“If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient,” Alfonsi wrote.

The team had sent questions and requested comment from the White House, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security for the story, according to the email. But the administration declined to grant the journalists an interview.

“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO,” Alfonsi wrote. “Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.”

“The 60 Minutes report on ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast,” a CBS News spokeswoman said in a statement. “We determined it needed additional reporting.” The network did not respond to a request to comment on Alfonsi’s statement about Weiss’s intervention and the rationale. Alfonsi did not respond to a request for comment.

The segment, titled “Inside CECOT,” was set to cover the Trump administration’s deportations of Venezuelan migrants to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), one of El Salvador’s most notorious prisons. The network had teased the segment for days, but by Sunday the trailer and promotional materials had been removed from CBS News’s website.

The original preview said that Alfonsi spoke with released prisoners, who describe “brutal and torturous conditions” inside the prison.

Hundreds of Venezuelans who have been deported to El Salvador under Trump’s immigration crackdown have endured systematic torture and abuse — including sexual assault — during their detention, according to a November report by Human Rights Watch. The report said conditions at CECOT breached the United Nations’ minimal rules for the treatment of prisoners.

In the email to her team, Alfonsi wrote that she learned Saturday that Weiss killed the story, which she says was screened five times and cleared by both the standards department and the network’s attorneys.

Weiss was named CBS’s top editor this fall after David Ellison’s newly formed Paramount Skydance bought The Free Press, the opinion website she founded, for $150 million. While the two properties are still technically separate, Weiss runs both. Her early days at the network have been marked by rapid changes at the network, including restructuring and layoffs. Weiss launched a new town hall series including an interview with Erika Kirk, the widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Earlier in December, CBS promoted Tony Dokoupil, who has co-anchored “CBS Mornings” since 2019, to anchor “CBS Evening News,” one of the most prominent jobs in television journalism.

In the email, Alfonsi said the sources in the segment “risked their lives to speak with us.” She added: “We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories.”

“If the standard for airing a story becomes ‘the government must agree to be interviewed,’ then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast. We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state,” Alfonsi wrote.

“It is factually correct,” she added. “In my view, pulling it now — after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”