( CNN ) -- Nearly eight years later , Connie Chung still remembers being surprised . `` Stonewalling is what gets politicians in trouble , when they ... try to cover up , '' Connie Chung says . It was one of those television moments that linger in the national consciousness , like Barbara Walters sitting down with Monica Lewinsky , Dan Rather with Saddam Hussein , or Jay Leno asking Hugh Grant what the hell he had been thinking . Chung was with ABC then , and she got the `` get '' -- the first interview with Gary Condit , the California congressman at the center of the Chandra Levy media frenzy . The former Washington intern , you 'll recall , had been found murdered in Rock Creek Park , and law enforcement sources let it be known that the married Condit had been having an affair with her . In an interview airing Sunday on `` Reliable Sources '' ( 10 a.m . ET , during CNN 's `` State of the Union with John King '' ) , Chung says she was surprised when Condit refused to acknowledge the romantic relationship . `` Stonewalling is what gets politicians in trouble , when they stonewall or they try to cover up , '' she says . `` I think that the general public and the news media wanted him to be honest , and if he could be honest about that part of the story , then he could be -- then he would be believed when he was answering other questions as to whether or not he had anything to do with her disappearance . '' I often focus on media excess and media mistakes on the program , but we also try to highlight good journalism . The segment includes two Washington Post reporters , Sari Horwitz and Scott Higham , who cracked the Levy mystery in a 13-part series last year . They did what the D.C. police could not : They identified Ingmar Guandique , an illegal Salvadoran immigrant , as Levy 's likely killer . Authorities issued an arrest warrant for the imprisoned suspect this week . But Horwitz and Higham talk about how they were roundly criticized for resurrecting the case and accused of sensationalizing it . It 's clear that Levy 's case became a huge deal in 2001 because of the Condit connection . At the same time , Chung says , `` The news media had changed . This was the gradual evolution of what the news media was doing . There was flavor of the week , the story du jour . '' The Levy frenzy became the precursor for the missing-women TV melodramas that followed : Laci Peterson , Stacy Peterson , Natalee Holloway . The stories of women who were not celebrities , whom no one had heard of before , became national soap operas because they drove cable and morning show ratings . At least , in Levy 's case , the soap opera appears to be drawing to a close .
Congressman would n't admit affair with a former intern . Honest ##y might have helped save Condit , the anchor says . Congressman recalls interview for ` ` Reliable News '' Sunday on CNN .