John J. Miller has a piece today in the Wall Street Journal‘s Free Expression section about The Path to 9/11 miniseries that aired once on ABC and then disappeared. I had forgotten about it. An aspect of the series and its reception is particularly worth being reminded of.
One scene shows President Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, in the situation room in 1998, failing to give the green light for a military action to grab Osama bin Laden. Miller writes:
A couple of weeks before the scheduled broadcast of “The Path to 9/11,” ABC sponsored a screening in Washington, D.C. It showed a portion of the program, including the scene with Berger. Almost immediately, Democrats revolted. Harry Reid of Nevada, Chuck Schumer of New York, and three other senators sent a letter to Bob Iger, who was the CEO of Disney, which owns ABC. It warned him about “misinformation,” urged him “to cancel this broadcast,” and reminded him in the manner of extortionists who run a protection racket that ABC enjoys “a free broadcast license” from the government “to act as a trustee of the public airwaves serving in the public interest.”
It was a brazen move. It might even be described as “despicable, disgusting, and against democratic values,” which is what Mr. Schumer called President Trump’s demands that ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel last year, after the late-night host claimed that the assassin of conservative activist Charlie Kirk was “one of them,” i.e., a member of “the MAGA gang.”
At least the letter from the senators was a public document. The media reported on it. Americans could read it. In private, President Clinton phoned Mr. Iger and insisted that he stop the show, according to the journalist Carol Felsenthal in her 2008 book, “Clinton in Exile.” ABC responded by ordering last-minute edits. The scene with Berger was chopped up. “That was an important sequence,” says Cyrus Nowrasteh, the screenwriter. “We were censored.”
Miller wrote about the series for us in “Blacklisting ABC” (2006).