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Following complaints, ABC tweaks its 9/11 mini-series
Chicago Tribune ^

Posted on 09/07/2006 11:21:19 AM PDT by Sir Gawain

ABC toned down a scene that involved Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel "Sandy" Berger, declining to give the order to kill bin Laden, according to a person involved with the film who declined to be identified. "That sequence has been the focus of attention," the source said.

The network also decided that the credits would say the film is based "in part" on the 9/11 panel report, rather than "based on" the report, as the producers originally intended.

(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...


TOPICS: Breaking News; Crime/Corruption; Government
KEYWORDS: abcaljazeera; abcisvestia; abcnytimes; abcpravda; abctass; abctv; appeasement; benedictarnold; bj; bjclinton; bluedressstains; boycottbait; clintonfailures; clintonlegacy; demorats; dhimmicrats; fifthanniversary; iwantolive; kneepadsrus; mediajihad; mediamorons; mediawhores; monica; neglect; negligence; ovalofficestains; pathto911; whileclintonslept
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To: cvq3842
ABC is marginalizing itself.

The deleted scenes will be 1,000 times more famous than the show itself.


True. After all the whining, everyone will want to know what was cut out. And the internet will provide it.
381 posted on 09/08/2006 1:12:43 PM PDT by CottonBall
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To: antceecee
Just why is it the Bush admin. won't call a spade a spade? I'm mystified as to why they don't take the opportunity to pound the Clintonistas with the truth!

Republicans aren't very good at taking any opportunities. With control of the House, Senate, and WH, they're still acting like the minority party and giving in too much. I think this is just more of the same. (It could be called taking the high road, but the end result is they look like wimps.)
382 posted on 09/08/2006 1:14:51 PM PDT by CottonBall
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To: Sir Gawain; Bokababe; FormerLib; ma bell; DTA; kosta50
Here is the comment I sent to ABC:

Please show "The Road to 9/11" this weekend in its original form, with no changes. Please do not give in to political pressure. We Americans who went through 9/11, and especially those who lost loved ones or served in the military, deserve no less!

[End of comment.]

_________

Because of my involvement in Serbian issues, I know very well that individuals like clinton, Hillary, Mad Halfbright, Sandy Burglar, etc. aided and abetted the islamist cause. Serving up the Serbian nation (as well as Slavic Macedonia) to the islamists on a platter only made us look weak, and whetted their appetite to attack us directly!!!! Moreover, clinton's mishandling of the investigation of the 1993 WTC bombing, "Operation Bojinka", and other incidents let the planning for the second attack on the WTC go forward without hindrance.

383 posted on 09/08/2006 1:15:01 PM PDT by Honorary Serb (Kosovo is Serbia! Free Srpska! Abolish ICTY!)
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To: CottonBall
Just why is it the Bush admin. won't call a spade a spade? I'm mystified as to why they don't take the opportunity to pound the Clintonistas with the truth! Republicans aren't very good at taking any opportunities.

Because, despite appearances, Washington DC is just one big club, and every politician looks out for each other.

384 posted on 09/08/2006 1:15:57 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: CottonBall

I understand taking the high road, but there are times when you have to stop, turn around and give 'em hell.
Showing strength will improve the popularity of the GOP. Most average Americans wouldn't stand for the crap the Dimwits dish out. I think most expect their leaders to show some moxie.


385 posted on 09/08/2006 1:19:07 PM PDT by antceecee (Western countries really aren't up to winning this war on terror... it might offend the terrorists.)
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To: Republicus2001; Suzy Quzy

Sandy Berger received a $50,000 fine and his security clearance lifted for a time (five years IIRC). That's all the punishment I remember. Could have been more.


386 posted on 09/08/2006 1:33:31 PM PDT by I. Ben Hurt
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To: I. Ben Hurt

Nothing!! That punishment was NOTHING!!!


387 posted on 09/08/2006 1:34:55 PM PDT by Suzy Quzy ("When Cabals Go Kabooms"....upcoming book on Mary McCarthy's Coup-Plotters.)
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To: I. Ben Hurt

..just heard on Cavuto that the one scene with Burgler WHO HANGS UP on the CIA ops was pulled.....guess we now know about censorship


Doogle


388 posted on 09/08/2006 1:51:01 PM PDT by Doogle (USAF 69-73...."never store a threat you should have eliminated")
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To: Doogle
..it seems there was a disagreement about who hung up on the CIA ops....Burgler say's it was Tenet, Commission say's Burgler....could we now have an indication of what Burgler was stuffing down his pants DURING the investigation?...the truth will eventually win out.


