Who's Time Is More Important, Colin Powell's, or Tim Russert's

Tim Russert made a big deal about one of Colin Powell's aides trying to cut short an interview of her boss by the host of "Meet the Press." The Secretary of State was on a tight schedule and Russert had exceeded his alloted time and tried to end the interview.

Was it, "attempted news management gone berserk," as Russert accused?

If so, the Russert is guilty of the same thing.

"We were given precisely 10 minutes with Russert to tape an interview about his new book from 8 a.m. to 8:10 a.m. for broadcast at 10 a.m. last Friday," the WNYC radio host told me yesterday.

"My impression was that he was very tightly scheduled, and had to do five or six interviews one after the other and his people were trying to keep him on schedule ... Eight minutes into the interview, a woman's voice cut in and barked, 'WNYC, you have eight seconds left!' And the interview came to a quick end."

Lehrer added that the glitch was deleted from what sounded, when it was broadcast, like a seamless conversation.

"It was no big deal," Lehrer said, noting that the interrupter was not an NBC News employee. "These things happen. It was just the usual bureaucratic stuff and getting an interview. So we edited it out."

But two days later, Secretary of State Powell's press aide, Emily Miller, was so desperate to keep her boss on schedule that she tried to end Russert's taped interview when it ran into overtime. The "Meet the Press" moderator went ballistic.

Not only did Russert castigate Powell's aide on his own NBC show, he gave righteously indignant interviews about "attempted news management gone berserk" to CNN and The Washington Post.

On Monday, Lehrer poked fun at Russert's tantrum by airing the rude interruption that he had earlier excised.

"If Colin Powell's people were guilty of attempted news management gone berserk," Lehrer told me yesterday, "then I can say only that Tim Russert's people succeeded at it."

Russert could not be interrupted for comment yesterday.