What soon became apparent to reporters and producers at ABC News, though, was that there were two critical portions of the timeline that simply did not seem true. And the network struggled with this information for nearly three weeks before fully detailing the nature of the discrepancies during the Wednesday edition of "Nightline."

One of ABC's own off-air reporters had met with Condit about an unrelated matter (the California energy crisis) on the day after Levy's disappearance, May 2. But the timeline provided to ABC News appeared to say that this meeting had occurred on May 1 -- the very day Levy went missing.

Further complicating the matter for ABC were ambiguities surrounding Condit's relationship with the ABC reporter in question. The New York Post has reported (and Fox News trumpeted) that Condit had an affair with an ABC producer and, based on information in the Post, and according to sources within the network, it's clear that this is the same woman who had met with Condit on May 2. The romantic link, however, is firmly and unequivocally denied by the network. "This reporter," an ABC News executive told Salon on Thursday, "has had a professional relationship with Congressman Condit for years, nothing more than that, period."

So the story plays out like this: According to ABC sources, the ABC News off-air reporter met with Rep. Condit at the Tryst restaurant (that's no joke) on May 2, between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., to discuss the California energy crisis. The reporter eventually circulated an e-mail to this effect within ABC's Washington Bureau long before the significance of the meeting became known. Yet the timeline provided by the Condit camp made no mention of this meeting, even though it did cover the day in question.

The Condit timeline did, however, mention another meeting at the same location with an unnamed reporter -- but with one critical difference. Rather than taking place on the afternoon of May 2, the timeline had this meeting taking place between 6:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on May 1. Police place Chandra's last known whereabouts in her apartment early on May 1, in part because of an e-mail she apparently sent from her computer that morning.

Producers and reporters at ABC News could not at first be certain that the purported May 1 meeting was not with some other reporter from another news organization (no names were supplied in the timeline). But they were quite certain that they knew where the congressman was the following afternoon, and that his timeline did not reflect his whereabouts. "We had no way of knowing," the same ABC News executive told Salon on Thursday, "whether this was a sin of omission or commission, or whether there were two different meetings."

Based on the apparent discrepancy, however, ABC immediately contacted both the congressman's office and his legal team. "We went back to his attorney Abbe Lowell's office," said the same ABC News executive. "We said, 'We know there was a meeting with an ABC news reporter but we don't see it on [the timeline].' They told us 'this was just a draft, just a draft of a timeline which is neither complete nor completely accurate.' We asked, 'Who was the meeting with on Tuesday and why isn't there [any mention of a meeting] on Wednesday?' They said they'd get back to us. But we have never gotten an official response." According to another print reporter covering the case, Condit's chief of staff, Mike Lynch, later refused to distribute copies of the timeline to other news organizations, telling the reporter that the timeline contained "mistakes" and that he had been chastised by members of Condit's legal team for releasing the timeline to ABC News.

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