Posted on 09/11/2006 6:22:09 AM PDT by Grig
NEW YORK -- ABC made several editing changes to the first part of its miniseries "The Path to 9/11" following furious protests by Clinton administration officials that it fabricated scenes about their actions prior to the terrorist attacks.
But the network resisted calls to cancel the $40 million miniseries, airing commercial-free over two nights. Part two is scheduled for Monday, with an interruption for President Bush's address to the nation.
Several scenes were cut or changed from the movie that aired Sunday and finished 20 minutes shy of its three-hour time slot. ABC has called it a dramatization, not a documentary.
One scene, in a copy of the movie given to television critics a few weeks ago, indicated President Clinton's preoccupation with his potential impeachment may have hurt the effort to go after Osama bin Laden.
In the original scene, an actor portraying White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke shares a limousine ride with FBI agent John O'Neill and tells him: "The Republicans are going all-out for impeachment. I just don't see in that climate the president's going to take chances" and give the order to kill bin Laden.
But in the film aired Sunday, Clarke says to O'Neill: "The president has assured me this ... won't affect his decision-making."
O'Neill replies: "So it's OK if somebody kills bin Laden, as long as he didn't give the order. It's pathetic."
Another scene in the critics' cut showed O'Neill asking Clarke on the telephone: "What's Clinton going to do (about bin Laden)?"
Clarke replies, "I don't know. The Lewinsky thing is a noose around his neck."
This was cut entirely from the film that aired Sunday.
Another scene in the movie that depicted a team of CIA operatives poised outside of bin Laden's fortress in Afghanistan, ready to attack, was substantially shortened from the original. Pictures of the waiting Afghanistan operatives are interspersed with those of officials in Washington, who had to approve the mission.
The original version depicted national security adviser Samuel R. Berger hanging up on CIA chief George Tenet as Tenet sought permission to attack bin Laden. The movie aired Sunday did not include Berger hanging up.
The effect of the editing in that scene is to deflect specific blame. It ends with actor Donnie Wahlberg, portraying the head of the CIA team in Afghanistan, saying: "Are there no men in Washington, or are they all cowards?"
In the critics' version, Wahlberg's statement is followed directly by archival footage of Clinton's video testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Sunday, that footage was not included.
Twice, the network de-emphasized the role of the commission that investigated the terrorist attacks in its film.
The critics' version contained a note in the opening credits that the film is "based on the 9/11 commission report." That was omitted Sunday.
In a separate disclaimer that ran three times Sunday, ABC said the material is "drawn from a variety of sources including the 9/11 commission report and other published materials and from personal interviews." That differs from a note in the critics' version that said the dramatization "is based on the 9/11 commission report and other published sources and personal interviews."
The disclaimer emphasized that the movie was not a documentary.
"For dramatic and narrative purposes the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression," the note said.
Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said in a statement Sunday night that ABC and its parent, The Walt Disney Co., "chose fiction over fact and entertainment over education in airing their TV show."
Critics, such as historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., said it was "disingenuous and dangerous" not to include accurate historical accounts in the movie.
Thomas Kean, head of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks and a backer of the film, said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday that he hadn't seen the final cut of the movie but urged Americans to watch it.
"If people blame Bill Clinton after seeing this, then the miniseries has failed," said Kean, the former Republican New Jersey governor. "That's wrong and it shouldn't happen."
John Lehman, another Republican commission member, said on the ABC News show that he's told the film is equally harsh on the administrations of President Bush and his father.
"And if you don't like the hits to the Clinton administration, well, welcome to the club," Lehman said. "The Republicans have lived with Michael Moore and Oliver Stone and most of Hollywood as a fact of life."
We all were. Well most of us were, and I plead guilty.
So, in your opinion, the 93 terror attack on the WTC was ignored because of monica?
The editing was still very minor.
I don't really give a flip that the Monica stuff was cut out.
They still left in the most offending part of the Monica stuff, cutting to Clinton waving his finger.
And Berger, while not hanging up, still comes off very badly. He still ends up rejecting the call to go after Bin Laden because he thinks he needs Clinton to approve it. So, he ultimately turns down the chance to get him.
Albright's scene where she says she let the govt. know about the attempt was left in as well.
Absolutly! The democrats have been saying that for years.
"Whatever the problem is, the answer is NOT elect more democrats."
Hugh Hewitt
This report is a bit off. It was the head of the Northern Alliance that said, 'Are there any men left in Washington, or are they all cowards?', not the Wahlburg character.
Still lying after all these years.
There may have been a few people in the world who understood what was required, but it seems to me very likely that anyone in the Oval Office would have pursued the terrorists according to SOP right up until 9/11/01.
The movie, "Tora, Tora, Tora" depicts the President as giving the order to let Japan attack first. When you are dealing with nations that take time to build up to war and then will attack military targets, you can build up to defense and take the moral high ground of waiting to be attacked.
