Soon after its release, with the facilitation of FBI suppression, as author Sam Greenlee believed, the film was removed from theaters as a result of its politically controversial message. Nina Metz wrote in the "Chicago Tribune": "For years it was only available on bootleg video. In 2004, the actor Tim Reid tracked down a remaining negative stored in a vault under a different name ('When they want to lose something, they lose it,' Reid told the "Tribune" at the time) and released it on DVD." In a 2004 feature for NPR, Karen Bates reported that the director of the film, Ivan Dixon, admitted that United Artists would not show the film in a way that would allow its political message to come through when clips were viewed prior to the film’s public release. "Dixon says when United Artists screened the finished product and saw a Panavision version of political Armageddon, they were stunned."