Discover the Secret Right-Wing Network Behind ABC's 9/11 Deception

Huffington Post via Yahoo News ^ | September 8, 2006 | Max Blumenthal

[Lorianne]

Less than 72 hours before ABC's "The Path to 9/11" is scheduled to air, the network is suddenly under siege. On Tuesday, ABC was forced to concede that "The Path to 9/11" is "a dramatization, not a documentary." The film deceptively invents scenes to depict former President Bill Clinton's handling of the Al Qaeda threat.

Now, ABC claims to be is editing those false sequences to satisfy critics so the show can go on -- even if it still remains a gross distortion of history. And as it does so, ABC advances the illusion that the deceptive nature of "The Path to 9/11" is an honest mistake committed by a hardworking but admittedly fumbling team of well-intentioned Hollywood professionals who wanted nothing less than to entertain America. But this is another Big Lie.

In fact, "The Path to 9/11" is produced and promoted by a well-honed propaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far right activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, he is working with a secretive evangelical religious right group founded by The Path to 9/11's director David Cunningham that proclaims its goal to "transform Hollywood" in line with its messianic vision.

Before The Path to 9/11 entered the production stage, Disney/ABC contracted David Cunningham as the film's director. Cunningham is no ordinary Hollywood journeyman. He is in fact the son of Loren Cunningham, founder of the right-wing evangelical group Youth With A Mission (YWAM). The young Cunningham helped found an auxiliary of his father's group called The Film Institute (TFI), which, according to its mission statement, is "dedicated to a Godly transformation and revolution TO and THROUGH the Film and Televisionindustry." As part of TFI's long-term strategy, Cunningham helped place interns from Youth With A Mission's in film industry jobs "so that they can begin to impact and transform Hollywood from the inside out," according to a YWAM report.

Last June, Cunningham's TFI announced it was producing its first film, mysteriously titled "Untitled History Project." "TFI's first project is a doozy," a newsletter to YWAM members read. "Simply being referred to as: The Untitled History Project, it is already being called the television event of the decade and not one second has been put to film yet. Talk about great expectations!" (A web edition of the newsletter was mysteriously deleted yesterday but has been cached on Google at the link above).

The following month, on July 28, the New York Post reported that ABC was filming a mini-series "under a shroud of secrecy" about the 9/11 attacks. "At the moment, ABC officials are calling the miniseries 'Untitled Commission Report' and producers refer to it as the 'Untitled History Project,'" the Post noted.

Early on, Cunningham had recruited a young Iranian-American screenwriter named Cyrus Nowrasteh to write the script of his secretive "Untitled" film. Not only is Nowrasteh an outspoken conservative, he is also a fervent member of the emerging network of right-wing people burrowing into the film industry with ulterior sectarian political and religious agendas, like Cunningham.

Nowrasteh's conservatism was on display when he appeared as a featured speaker at the Liberty Film Festival (LFF), an annual event founded in 2004 to premier and promote conservative-themed films supposedly too "politically incorrect" to gain acceptance at mainstream film festivals. This June, while The Path to 9/11 was being filmed, LFF founders Govindini Murty and Jason Apuzzo -- both friends of Nowrasteh -- announced they were "partnering" with right-wing activist David Horowitz. Indeed, the 2006 LFF is listed as "A Program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center."

Since the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1992, Horowitz has labored to create a network of politically active conservatives in Hollywood. His Hollywood nest centers around his Wednesday Morning Club, a weekly meet-and-greet session for Left Coast conservatives that has been graced with speeches by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Victor Davis Hanson and Christopher Hitchens. The group's headquarters are at the offices of Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a "think tank" bankrolled for years with millions by right-wing sugardaddies like eccentric far right billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. (Scaife financed the Arkansas Project, a $2.3 million dirty tricks operation that included paying sources for negative stories about Bill Clinton that turned out to be false.)

With the LFF now under Horowitz's control, his political machine began drumming up support for Cunningham and Nowrasteh's "Untitled" project, which finally was revealed in late summer as "The Path to 9/11." Horowitz's PR blitz began with an August 16 interview with Nowrasteh on his FrontPageMag webzine. In the interview, Nowrasteh foreshadowed the film's assault on Clinton's record on fighting terror. "The 9/11 report details the Clinton's administration's response -- or lack of response -- to Al Qaeda and how this emboldened Bin Laden to keep attacking American interests," Nowrasteh told FrontPageMag's Jamie Glazov. "There simply was no response. Nothing."

A week later, ABC hosted LFF co-founder Murty and several other conservative operatives at an advance screening of The Path to 9/11. (While ABC provided 900 DVDs of the film to conservatives, Clinton administration officials and objective reviewers from mainstream outlets were denied them.) Murty returned with a glowing review for FrontPageMag that emphasized the film's partisan nature. "'The Path to 9/11' is one of the best, most intelligent, most pro-American miniseries I've ever seen on TV, and conservatives should support it and promote it as vigorously as possible," Murty wrote. As a result of the special access granted by ABC, Murty's article was the first published review of The Path to 9/11, preceding those by the New York Times and LA Times by more than a week.

