Posted on 09/11/2006 6:19:03 PM PDT by jdm
ABC went ahead Sunday with its slightly tweaked but still controversial miniseries, The Path to 9/11. And while former Clinton administration officials still seethed at, what former counterterrorism czar and current ABC News consultant Richard Clarke called "an egregious distortion," many of them joined the rest of the country and simply didn't watch.
A week's worth of complaints from the Clintonites and others didn't convince ABC to pull the five-hour, commerical-free $40 million docudrama. Instead, the network recut the movie, deemphasized its reliance on the 9/11 Commission Report as primary source material and urged naysayers to watch the finished product before making any judgments.
"Having now seen the first night of this fiction, it is clear that the edits made to the film did not address the factual errors that we brought to your attention," Bruce Lindsey, the former President's personal attorney and head of the Clinton Foundation, wrote in an open letter to Disney chief Robert Iger.
"The final product was fraught with error and contained contrived scenes that are directly contradicted by the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report. The film has undoubtedly cemented in millions of viewers' minds a false impression of critical historical events."
Clarke, who served under both Clinton and George W. Bush and now works for ABC News, was equally scathing.
"As someone who was directly involved in almost every event depicted in the fictionalized docudrama The Path to 9/11, I believe it is an egregious distortion that does a deep disservice both to history and to those in both the Clinton and Bush administrations who are depicted," Clarke said in a written statement.
"Although I am not one to easily believe in conspiracy theories and have spent a great deal of time debunking them, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the errors in this screenplay are more than the result of dramatization and time compression [as ABC initially implied]."
Ex-Clinton cabinet members, joined by such news commentators as CNN's Bill Bennett and Fox News' Chris Wallace, noted historians, progressive bloggers and even the miniseries' own star, Harvey Keitel, said that based on review copies of The Path to 9/11, the telefilm unfairly blamed the Clinton administration for the September 11th terrorist attacks.
The critics were especially irked that ABC touted the project as being based on the official 9/11 Commission Report, despite containing scenes that contradicted the report.
ABC ended up cutting about 20 minutes out of the first night's three-hour running time, much of it from the climax in which a team of CIA agents are positioned outside of Osama bin Laden's encampment, seemingly ready to strike.
In the original version, former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger seems to balk at ordering an attack by hanging up on CIA boss George Tenet. That's followed by a scene in which an Afghan in the CIA party asks, "Are there no men in Washington, or are they all cowards?" The next scene includes archival footage of Clinton's video testimony in the Lewinsky affair, implying that he was too busy worrying about impeachment to focus on terrorism.
ABC's editors did some tinkering, removing the news footage of Clinton and cutting the shot of Berger.
But the network left intact a scene in which former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright alerts Pakistan to a missile strike, which, in turn, allows bin Laden to escape--despite the 9/11 Commission debunking the story.
Leftie bloggers also decried ABC's choice of director, David L. Cunningham, and screenwriter, Cyrus Nowrasteh, both of whom have documented conservative leanings.
Unlike the advanced copies sent out to TV reviewers hyping the production as based solely on the 9/11 Commission Report, ABC issued a disclaimer noting The Path to 9/11 was also based on "other published sources and personal interviews."
"For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well time compression," read the disclaimer.
Former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, the Republican cochair of the 9/11 Commission who acted as a consultant on the project (though has still refused to confirm whether he was paid for those services), stated on ABC's This Week on Sunday that he thought The Path to 9/11 was accurate, though he admitted not having seen the final cut.
"If people blame Bill Clinton after seeing this, then the miniseries has failed," Kean said. "That's wrong and it shouldn't happen."
ABC declined further comment Monday.
As for Bill Clinton himself? "He made the choice that most Americans made," Clinton Foundation spokesman Jay Carson told the Associated Press. "Of a fictionalized drama version of Sept. 11 or the Manning brothers playing football against one another, he chose the latter."
