Hey, did you catch 60 Eunuchs on Sunday?

I mean Minutes. Did you catch 60 Minutes on Sunday? It was another in a series of major scoops, this one thanks to unprecedented and exclusive access afforded CBS News by the National Security Agency. The NSA, of course, is the US government’s electronic-spying juggernaut that we’ve come to discover has been tracking phone calls, emails, social media posts and probably sex dreams of American citizens.

The premise of the piece: gosh, the NSA has taken quite a drubbing since the Edward Snowden data dump. Don’t they deserve a chance to tell their side of the story? As correspondent John Miller explained:

No US intelligence agency has ever been under the kind of pressure being faced by the National Security Agency after details of some of its most secret programs were leaked.

Who likes pressure? So the spookocracy took the remarkable step of letting 60 Minutes inside their secret sanctuary, placing their reputation in the hands of CBS News correspondent John Miller, the paragon of journalistic independence who has flacked for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and FBI but hasn’t worked for the US intelligence directorate for two solid years. His hardballs came fast and furious.

“There is a perception out there that the NSA is widely collecting the content of the phone calls of Americans. Is that true?”

“No,” Alexander explaned, “that is not true.”

No! They don’t listen to your calls! They simply record what number you are calling, where that phone is located and the time of the call. Why, it’s no more intrusive then government agents following you around and keeping track of every person you speak to, where and when. So why make a federal case out of it?

Actually, someone did make a federal case out of it. And Monday a US federal judge ruled that the NSA programs are most likely a violation against fourth amendment prohibitions on unreasonable search and seizure. Judge Richard Leon issued a preliminary injunction against the government (stayed by pending appeal.) But never mind that. The CBS inquisition was relentless. You should have heard Miller’s follow-up question when NSA chief General Keith Alexander asserted, with a straight face, that citizens should be grateful to the NSA for “defending their civil liberties and privacy”.

Yes, you should have heard the follow-up question, but Miller didn’t ask one.

Later, in pondering whether the government should cut an amnesty deal with Snowden in exchange for the remaining unreleased classified documents, Alexander said no. “I think people have to be held accountable for their actions.”

Yes, but not by 60 Minutes, which somehow in the 27 of those minutes devoted to the subject didn’t find time to ask Alexander why he lied to Congress in June about the number of terror plots supposedly disrupted thanks to NSA vacuuming, and in 2012 public statements about what data it collects.

“We don't hold data on US citizens,” he told an audience at American Enterprise Institute in July 2012. In fact, he had slightly misspoken. What he meant was, “We hold data on all US citizen who make phone calls, and we hold it for five years.”

This from the program that for 45 years has always asked the hard questions, fearlessly spoken truth to power and tirelessly exposed corruption, commercial criminality, political misfeasance, hypocrisy and all manner of evils, large and small. With very few stories over four and a half decades blowing up in its face.

But what an autumn 60 Minutes is having. On 27 October, reporter Lara Logan suggested an Obama Administration cover-up over last year’s terrorist attack on a US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. Her big scoop was based on an account by a security contractor (ie private soldier) who claimed to have been at the scene. Alas, Logan forgot to ask him if a) he was a liar b) trying to flog a book c) published by a CBS subsidiary.

As other news organizations discovered within 48 hours, the source had given directly contradictory accounts both to his employer and the FBI. Logan and her producer were suspended. I would say late correspondent Mike Wallace and founding executive producer Don Hewitt are spinning in their graves, but most likely their rotisseries shorted out two weeks ago.

That’s when Charlie Rose scored a rare interview with billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Bezos. The exclusive access yielded a 14-minute commercial for Amazon, a piece justifiably wide-eyed about the infrastructure of the e-tailing colossus and Bezos’ambition to sell “everything to everyone”.

Rose questioned the e-oligarch about his negligible profitability, but missed the chance to ask if Amazon’s market share has been built on predatory pricing. Rose marveled at the employees zipping around gigantic warehouses, but had no questions about low wages and harsh working conditions.

The big climax was Rose’s sneak peak at the auto-piloted mini-octocopter that may in the near future deliver packages within an hour of the order. Imagine that! An Amazon drone … standing right next to the octocopter. “Oh, my God!” Rose exclaimed.

My sentiments exactly.