It was about the broader issues illuminated by an AGIS/Conxion peering conflict that prevented a number of people from accessing his web site in October 1997.
I didn't want it published "as is" since it wasn't written for public consumption. There were personal details that detracted from the message, adjustments I wanted to tone down some of the rhetoric and some people (sources) who I referred to who needed better credit and/or real links.
I didn't say it was private, but in some of it I was "talking" directly to him. And it was certainly netiquette at the time that email was by default private; he said that was "crap", that he'd gone over this issue "countless times", that "off the record" was a privilege that had to be negotiated ahead of time and that he was "being very generous" in offering to delete it.
That message from him left a rather bad taste in my mouth.
My email was in response this public posting on his blog, start with the 4th paragraph of this page: http://www.scripting.com/1997/10/16.html
It wasn't abusive, although it was harsh on some bad players of the era, like UUNET, e.g. their actions prompted the editor of Boardwatch to commission a cover depicting the head of UUNET planting blue barrels of ANFO in MAE-East and I think MAE-West, referring to the OK City bombing a couple of years earlier.
The general issue of the day as I put it in my email:
"[T]he ISPs that are refusing to peer with others on equal terms are basically no longer offering Internet connectivity, but are instead offering a private network that happens to be connected to parts of the Internet. As I like to describe it, their unique selling proposition is "sign up with us, and we'll connect you to a steadily smaller portion of the Internet"."
UUNET's dominance at that time allowed them to play this sort of game and we still see it occasionally when a low cost provider irritates another. The end result of these power plays as I said at the time was "paying customers of the disconnecting ISP demand full connectivity or take their business elsewhere", although obviously that was a lot easier in the dialup era.