FACTUAL


“Then, with a little research, I found out about the photographs which, once taken, were locked into the National Archive for 40 years. In intervening years, after freedom of information requests, thousands had been released including many from that day, but few had been published. The idea was to take the oral history and match these images to it.”


So, he wrote a proposal, back in 2017. He secured some development money, for initial research. Then he contacted the Bush community and spend a further six months negotiating access.


Persuading a president


“When we approached [the President] a year and a half ahead of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we were the first to do so. And it was acknowledged by everyone – including him – he had to do something around the anniversary. But it was tricky as he is quite a reluctant interviewee,” Wishart recalls.


Luckily, many others involved – his two Chiefs of Staff, for example, other senior advisors, and the security services - readily agreed. Unluckily, principles of agreement were secured in March 2020, just as the pandemic took off.


“For a while, it looked like the whole thing


might collapse,” he says. “But as the first lockdown lifted in August, and with the greenlight from the BBC and Apple TV+, we were among the first journalist to get access back into the US.”


Even so, Covid-19 had a significant impact on filming.


“We had planned two week filming blocks to get the interviews done that September and October,” Wishart adds. “But then we had a two-week quarantine to factor in on arrival. And then we ended up driving around America not flying – because of the Covid risk, we were very wary of making any of the former members of state, who are now quite elderly, ill.”


and dealing with what happened as it played out wasn’t an easy wicket,” he says.


“Everyone asks politicians ‘Why did you do this or that?’ and, when asked enough, they answer by rote. But show them a photograph from the day and ask how they felt and you get something else.”


COHERENT STORY - ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT - OF WHAT HAPPENED ON THAT DAY


MUCH HAD ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT 9/11, BUT THERE WAS A GAP: A


White House chief photographer Eric Draper’s photographs allowed the production team to tell the story unlike other ways it had been told before.


A nine week block of filming done that autumn was then followed by a second five week block in early 2021, with President George W Bush’s interview among the last to be shot.


“Much had already been written about 9/11, but there was a gap: a coherent story about the government of what happened on that day. As Simon [Young] reminded me in one of his emails, everyone involved was human


Wishart continues: “And we did so by asking those involved about the choices they had to make, the imponderables they had to consider, the little information they had, and how they felt – something that the 3,000 bereaved families have owned for many years, but as the 20th anniversary approached, finally felt a legitimate question.”


9/11: Inside the President’s War Room was first broadcast before the Ten O’clock News on BBC 1 on August 31 2021 – the day the US withdrew from Afghanistan, a direct consequence of the War on Terror declared by George W Bush in response to the September 11 attacks.


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