Murty followed her review with a blast email to conservative websites such as Liberty Post and Free Republic on September 1 urging their readers to throw their weight behind ABC's mini-series. "Please do everything you can to spread the word about this excellent miniseries," Murty wrote, "so that 'The Path to 9/11' gets the highest ratings possible when it airs on September 10 & 11! If this show gets huge ratings, then ABC will be more likely to produce pro-American movies and TV shows in the future!"

Murty's efforts were supported by Appuzo, who handles LFF's heavily-trafficked blog, Libertas. Appuzo was instrumental in marketing The Path to 9/11 to conservatives, writing in a blog post on September 2, "Make no mistake about what this film does, among other things: it places the question of the Clinton Administration's culpability for the 9/11 attacks front and center... Bravo to Cyrus Nowrasteh and David Cunningham for creating this gritty, stylish and gripping piece of entertainment."

When a group of leading Senate Democrats sent a letter to ABC CEO Robert Iger urging him to cancel The Path to 9/11 because of its glaring factual errors and distortions, Apuzzo launched a retaliatory campaign to paint the Democrats as foes of free speech. "Here at LIBERTAS we urge the public to make noise over this, and to demand that Democrats back down," he wrote on September 7th. "What is at stake is nothing short of the 1st Amendment."

At FrontPageMag, Horowitz singled out Nowrasteh as the victim. "The attacks by former president Bill Clinton, former Clinton Administration officials and Democratic US senators on Cyrus Nowrasteh's ABC mini-series "The Path to 9/11" are easily the gravest and most brazen and damaging governmental attacks on the civil liberties of ordinary Americans since 9/11," Horowitz declared.

Now, as discussion grows over the false character of The Path to 9/11, the right-wing network that brought it to fruition is ratcheting up its PR efforts. Murty will appear tonight on CNN's Glenn Beck show and The Situation Room, according to Libertas in order to respond to "the major disinformation campaign now being run by Democrats to block the truth about what actually happened during the Clinton years."

While this network claims its success and postures as the true victims, the ABC network suffers a PR catastrophe. It's almost as though it was complacent about an attack on its reputation by a band of political terrorists.

[Christian4Bush]

I am.

Evenin/mornin Howlin...figured it would be you and/or Peach. I don't know how much, if any, I will watch of it...I'm starting a new job on 9/11 morning, in the People's Republic of Santa Monica (CA), so I want to get a good night's sleep...and I KNOW that I'll be FReeping all night if I watch it at all.

Perhaps I'll follow along the AussieBabe, or whoever that was, since they get it way before we do, or perhaps I'll follow the East Coast thread. 5pm on the Left Coast, I'll still be awake. Should be interesting, now that it's finally here. This thread may rival a SOTU or Election Day thread.

Thanks for all you do. I have a lot of favorites here, but you are one of my Top 10.

[Aussiebabe]

I talked my husband into watching at least the first couple of hours and will have him report if he gets a chance. He will use my by-line and report.

[JLAGRAYFOX]

I can't put my finger on it, but there is some driving reason that someone or some group wants to bring down 911 enabler and murderer of American innocents, Bill Clinton and the Democrat Party. And....it is not the the VRWC, the Republican Party or USA conservatives. Of course, most of us on the right wing side of politics have known from day one that Bill Clinton failed in the number one POTUS responsibilty, protecting America and Americans. The 911 commission was a joke and farce from its outset.

So the question is, why would ABC, a flaming left-wing, liberal, Democrat MSM TV station and its owner the Disney empire, put out a miniseries that defines Bill Clinton and the Democrat Party as major culprits in just standing by and enabling 911 to occur along with many other earlier terrorist attacks on the USA and Americans to go down without effective American response?

I can only come with three (3) scenerios: One is that a group of powerful American Jewish Democrat Party liberals feel betrayed by the current Democrat Party and Bill Clinton, because of Democrat Party weak support for Israel in the recent military flare-up in Lebanon. In fact, there are many Democrat Party Jew haters, John Dingle, John Conyers, Cynthia McKinney, Maxine Waters, William Jefferson, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Barbara Lee, Harry Belafonte, etc, for example. Actually there are quite a few more. As such, this "Jewish" cabal has decided to move to weaken or destroy the Democrat Party, and let the real truth about Bill Clinton, the murderer of American innocents and military personnel surface. If the Democrat Party does not retake either the Senate or the House this upcoming November, it will further weaken and start to break apart.

Reason two could be that there are Democrat liberals that actually love this country, and they have decided that the lies and cover-ups that have protected Bill Clinton are damaging to the continued existance of the United States of America, and that the Democrat Party must be taken down right now. The howling and ranting from the Democrat Party is proof that the Democrats are deathly afraid that this can happen. It will!!!

The third reason could be that the MSM has come to realize that the USA is truly at war and is under attack, And as such, this miniseries are set to outline in-depth to the American people, who the real enemy is, and Bill Clinton is just a failed portion of a weak man consumed with sex and ego he considered more important than the protection of the American union and her citizens.

