“It goes without saying that they have a lot of clout,” said the former Clinton official, “and they have a lot of people who will protect whatever they see as being in their interests. Hillary Clinton might very well run for president and a lot of people want to, if not curry favor, then protect their franchise.”

This is not the first time that the Clintons have prevailed upon a media organization to cancel a project that could run counter to their political ambitions. In September 2007, Politico reported that GQ, the Condé Nast men’s magazine, killed a story about Hillary Clinton’s dysfunctional presidential campaign organization under threat of being denied access to Bill for its “Man of the Year” issue. According to Politico’s Ben Smith, now editor in chief of BuzzFeed, the former president’s spokesman Jay Carson suggested to GQ editors that Clinton would not make himself available if the magazine published the dishy article about internal squabbles in his wife’s campaign by Atlantic writer Joshua Green…

The former Clinton official said, in that case and the current one, Team Clinton was acting out of legitimate political necessity. “What should they do? It seems like a good idea to me,” said the former official. “There are maybe eight people in Manhattan who care about the process, and there’s millions of people who would potentially see the documentary and the miniseries. You do the math.”