Doogle
389 posted on 09/08/2006 2:14:42 PM PDT by Doogle (USAF 69-73...."never store a threat you should have eliminated")
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To: Doogle

Ha.....John Gibson got a hold of a copy and played those scenes....hehehe


390 posted on 09/08/2006 2:15:55 PM PDT by mystery-ak (My Son, My Soldier, My Hero..............)
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To: mystery-ak
Ha.....John Gibson got a hold of a copy and played those scenes....hehehe

..yeah but notice no one in the MSM has mentioned Sandy Berger's paper fetish?

Doogle

391 posted on 09/08/2006 2:18:25 PM PDT by Doogle (USAF 69-73...."never store a threat you should have eliminated")
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To: mystery-ak

This may backfire on Bill and Hillary.

If he comes off bad anyway, and people think it was sanitized, they may think wow, it was even worse before it was censored.


392 posted on 09/08/2006 4:05:39 PM PDT by PA-RIVER
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To: Sir Gawain

I didn't find Michael Scheuer's name in any posts on this thread so I thought I'd add this to the mix.

http://newsbusters.org/node/7438

Former Head of CIA's Bin Laden Unit: Clinton Admin Played Role in Nixing Osama Op

Posted by Noel Sheppard on September 7, 2006 - 00:22.
In response to an article published at NewsBusters and The American Thinker, I have received two e-mail messages from Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA that used to head up “Alec Station,” the Counterterrorist Center’s Osama bin Laden unit. (Update: Scheuer is the individual regularly referred to in the 9/11 Commission report as "Mike".) His name might ring a bell as the previously anonymous author of the books Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. In his writing as well as his interviews, Scheuer is an outspoken critic of the current Administration’s prosecution of the war on terror, as well as an opponent of the war in Iraq. As such, he is not considered to be a friend of the president’s.

That said, after reading my piece about the smear campaign against ABC’s “The Path to 9/11,” Scheuer apprised me of an op-ed he had written for the Washington Times on July 5 of this year. Given its context to this issue, I wanted to share it with our readers, and will do so in its entirety in a moment.

However, before I do, let me first share a more recent opinion offered by Scheuer as answers to some questions I asked of him in response to his first e-mail message: “Is the scene in question as depicted by Rush an accurate account of the plan to capture or kill bin Laden in Afghanistan. If so, who do you believe gave the order to halt it?” Scheuer responded:

Regarding the scene, it was never clear to my officers or myself who canceled the operation. It is true that Clarke was bad-mouthing it. What I don't think people know, however, is that the Agency had thoroughly reviewed the plan and had approved its execution at the highest level -- that is, at the level of DCI Tenet and his immediate subordinates. (NB: At Tenet's direction, JSOC commanders at Fort Bragg also reviewed the plan. They approved it, said they could not do better, and built two sand-table mock-ups of the bin Laden's compound for us to use in preparing the operation.) My officers and I were told that the plan had been sent to Clarke and the NSC for approval. The next thing we knew, the Chief of CT at CIA told us that the plan had been canceled because civilians might get killed, there was not a hundred percent chance that we would get bin Laden, and that if bin Laden was killed in the capture effort the CIA might get accused of assassination. The implication to us at the time was that the NSC canceled the operation, but Tenet later claimed he did it himself. I don't know what the full truth is on this issue. Interestingly, after our east Africa embassies were bombed on 7 August 98, Clarke ordered us to immediately revive the capture plan, but of course by then the chance had been well and truly lost.

Update: Scheuer's statements above are somewhat confirmed by the 9/11 Commission report:

"Mike" thought the capture plan was "the perfect operation." It required minimum infrastructure. The plan had now been modified so that the tribals would keep Bin Ladin in a hiding place for up to a month before turning him over to the United States -- thereby increasing the chances of keeping the U.S. hand out of sight. "Mike" trusted the information from the Afghan network; it had been corroborated by other means, he told us. The lead CIA officer in the field, Gary Schroen, also had confidence in the tribals. In a May 6 cable to CIA headquarters, he pronounced their planning "almost as professional and detailed...as would be done by any U.S. military special operations element."

Update: Another interesting part of the 9/11 Commission report concerning this matter:

On May 29, "Jeff" informed "Mike" that he had just met with Tenet, Pavitt, and the chief of the Directorate's Near Eastern Division. The decision was made not to go ahead with the operation. "Mike" cabled the field that he had been directed to "stand down on the operation for the time being."

As a further elaboration of Scheuer’s views, here is his July 5 Washington Times op-ed that will certainly shed more light on the current controversy surrounding ABC’s “The Path to 9/11”:

Bill and Dick, Osama and Sandy

With one credible September 11 movie, "United 93," under our belts, it will be interesting to see whether ABC-TV will complete the September 11 Commission's whitewashing of the pre-September 11 failure of U.S. intelligence-community leaders in its forthcoming mini-series based on Richard Clarke's memoir, "Against All Enemies."

