The enemies of free speech are on the march--Part 5: The Senate censorship politburo

By Wes Vernon

Five Democrat senators have sent a thinly veiled threat to Disney's ABC: Pull The Path to 9/11 or we will put you out of the broadcasting business.

The Orwellian "big brother" police state is advancing its attempted assault on the freedoms we in the United States of America take for granted. Five senators presume to set themselves up as a censorship politburo right here on the soil of the home of the brave and the land of the free. The offense? Showing media darling Bill Clinton not doing his job.

Mind you, this baring of senatorial fangs does not come from some backbencher on Capitol Hill. The memo comes from Senate Democrat leader Harry "We've Just killed the Patriot Act" Reid (Nev.), his angry troops-slandering side-kick Richard Durbin (Ill.), Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), and Bryan Dorgan (N.D.).

Of course, the senators don't come right out and explicitly say they will go after ABC's broadcast station licenses unless the network caves in to their Pravda-style approval of the party line. That would scare Joe and Jane Six-pack. Better to use Orwellian language to get the message across to broadcasters who already live in mortal fear of the FCC shutting them down. They'll get the code language, don't worry about that.

Here is the key passage in the politburo letter, and it is as subtle as a sledgehammer:

"The Communications Act of 1934 provides your network with a free broadcast license predicated on the fundamental understanding of your principlal obligation to act as a trustee of the public airwaves in serving the public interest [italics mine]."

And then there is this, once again with italics added:

"We urge you, after full consideration of the facts, to uphold your responsibilities as a respected member of American society and as a beneficiary of the free use of the public airwaves to cancel this factually inaccurate and deeply misguided program."

Bear in mind, the Congress of the United States has life or death power over the operations of the FCC. This is especially true of the Senate, which can refuse to confirm nominees for the commission. Oversight hearings on Capitol Hill can bring more pressure to bear on the FCC's regulation of "broadcast content" — a polite euphemism for censorship. Also, Congress has the ever-present bottom line control over the FCC — the purse strings, i.e. its operating budget.

It is one thing, for example, for Senator Dick Durbin — who has been living off the taxpayer for all of his adult life — to remind broadcasters that they are "beneficiaries of free use of the public airwaves." It is quite another to put up the money, to say nothing of a certain amount of smarts and hard work, to operate successfully a broadcast company — be it a major network corporation or a small station serving small towns and rural areas.

I have worked in both settings, and even given occasional differences with management policy, I never knew a broadcast operator who was unaware of his "obligations" to serve the public. Durbin's bio suggests he has never put up the money to operate a lemonade stand.

Showing their hand

More to the point: Every broadcaster knows the real meaning in a memo he receives from five United States Senators telling him to cancel — not just to ask for "equal time," but cancel — a planned docudrama. That has a very chilling effect. Only a politician with a police state mentality would put that in writing.

But the five senators may have let the cat out of the bag. This is a preview of what you can expect if the Democrats take control of Congress in the November elections. There is a plan afoot to bring back the FCC's so-called "Fairness Doctrine," in itself an Orwellian term for shutting down free speech on the airwaves.

Congresswoman Louise Slaughter and her fellow New Yorker Maurice Hinchey have introduced separate bills to require "equal time" for liberals for each of the conservative radio talkshow hosts. Since liberal talkshow hosts have repeatedly bombed with the public, this is liberalspeak for using raw government power to shut up broadcast speech Slaughter and Hinchey don't like. They are just waiting for a change of congressional control to push their legislation. In that endeavor they have the backing of top Democrats Howard Dean, Al Gore, and John Kerry, who have blamed talk radio for their political setbacks.

As to the substance of the ABC documentary...

As I write this, ABC has labeled the whining of credibly-accused rapist Bill Clinton and his attack dogs about the alleged unfairness of The Path to 9/11 as "premature." The editing is going on right down to airtime, they say. I'll just bet it is. When you have a gun held to your head, you'll do almost anything. By the time you read this column, we may know to what extent the threats have worked. The Sunday Washington Times says ABC execs have begun "wimping out."

The writer of the film says yes, it is true that some edits have been made due to political pressure. Cyrus Nowrasteh acknowledged as much in answer to a direct question from radio talkshow host Sean Hannity. He added the current climate has a chilling effect that "is not great for the creative process."

At the same time, Nowrasteh insisted "the essential content of the movie" remains intact. "They can't gut what it's about. They can't rewrite history." Hannity indicated he would withhold judgment on that until the show is actually aired. But the radio talker said the pressure is "the greatest threat to free speech since the Sedition Act over 200 years ago."

