MEMORY HOLED: A 9/11 Story Some Want Us to Forget.

“The Path to 9/11” aired exactly once, two decades ago. Then it vanished. ABC hasn’t shown it since. The network has refused to release it on a disc or as a download. No streaming service carries it.

It’s almost like someone doesn’t want you to watch it.

Millions of Americans saw the docudrama in 2006, on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. It played across two nights, without commercials. Its major inspiration was the final report of the 9/11 Commission, the bipartisan panel empowered by federal law to investigate the terrorist attacks.

“Few people actually read the report,” says Quinn Taylor, the former ABC executive who conceived of the show, in an interview. “Our goal was to put it in living rooms and make people think.”

ABC invested more than $40 million in the project. It signed up stars such as Harvey Keitel, Patricia Heaton, Amy Madigan, Donnie Wahlberg and others. There was talk of broadcasting “The Path to 9/11” annually, as a public service. The idea was to portray the national-security lapses that allowed Osama bin Laden to deliver death and destruction to America. The hope was to keep the country alert and vigilant.

“The Path to 9/11” is a gripping story of failure. I watched it 20 years ago and wrote about it favorably. I recently rewatched it, having saved promotional DVDs from back in the day. It holds up well as a dramatic chronicle of what went wrong.

This is more about the Swamp protecting its own than anything else — so read the whole thing, out from behind the WSJ paywall.