Bill Clinton assails 9/11 TV drama

Former President Bill Clinton has dismissed as "indisputably wrong" a US TV show that suggests he was too distracted by a sex scandal to confront the Islamic militant threat that culminated in the Sept. 11 attacks, his spokesman said.

"The Path to 9/11," a miniseries due to be broadcast on Sunday and Monday nights, charts the run-up to the attacks that occurred five years ago and killed 2,992 people.

The show portrays Clinton's former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, and others as having bungled an opportunity to capture Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Clinton administration officials complained that parts of the miniseries were fabricated.

Jay Carson, a spokesman for Clinton's office in New York, said: "We don't claim the scenes are wrong. They are indisputably wrong. ABC says so. The 9/11 commission report says so. Tom Kean (the Republican chairman of the 9/11 commission and a consultant on the film) says so. The writer of the show says so."

Clinton handed over power to President George W. Bush about eight months before the 2001 attacks.

On Friday, The Washington Post reported ABC was making minor changes to its docudrama in response to complaints by Clinton administration officials and other Democrats.

The network would not confirm those changes were being made, but issued a statement saying, "For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalised scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogueue, and time compression.

"No one has seen the final version of the film, because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticisms of film specifics are premature and irresponsible."

Kean told The Washington Post he asked for changes that would address complaints raised by the former Clinton officials. He told the paper the network was considering his request.

The newspaper quoted one unidentified ABC executive as saying changes were "intended to make clearer that it was general indecisiveness" by federal officials that left America vulnerable to attacks, "not any one individual."

The show has added fuel to the election-year debate over who is tougher on terrorism, and US congressional Democrats urged ABC this week to cancel the miniseries.

Materials that publishing company Scholastic intended to use in conjunction with the program have been pulled from Scholastic's web site.

"After a thorough review of the original guide that we offered online to about 25,000 high school teachers, we determined that the materials did not meet our high standards for dealing with controversial issues," Dick Robinson, head of Scholastic, said in a statement.

The producers of "The Path to 9/11" say the miniseries is based on information collected at commission hearings.

Starring Harvey Keitel, it traces the roots of the Sept. 11 plot, depicting missteps, ineptitude, political decisions and bureaucratic intransigence that thwart investigative efforts.

"The American government let us down," Kean told Reuters. "Not only didn't they stop the plot, they didn't even slow it down."

Kean said he saw the show as a way to raise awareness of the recommendations made by the 9/11 commission, which issued its report in 2004.

Kean said he expected criticism. "People in both parties didn't particularly like the commission report, and I think people in both parties aren't going to love this one."

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