Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice walks through a maybe breaking story that suggests the government spied on Christiane Amanpour. Interesting read, and something to keep an eye on in case it turns into something. Upon reflection, another possible scenario looks like this:

Is it a Rathergatish-style set-up?

• Inside source tips somebody at NBC, but the tap never happened and the inside source is working for Bush/Cheney/Rove/whoever.
• Feed them enough line that they’ll go with a story, and when they do it turns out there was no tap, no evidence, nada.
• Discredit a network news agency and especially discredit a reporter they can’t much care for.

Who knows. That would be the evil angle, and that alone makes it plausible…..