Before 9/11/01 that was the way the U.S could afford to play the game. If those on the anti-terrorism task forces knew better the people of this country did not know better. And our process is still governed by politics which means support from the people. In that light many of the things that were done prior to 9/11/01 made some sense. We could hope someone else might have been able to move us to a war footing sooner, but there is no real reason to believe so.
What's damnable (I use that word in the truest sense) isn't that we really didn't know what we were dealing with before 9/11/01, it's that we don't seem to know now. If I got no other message from the movie last night it was that the rules have changed and we will not win unless we start playing by the changed rules. It was a support for the Patriot Act. It was a support for the international wiretaps. It was a support for the covert prisons and interrogations. It was a support for tracking terrorist funds and drying them up at the source.
It was a support, in short, for everything our Democratic leadership is trying to shut down. It was not so much an indictment of the explicable failures of the past, but of the inexplicable failures of the present.
And it was a reminder that it really does matter who we elect to lead us, both in Congress and the White House.
Shalom.
Told ya!
They did get oen thing wrong...clinton still waved his finger at us. They did include archival footage.
No way.
The mini-series fails to show Osama telling the world that Clinton's pullout from Somalia showed we didn't have the courage to oppose him!
And the movie did include archival footage of clinton waving his finger at us.
And the movie did include archival footage of clinton waving his finger at us.
I think in the long run the version that ran with edits may be more damning to Clinton than the original. It's like a sex scene in a 1950's era movie--there's a hint of what is going on but the down dirty part of it is left to the viewers' imagination (unlike today's movies that let it all hang out). With all the press on how the movie as aired was edited to make Clinton and cohorts look better, the general public will be wondering what was left on the cutting room floor, and their imaginations will be left to wander. Willa Cather called it "the thing not spoken", and opined that the best writers give only a hint and leave the rest to the audience.
I put this timeline together from different named sources and posted it on FR before but I am posting it again in this thread, because I have gotten good feedback from it.
+ On Jan. 6, 1996, Clinton had a sexual encounter with Lewinsky the White House intern. (Starr Report)
+ Week of Jan. 14 - 21, Clinton had several sessions of phone sex with Lewinsky. (Starr Report)
+ On Jan. 21, Clinton had another sexual encounter with Lewinsky. (Starr Report)
+ On Feb. 4, Clinton activities included a sexual encounter followed by a leisurely chat with Lewinsky, as the two "sat and talked [afterward] for about 45 minutes," (Starr Report)
+ On Feb. 6, U.S. Ambassador to the Sudan Tim Carney met with Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Osman Mohammed Taha at Taha's home in the capital city of Khartoum. "If you want bin Laden, we will give you bin Laden," Foreign Minister Taha told Ambassador Carney. (Losing bin Laden-Richard Miniter)
+ In late February or March, the president telephoned her (Lewinsky) at home and said he was disappointed that, because she had already left the White House for the evening, they could not get together. (Starr Report)
+ On March 10, Sudan's Minister of State for Defense Elfatih Erwa met with the CIA's Africa bureau chief. On instructions from its president, the government of Sudan agreed to arrest bin Laden and hand him over to U.S law enforcement at a time and place of the Clinton administration's choosing. "Where should we send him?" Erwa asked the CIA representative. (Losing bin Laden-Richard Miniter)
**THAT SAME DAY** (March 10)- Ms. Lewinsky took a visiting friend, Natalie Ungvari, to the White House. They bumped into the president, who said when Ms. Lewinsky introduced them, 'You must be her friend from California.' Ms. Ungvari was 'shocked' that the president knew where she was from. (Starr Report)
President Clinton has acknowledged being fully briefed on the Sudanese efforts to turn over the 9/11 mastermind, admitting that he made the final decision to turn the offer down."The Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again," Clinton confirmed during a February 2002 speech to a New York business group. (Losing bin Laden-Richard Miniter)
+ On March 31, Clinton had sex with Lewinsky. (Starr Report)
+ On May 18, bin Laden boarded a chartered plane in Khartoum with his wives, children, some 150 al-Qaida jihadists and a cache of arms - and flew off to Jalalabad, Afghanistan. (Losing bin Laden-Richard Miniter)
+ 1998- There had been numerous earlier reports of bin Laden's interest in using aircraft for terror attacks, including a 1998 plot to fly an explosives-laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center. (Curt Anderson, Associated Press Writer)
+ Sunday, April 4, 2004- The ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Sunday that President Clinton's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky compromised U.S. national security because it left him unable to deal with the threat posed by al-Qaida.
"What really happened here, I think, is President Clinton's greatest mistake was Monica Lewinsky,"Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., told Fox News Sunday. "And that forced him to take his eye off the ball. He lost the ability to lead the nation."
Yes it did.
And that nightline episode was an excuse for "impartial" reporters to express their opinions.
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