One scene — reportedly deleted to please the Senate censorship politburo — shows National Security Advisor Sandy Berger hanging up on a CIA agent in the field who is trying to get the green light to kill Bin Laden when he had the opportunity to do so.

Some have said it was actually CIA Director George Tenet who made the decision not to act. Other researchers have insisted Sandy Berger absolutely "ran those meetings" where the call purportedly was received. One way or the other, it was the Clinton administration in action — or inaction — since both Berger and Tenet were his appointees and it happened on his watch.

Nowrasteh says there were about a dozen missed opportunities to snatch Bin Laden and they were compressed into one. It would be difficult to dramatize exactly what happened by showing all of them in a single movie, he noted. That does not get around the fact that Bill Clinton had a chance to get bin Laden and he didn't.

Since 2002, I have had access to a tape of Clinton admitting as much. In a recording obtained by Carl Limbacher of NewsMax, Clinton told a Long Island audience in February of that year, "So I didn't bring him [Bin Laden] here because we had no basis on which to hold him. We pleaded with the Saudis to take him."

That was Clinton in his own words. Those were the words of a man who lied under oath and quibbled about the meaning of "is" who now points at ABC and says, "I don't want any lies in there."

Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger tells ABC, "You can fix it. You gotta yank it." Right — just as he "yanked" secret documents and stuffed them in his pants and socks so as to steal them from the National Archive.

Right-wing Hollywood?

9/11 commission Chairman Tom Kean (pronounced Cane) was a senior consultant in the making of the ABC film. He rejects the assertion by the Clinton crybabies that the work is the product of a "right-wing conspiracy."

In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, he said, "Hollywood is now being considered as being supportive of the right? That's a new perspective."

Right there, Governor Kean has nailed the real reason for all the uproar from the precincts of the left. They are used to having their worldview rubber-stamped by Hollywood and the mainstream media. How dare one of their presumed reliable echo chambers deviate from the party line. Going back to Hollywood's Stalinist past, one is reminded of the thinly veiled threat, "You should re-think your position, Comrade."

The attack dogs snarl

Perhaps the prize for sheer gall comes from Clinton acolyte Bruce Lindsey, who wrote to Governor Kean that he was "shocked" by the commission chairman's role in producing the film. "Your defense of the outright lies in this film is destroying the bipartisan aura of the 9/11 Commission and tarnishing the hard work of your fellow commissioners."

There are not enough rivers of ink to pick apart that glaring monument to the disingenuous. "Hard work of your fellow commissioners?" Which ones? The attack dogs the Democrats appointed to the 9/11 panel?

Is Lindsey speaking of Jamie "Stovepipe" Gorelick, who was nailed for insisting when she was at the Clinton Justice Department that law enforcement information not be shared with intelligence agencies, even beyond what was required by law? That was some of Gorelick's "hard work." (See this column Tom Kean: The politics of inclusion, the 9/11 Commission & the U.S. senator who might have been.)

Or maybe Mr. Lindsey is referring to Richard Ben-Veniste, whose modus operandi is the smear bucket. During the Whitewater Senate hearings, he dredged up the private family correspondence of Jean Lewis — a regulator who was hot on the trail of Clintonian misdeeds — and publicized it right out in the open, causing Lewis to pass out. That was a sample of Ben Veniste's "hard work."

Recalling a (phony) plea from another era, one could have asked (this time with credibility), "Have you no decency, sir, at long last?"

"Destroying the bipartisan aura of the 9/11 commission?" That "bipartisan aura" is Clintonspeak for my way or the highway. Chairman Kean bent over backwards to see to it that a report was released that reflected a commission consensus, all in the interest of attempting to heal the wounds of that dreadful day. He even defended Stovepipe (something many of us would not have done) so as to keep the commission from falling apart. And this is the thanks he gets? Slander from the Clintonistas?

The night of the Washington preview showing of Part 1 of 9/11 was an interesting experience for me and others.

Attack dog Ben Veniste got up and derided as "political" the parts of the film exposing Clinton's ineptness. Minutes later, a woman who is a 9/11 family member got up, spoke in favor of the film and said those who call it political "are being political themselves."

Amen to that. Let's hope that woman does not meet the smear treatment accorded others who have dared to cross the Clintons. Let's hope it is still true that "it can't happen here." But then maybe the Senate censorship politburo proves that it can.

© Wes Vernon