NEW YORK (Bloomberg) ? Richard Nixon?s infamous ?enemies list? included a bunch of journalists. George Bush may not keep a list, but he also seems to regard the media as his foe.

?News War?, a four-part PBS special premiering tonight at 10 p.m. Bermuda time, focuses on the government?s increasingly aggressive attempts to spin the news and intimidate journalists via threats and subpoenas.

The opening show focuses on the sad tale of former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, whose pre-Iraq invasion stories backed the Bush administration?s claim that Saddam Hussein had to go.

Miller says her stories used the same intelligence information provided to Bush. Correspondent Lowell Bergman also reminds us, with the help of archived footage, how the administration put the fear of nuclear annihilation in the American soul.

?We don?t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,? Condoleezza Rice warns in one ominous sound bite.

For the most part, Bergman reports, the press danced to the administration?s drumbeat. Next stop: quagmire.

?Lots of people wrote stories that were overly credulous,? admits New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller. Indeed, we see a clip of Vice President Dick Cheney quoting a Times story that precisely echoed the administration?s nuclear warning.

The Washington Post?s Bob Woodward also succumbed to the spin. In one clip that he no doubt wishes would disappear, Woodward tells a caller to Larry King?s CNN programme that the chance of there being no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ?is about zero?. As he now acknowledges, he was ?totally wrong?.

There were a few unconvinced parties, including former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson. In a Times op-ed piece, Wilson challenged Bush?s State of the Union speech that warned about Saddam?s nuclear ambitions.

Then came payback. Word was leaked that Wilson?s wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA operative. It was hardball, by any measure.

In the uproar that followed, the Times and other newspapers called for a special prosecutor to dislodge the snitch. ?Be careful what you editorialise for,? Miller notes.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald made it clear that the government was ready, willing and able to send uncooperative journalists to prison. He insisted that journalists who received the leaked information about Plame identify their source; of the four known to have received the tip, only Miller refused to testify. She went to prison for 85 days, even though she never wrote a word about Plame.

Woodward, also privy to the leak, says his source was former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. The revelation, Woodward insists, ?really didn?t amount to a violation of the law. There?s no echo of Watergate.?

Yet the case has had huge implications, according to the show. Fitzgerald?s ability to drag journalists into court demolished the assumption of a constitutional right to protect sources and put the press at a huge disadvantage, according to former Times columnist William Safire.

While the government has many ways to get information, including wiretapping and granting immunity to criminals, the ?essential route? for the press is ?to offer confidentiality,? Safire says. Journalist Mark Feldstein wraps up the show on a chilling note, warning of an ?emboldened? government. ?It?s Katie bar the door,? he says.

Somewhere, Nixon is smiling.