiane Amanpour being wiretapped. He responds that he hadn't heard that. Now, the fascinating thing is that NBC changed it's transcript of the interview after it had already posted it. Americablog has both transcripts.

So, I have a few unanswered questions. Were journalists wiretapped? How many, and which ones? Why did Andrea Mitchell bring up Amanpour - a rival network's correspondent? And, if Amanpour was indeed wiretapped, why her?

Yes, reporters were most likely tapped - especially those who have questioned or criticized the administration and its policies - in order to keep tabs on who they were talking to, the type of information they were getting, and what they were telling their superiors.

A few frightening thoughts spring to mind, though, when it comes to Christiane Amanpour. One is they were after her husband's conversations. James Rubin was a spokesman for the State Dept from 1997-2000 and a foreign policy advisor to John Kerry and General Wesley Clark.

The second is, if anyone was going to get an interview with Osama Bin Laden or one of his lieutenants, it would be her. She's just that good. And I'm sure she's been trying to score something like that. Who wouldn't? So, it's possible that the NSA was listening in on the off-chance than one of OBL's henchmen would give her a shout-out.

The third is that it might have had some connection to the fact that Amanpour is the daughter of Iranians who fled Iran during the 1979 revolution. (Although from the age of eleven, she was a student at boarding schools in Britain.)

One point to remember amidst all the speculation: If this proves to be true, the gov't could say it was completely legal, as Christiane most likely has contacts within the Al-Qaida network, and she and her husband live in London.

Update: Attytood and Americablog have more.