Following President Vladimir Putin’s live broadcast Q&A session in mid-October, Robert Amsterdam published an entry on this blog which today led to an interesting cover story exposing a rather major factual mistake during the state broadcast. The caller, a 70-year-old mechanic from Novosibirsk named Alexander Sibert, asked Putin the following question live on air: “In an interview not so long ago, former U.S. Secretary of State Albright said that it is not fair that Russia alone should have control over Siberia’s colossal natural wealth. My question is: what consequences can such statements have, and what is your view of such statements?” Clearly delighted to be thrown another softball to hit out of the park, Putin responded in part “I am not acquainted with this particular statement by Mrs Albright, but I know that some politicians do share these ideas. I think such ideas are a sort of political erotic fantasy: they procure a certain pleasure, perhaps, but are unlikely to ever produce positive results.” I can’t be 100% sure that Bob was the first one to point out back on Oct. 23 that Albright never said such a thing, and that the closest she had come to talking about this subject was a 1998 speech talking about foreign investment, but so far I haven’t seen anything to refute this scoop. But it’s interesting that the same news later appeared in an article by RFE/RL on Nov. 5 for which Bob interviewed, then followed up by today’s Moscow Times article, which does the tough work of actually tracking down Mr. Sibert. (UPDATE: Lyndon from Scraps of Moscow points out that Yulia Latynina was on top of this story a day after our blog post, so perhaps the scoop parade is unwarranted!) The article, below the jump, is a must-read, and we hope this blog can continue to give good scoop for our journalist readers.