Hillary Clinton film is scrubbed as sources go mum

You can scrap the CNN documentary on Hillary Rodham Clinton: Nobody — absolutely nobody — would agree to speak on record about the former secretary of state and potential 2016 White House candidate, the film director said.

Film director Charles Ferguson said in The Guardian that he pulled the plug on his planned documentary after receiving a solid wall of silence from the 100 or so he approached to interview for the film..

On top of that, aides to the former secretary of state pressured CNN from behind the scenes to have the film dropped from its production schedules, Mr. Ferguson said. One statement from an aide: Mrs. Clinton would only cooperate “over my dead body,” he said, in The Guardian.

“Neither political party wanted the film made,” he said to The Huffington Post. “After painful reflection, I decided that I couldn’t make a film of which I would be proud. And so I’m cancelling.”

Mr. Ferguson, who has several other documentary credits to his name, said Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman, Philippe Reines, actually “interrogated” executives at CNN about the documentary.

“When I approached people for interviews, I discovered that nobody, and I mean nobody, was interested in helping me make this film. Not Democrats, not Republicans — and certainly nobody who works with the Clintons, wants access to the Clintons, or dreams of a position in a Hillary Clinton administration.”

Mr. Ferguson said that even journalists refused to talk.

“Not even journalists who want access, which can easily be taken away,” he said in the media report. “I even sensed potential difficulty in licensing archival footage from CBN [Pat Robertson] and from Fox. After approaching well over a hundred people, only two people who had ever dealt with Mrs. Clinton would agree to an on-camera interview, and I suspected that even they would back out.”

Mr. Ferguson said that what surprised him most was the concerted effort from high-ranking Democrats to silence his documentary.

“Quietly and privately, prominent Democrats made it known both to CNN and to me that they weren’t delighted with the film either,” he said. He also called the shutdown of his production a pure victory for the Clinton camp.

“It’s a victory for the Clintons, and for the money machines that both political parties have now become. But I don’t think that it’s a victory for the media, or for the American people,” he said. “This is not [Mrs. Clinton’s] finest hour.”