Indeed, The Path to 9/11 was crushed by NBC's season premiere of Sunday Night Football, which pitted Peyton Manning and his Indianapolis Colts against brother Eli and his New York Giants. The football game drew an estimated 20.7 million viewers to 13 million for The Path to 9/11, per Nielsen Media Research. ABC did get a small measure of consolation by beating CBS' 9/11 documentary, which attracted 10.6 million in its third airing.
Part two of The Path to 9/11 , which presumably will focus more on the Bush administration's fumbles, airs Monday but faces the possibility of drawing even fewer viewers. ABC plans to split the broadcast in half to accommodate President Bush's speech from the White House.
""As someone who was directly involved in almost every event depicted in the fictionalized docudrama The Path to 9/11, I believe it is an egregious distortion that does a deep disservice both to history and to those in both the Clinton and Bush administrations who are depicted," Clarke said in a written statement. "
If anyone is to blame for factual errors, it should be Clarke.
I read the report, and while I don't have a photographic memory, the movie I saw correlated with the report very well.
The message of the movie was not one of blame against government, it was a wake-up call to the people to know we are at war. And we can't fight the war without the will or the tools.
I thought it was well done.
Shalom.
The message of the movie in a nutshell. They also seriously emphasized how the Philipina police officer had thwarted a plot by opening Ramsey Yousef's laptop but we could not open Zacharius Mussouwi's laptop.
Over and over they reminded us, it's a war.
Shalom.
And JEERS for the local affiliate who felt they had to put a border around one scene with a crawl at the top about how it was ABC's decision to run the movie despite the controversy and it didn't necessarily reflect the views of the station.
Shalom.
3. Unwillingness to recognize the difference between a war and a police action.
And not just the Clinton administration. The Bush administration took its lumps as well. The difference? The Bush administration didn't cry like babies before the show was aired. Also, the Bush administration stepped up to the plate after Atta rubbed our noses in the fact that we had "misunderestimated" the fanatics.
Shalom.
We knew enough, but didn't have the will.
Kirk: "You know enough to warn the airlines" CIA Hack: "And cause a panic? No way. Bring me specifics."
Well, I think there was a panic anyway. The difference was, this way there were also nearly 3,000 deaths.
That's a tragedy when it's about our soldiers losing their lives in Iraq, but it's an annoying political hatchet job when it's about innocent civilians being blown to smithereens.
BTW: I can't watch that scene of the plane flying into the south tower with the flames shooting out of the building in all directions without choking up. Words fail me in describing the monstrosity of what those animals did.
Shalom.
Does anyone else find it very interesting that Clarke would say this considering the fact that he came off like Superman in the movie?
Does that mean he wasn't the 9/11 superhero??
That is the bottom line. The CIA and FBI lifers didn't have the courage to make a decision. Many corporations struggle with the same disease. In political bodies, the correct behaviors are rewarded, it should be results that are rewarded.
What is Clarke whining about? He came across very well in the film.
The only people who know the truth are those that were present in real time. The movie information comes from mostly those people. It is interesting that few of the klintonistas are offering to PROVE the errors by giving up their meeting notes (they undoubtedly took notes).
Instead, they merely whine that the lines are lies, were never said, etc.
Are we to believe proven liars?
And the DU types who weren't even near the real time situations should be told to offer up proof of their statements. At least the contributors on our side are willing to state to the truth of the story.
"Harvey Keitel, said that based on review copies of The Path to 9/11, the telefilm unfairly blamed the Clinton administration for the September 11th terrorist attacks."
I'm assuming Harvey said this after the check cleared?
I would like to see a censure vote on the senators who wrote threatening and intimidating letter to Disney. They violated their oath to defend and protect the constitution.
I know that camera technique is supposed to impart excitement and all that...but it makes me reach for the off button.
Part II was a bit better but the camera technique still bugged me.
Oh. believe me. A motion to censure would be big news, partly because it would indicate the Senate was willing to do its job of policing its own members. It is a reprimand. It could tip an election in MI, maybe.
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