After our conversation, I asked her aides if they would allow me to put any of our discussion on the record. It was their prerogative to decide, given the off-the-record provision to which I had agreed. I sent large portions of the Clinton transcript in an email to Jennifer Palmieri, the campaign communications director. “These exchanges were pretty interesting,” I wrote. “Would love the option to use.”

Ideally Palmieri would have reviewed portions of the interview — about 2,000 words — and come back with a simple “Fine, use what you want.” There was nothing damning or embarrassing in there, at least that I could tell.

I heard nothing for a few days. Palmieri shared my email with others in the campaign, including Podesta, apparently. Finally, after consulting with Clinton herself, Palmieri said they would agree to put two sections of the interview on the record. One of them was an icebreaker exchange between Clinton and me in which I mentioned that I had just seen a moose on the side of the New Hampshire road. This elicited an animated response from Clinton about how she herself had encountered lots of moose up-close when she worked in Alaska one summer during college. Simple enough, right? Well, not quite. Palmieri demanded that I not include an aside that Clinton made in the midst of her moose monologue — about Sarah Palin.

Now it can be told. “I always got a big kick out of Sarah Palin with all of her ‘We’re cooking up some moose stew here,’ ” Clinton told me. She did not seem to be belittling the former Alaska governor in any way, though I should also point out — and this does not come through in the transcript — that Clinton uttered her “we’re cooking up some moose stew here” line with a passable Palin impersonation. I have no idea why Clinton would not want this Palin aside in the article, though I’m guessing she did not want to invite a public back-and-forth with Palin, as can happen.

As it turns out, one of the “newsier” takeaways from this week’s WikiLeaks trove involved the Palin remark. “NY Times’ Mark Leibovich Obeyed Request to Cut Palin Joke From Hillary Interview,” said a headline Tuesday in Breitbart, the adamantly pro-Trump news site. Putting aside that it wasn’t really a joke, the word “obeyed” here goes to the essence of the criticism, mockery and vitriol I’ve been receiving from the right in recent days. “Hillary, let’s make a deal!” Palin tweeted on Wednesday. “I’ll swap ya — my special moose chili recipe for your nifty-shifty trick that lets you edit media coverage of yourself.”

Or as Trump put it Wednesday night at a rally in Florida, The Times granted Clinton “veto power over her quotes in a story,” he said. “Nobody ever called and said, ‘Mr. Trump, we’ve written this story, would you give us a little feedback?’ ” This is obviously not what happened in my case, but given the sausage-grinding revealed in the leaked back-and-forth, I can see how the uninitiated might get that impression.

Politicians in fact go “off the record” with reporters with some frequency. As soon as the reporter grants the off-the-record provision, he is effectively allowing “veto power” over that material. That part of the conversation remains private unless he or she says otherwise. That’s the “nifty-shifty trick” Palin was referring to.