Facing heavy pressure from Bill Clinton and backlash from an educational publisher, ABC is revising its controversial miniseries, "The Path to 9/11" - including altering a key scene about the effort to kill Osama bin Laden.
The network has toned down - but not eliminated - a fictional scene involving Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, that the former president had protested in a letter to ABC, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Berger was portrayed in the original version as declining to give the order to kill bin Laden just before hanging up the phone on CIA operatives in the field.
An unidentified ABC executive told The Washington Post "adjustments and refinements" are "intended to make clearer that it was general indecisiveness" of White House officials that left the country vulnerable.
The New York Post reported yesterday that Clinton had demanded that ABC "pull the drama" if revisions aren't made before its airing on Sunday and Monday to mark the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
In scathing letters to ABC chief Bob Iger, Clinton and other high-profile Democrats blasted the miniseries for using several fictionalized scenes to cast the ex-president's team as weak on bin Laden.
Disney-owned ABC's move to quell the criticism came as Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Sen. Charles Schumer and other Democratic leaders sent a letter to Iger, accusing his network of spreading "deeply flawed and factually inaccurate misinformation."
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton issued a statement insisting her husband worked "tirelessly to fight terrorism and keep America safe, and that is the only truth that matters."
I'm sure ABC felt no coercion or censorship whatsover over all these high ranking federal officials attacking them and demanding the show not air and/or be edited to meet their approval.
After all, it isn't as if the federal government regulates the broadcast networks or anything...
