Many wonder what is new to say on this subject, and the answer is, not a lot. Koppel's effort is a case in point. The sheer import of 9/11 collides with the absence of major revelations to anyone who has been paying attention since 2001. This is not riveting television, but it does make us take stock.
We are drawn to his entry among others because, first, Koppel is a grown-up and a scourge of cliched journalism. He is crisp, curious, and authoritative. He strives harder than most of his ilk to make sense of things and succeeds a good deal of the time. His reports radiate dry clarity. (That said, he can also be pompous, didactic, and ripe for withering parody.) Also, this is his first documentary collaboration with the Discovery Channel since he retired from ABC's ``Nightline."
The town meeting will include a mix of present and former government officials, civil libertarians, 9/11 Commission members, and 9/11 family members. This kind of affair usually generates more heat than light, but Koppel loves the format.
He opens the program by asking the right questions -- How did this happen and why does the National Security Agency have access to my phone records ? -- and then builds a solid, unspectacular series of case studies into the effects of 9/11 on our civil liberties.
We are reminded of the shellacking those liberties took from the Bush administration's post 9/11 stance, referred to as ``the paradigm shift." This chilling euphemism essentially reversed the presumption of innocence embedded in American jurisprudence when it comes to suspected terrorists and anchored a preemptive stance against perceived threats in any form to American security.
From it, the show posits, flow the prisoner abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the renditions of suspects to secret prisons abroad and, internally, the warrantless NSA wiretaps of American citizens. This thinking also buttresses the infamous memo by former Justice Department official John Yoo relaxing the definition of torture. (Yoo's attempts to defend his handiwork on camera are risible.)
We tour Guantanamo and are later reminded of the Supreme Court's decision striking down the Bush ground rules to try suspects in military tribunals. ``A state of war is not a blank check for the President," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote.
The best insight into the administration's posture after 9/11 comes from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who talks of the existential fear gripping the White House that something worse would soon occur. This may explain what critics charge is a deplorable track record on civil liberties since the attack but hardly excuses it. Decisions based on fear are almost always bad.