I don't know which one of these reasons, if any, bears fruit, but whatever the reason, Disney and ABC appear to be going forward with the release of this miniseries, after receiving the most unbelievable and unheard of political pressure from an ultra panic stricken Democrat Party and a frantic Bill Clinton. I just know one thing. the chickens are coming home to roost for the true culprits of 911, which I believe bodes well for the future existance and well being of the American nation and her people.

[Rte66]

It's possible the ABC moonbats just don't think 9-11 was all that important, ya know? After all, they're all still here, so what's the big deal?

And gee, the movie "Bobby" is coming out and that's 100 times more important.

[weegee]

STREAMING DOCUMENTARY ON

DESPOTISM

http://www.archive.org/details/Despotis1946

leftist "comments" on that site claim it portrays Bush's policies but they are wrong. From the media bias to the Rat control of major metropolian areas, to Political Correctness indoctrination in academia, there is one agenda striving for control. And it is a racist and intolerant ideology. Just look at the venom spewed by the proPalestian War Moveon, Daily KOS, DUmmy types. Look at the attacks on Lieberman and Codi Rice.

Measures how a society ranks on a spectrum stretching from democracy to despotism. Explains how societies and nations can be measured by the degree that power is concentrated and respect for the individual is restricted. Where does your community, state and nation stand on these scales?

[BIGLOOK]

Very interesting post.

Perhaps some on the Left are having an Epiphany but one would hardly know it from the daily, hourly condemnation of the Right in the MSM. Liberals I know have been mysteriously silent lately, which is odd in the pre election season.

Dare we think of Reagan Democrats arising?

[STARWISE]

Whatever is on that site .. Post #17 on the other thread .. has been pulled. Nada. Hmmmmm

[Dallas59]

*sigh*...3000 people dead, billions in damage and the left and the Democrats worry about a show on TV. Islamic Muslims did 9/11/2001. That's where the blames lies and they will do it again.

[TomGuy]

Nefarious, that's what it is.

I didn't realize that Hollywood had been so secretly infiltrated by such evil, those dastardly conservatives!


How dare they!!!!

Infiltrate Hollywood and make a mean movie about such an idol as Billy J!!!!

Dastardly! That's what it is!!!

We should boycott --- something!!

Let's boycott popcorn. That'll show'em.

===


[Poor Disgraced, Disbarred, and Impeached! He's still trying to create the image of a legacy he let slip through this cigar-toting fingers.]

[Eddie01]

Another FR poster (whom I never recorded officially) stated you only know your over the target when you receive flack.

[Erik Latranyi]

A week later, ABC hosted LFF co-founder Murty and several other conservative operatives at an advance screening of The Path to 9/11.

This is an outright lie....as expected from the loonie left.

Rush was at that premiere. He said that the screening was mixed, 50/50 liberal/conservative. He also describes Richard Ben Veniste getting into Cyrus' face after the screening and screaming about how the film distorts the truth.

[metesky]

His Hollywood nest centers around his Wednesday Morning Club, a weekly meet-and-greet session for Left Coast conservatives that has been graced with speeches by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Victor Davis Hanson and Christopher Hitchens.

Newt Gingrich, disgraced tub o' lard working hand-in-glove with PIAPS to foist a socialist government health care system on the U.S.

Victor Davis Hanson, liberal Democrat historian who happens to "get" the WOT.

Christopher Hitchens, socialist drunkard who also happens to "get" the WOT.

Man oh man, that VRWC is more powerful than I thought.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Oh brother. The whining is deafening."

Yup---the "Left" simply HATES it when the "right" adopts the left's own tactics, then does a better job at implementing and carrying them out.

[13Sisters76]

I hit the floor laffin' after reading this- these people are more insane by the minute.

Just a bit of not-so-new news- we KNEW about Clinton's lack of attention re: OBL LONG before this movie was ever made. All he and his pals did was convince us of the truth.

What a bunch of ultra- maroons...

[CDHart]

"Have you ever seen such a large reaction to anything by the lefties? "

Maybe the Swift Boat video?

Carolyn

[listenhillary]

The third reason could be that the MSM has come to realize that the USA is truly at war and is under attack, And as such, this miniseries are set to outline in-depth to the American people, who the real enemy is, and Bill Clinton is just a failed portion of a weak man consumed with sex and ego he considered more important than the protection of the American union and her citizens.

Might be giving them too much credit for having a brain cell.

I wonder how many Journalists were watching with interest when the kidnapped Fox news reporter was made to convert to Islam at gun point? I didn't hear the journalists say much about this, but don't you think this had to slam head on into their reality?

I think they have realized they have tilted so far to the left that they are taking on water. Look at Couric cashing in on Limbaugh.

[bert]

It must be remembered that ABC was known in 2002 as Saddam's ministry of propaganda outlet in America.

The change would be quite a turnaround if true

[The Wizard]

tells me there is a lot of truth in this mini series.

[tet68]

Yes Arianna, everyone IS out to get you!

The thought of these delusional people running the country
should scare the crap out of any sane American.

[cgbg]

David Horowitz, lions, tigers, and bears, oh my! ;-)