Any journalist, any media, would always be willing and eager to interview exclusively the most powerful person in the world, who, unless proven otherwise, is the president of the United States.
On March 12, 2004, the day after the most terrible massacre that Spain remembers since the Civil War, the White House offered Lorenzo Milá, TVE's correspondent in Washington, a joint interview with George W. Bush and the first lady, Laura Bush, at the Spanish Embassy to express her condolences to a friendly people.
And, furthermore, the president gave news that Milá was not expecting: while the Government of José María Aznar insisted on attributing the attacks to ETA, in an increasingly less convincing manner, Bush assured that there was no need to rush to point out who was responsible, he offered his collaboration in the investigation and did not stop drawing parallels with the attack on the United States on 9/11 in 2001.
The next day, the 13th, the White House could not overcome its perplexity when it realized that TVE had not broadcast the entire interview, but only some brief cuts on
Telediario
.
He protested to Ambassador Javier Rupérez, whom the presidential couple had visited the day before.
TVE, then chaired by José Antonio Sánchez, with Alfredo Urdaci as news director, was unfazed.
Disregarding the extraordinary nature of such an interview, and the relevance of what was said there, was one more ingredient in the mountain of lies that tore Spain apart at the time and whose wounds have not yet healed.
Public television takes revenge for one of the most unworthy moments in its history by programming, on this Tuesday night's
News
(9:25 p.m.), a documentary that recovers that conversation and in which Milá and Rupérez remember those hours of shock and confusion :
The interview that never aired
(21 minutes).
Urdaci did not want to make statements to that program (nor did he make them to
Lo de Évole
on Sunday on La Sexta, where this episode was recalled).
The documentary and the raw material,
Lorenzo Milá's full interview with George Bush after 11-M
(seven minutes unedited), have been available since last Sunday on RTVE Play.
Just 24 hours after the 11M attacks, the US president gave an exclusive interview to TVE.
20 years later, you will be able to see it in its entirety on RTVE.
🔸 March 3 on @rtveplay
🔹 March 5 on @telediario_tve#LaEntrevista11M #20años11Mrtve pic.twitter.com/wwCiSpVXah
— RTVE News (@rtvenoticias) March 2, 2024
In those seven minutes, the Republican president tried to show closeness to the pain of the victims, because Americans know what it feels like after such an atrocity.
And he gave some praise to Aznar: the Spanish “are lucky to have him as president”, since he does know what “the war against terror” is and has fought “terrorist organizations like ETA”.
But, without being asked exactly who he thought it was, he was very clear: “We still don't know who did it.
"I wouldn't rule anyone out."
He offered to lend a hand: “The US Government will help the Spanish Government find out the facts if it so wishes.”
He also proposed pursuing terrorists wherever they are.
And he elaborated: “The facts will become known and it will be easier for the Government to know how to proceed.”
It was read between the lines: we don't know who it was and neither does the Spanish Government even though it claims to know.
And in private Bush was much more explicit: the US president replied to Rupérez when the ambassador attributed the attack to ETA.
“Well, my services tell me that maybe it wasn't them, but it was someone else…”
If he didn't fully know who he was, the less he knew who he wasn't.
Lorenzo Milá had not seen the recording of the interview again in the 20 years that had passed.
He believes that this valuable material was hidden not because it contradicted the official version, which insisted that it had been ETA while the jihadist trail continued to grow, but because it was no longer convenient for Aznar to appear as Bush's great ally, with whom he had posed. proud in the photo of the Azores that preceded the Iraq war.
The Aznar Government, through the obedient Urdaci, censured the world leader with whom he had managed to forge a close relationship.
“In that context we understood that they didn't like being friends with Bush, who associated this with Iraq,” Milá says today.
The credibility of the media controlled by the State hit rock bottom in those days (that of other private media continued to do so for longer).
On April 3, four Islamist terrorists blew themselves up and killed a police officer when they were cornered in Leganés.
The big hoax could no longer be sustained.
That it took us 20 years to know that interview in its entirety was not only part of crude political manipulation: it was a crime against journalism.
What public television professionals know how to do well when their bosses let them.
One day after the 11M attack, Lorenzo Milá interviewed George Bush and Laura Bush exclusively for TVE.
It was never broadcast in its entirety.
'The interview that never aired', tomorrow at 9:25 p.m. on @telediario_tve #LaEntrevista11M #20años11Mrtve https://t.co/TSP5iviyF5 pic.twitter.com/ithWAxlg9d
— RTVE News (@rtvenoticias) March 4, 2024
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