Media teasers about the mini-series have said that Mr. Clarke -- the former "terrorism czar" -- and a senior FBI officer, the late John O'Neill, will be the heroes of the saga. If true, and if ABC's fact-checkers are not diligent in verifying Mr. Clarke's stories and claims, the mini-series will be the September 11 commission's dream come true: The Bush administration will be blamed for September 11, the feckless moral cowardice of the Clinton administration will be disguised and Mr. Clarke and Mr. O'Neill -- in my view, two principal authors of September 11 -- will be beatified.

Mr. Clarke's book, on the basis of my involvement to varying degrees in the issues it covers, is a mixture of fact, fiction and cover-up. Mr. Clarke seems to get most names and dates right, and is correct in damning the early Bush administration for obliviousness to the al Qaeda threat. We must also take him at his word on his touching, if sycophantic, tales of Mr. Clinton instructing a young boy to be good to his mom and Hillary Rodham Clinton's secluded moment praying on her knees.

On the fantasy level, Mr. Clarke lays it on thick. His claim that the Clinton administration "defeated an al-Qaeda attempt to dominate Bosnia" is nonsense; bin Laden sent few fighters there because he had no contiguous safe haven for them. Mr. Clarke's claim that "the CIA had taken months to tell the FBI" several hijackers were in America is a lie. FBI officers sat in the unit I first commanded and then served in and they read the same information I did. If the data did not get to FBI headquarters it is because the FBI then lacked, and still lacks, a useable computer system. The FBI did not know the September 11 hijackers were here because Judge Louis Freeh and Robert Mueller have failed to provide their officers computers that allow them to talk securely to their headquarters and other intelligence community elements.

Another spectacular untruth is on page 52: "Later in the 1990s, CIA... [failed] to put U.S. operatives into the country [Afghanistan] to kill bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership, relying on Afghans instead." Mr. Clarke, of course, was at the center of Mr. Clinton's advisers, who resolutely refused to order the CIA to kill bin Laden. In spring 1998, I briefed Mr. Clarke and senior CIA, Department of Defense and FBI officers on a plan to kidnap bin Laden. Mr. Clarke's reaction was that "it was just a thinly disguised attempt to assassinate bin Laden." I replied that if he wanted bin Laden dead, we could do the job quickly. Mr. Clarke's response was that the president did not want bin Laden assassinated, and that we had no authority to do so.

Mr. Clarke's book is also a crucial complement to the September 11 panel's failure to condemn Mr. Clinton's failure to capture or kill bin Laden on any of the eight to 10 chances afforded by CIA reporting. Mr. Clarke never mentions that President Bush had no chances to kill bin Laden before September 11 and leaves readers with the false impression that he, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, did their best to end the bin Laden threat. That trio, in my view, abetted al Qaeda, and if the September 11 families were smart they would focus on the dereliction of Dick, Bill and Sandy and not the antics of convicted September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

About John O'Neill, little needs to be said. In my own experience, Mr. O'Neill was interested only in furthering his career and disguising the rank incompetence of senior FBI leaders. He once told me that he and the FBI would oppose an operation to capture bin Laden and take him to a third country for incarceration. When I asked why, he replied, "Why should the FBI help to capture bin Laden if the bureau won't get credit among Americans for his arrest and conviction"?

So, I look forward to ABC's mini-series, as well as to seeing the quality of the network's fact-checkers. If they do their job well, some of the September 11 Commission's whitewash may start to be peeled away. If they fail, however, the reality that Bill, Dick and Sandy helped to push Americans out of the windows of the World Trade Center on that September morning will be buried in miles of fantasy-filled celluloid.

Finally, on a personal note, it appears necessary to clear up some misunderstandings about the focus I have given to this issue the past couple of days. The truth is that I have not yet seen “The Path to 9/11,” and, frankly, have no opinion on it. How can one have an opinion on something one hasn’t seen?

In reality, that has been my point from the start. Too often in our country today, folks are inflamed by books, movies, and TV programs they haven’t either read or viewed. We see this on a regular basis whenever a conservative book is published, and the author will be thoroughly eviscerated on one of the network morning shows by some holier-than-thou type who hasn’t read the book in question at all. How many of the hollering left actually read Ann Coulter’s recent book before they shouted from the rooftops, “Off with her head”?

Well, it appears this has happened with “The Path to 9/11,” and all those guilty of rendering an opinion without having seen it should be ashamed of themselves. This is especially true of those in the blogosphere that have fanned the fires of discontent concerning this program before it even aired.

Is this miniseries a perfectly accurate accounting of the events surrounding the attacks on our nation five years ago? I don’t know. As Brent Bozell said in his piece concerning this matter:

The movie is based on the report of the 9/11 Commission, which itself is not infallible in its conclusions on what went wrong and what needs to fixed. Moreover, up front the moviemakers note it has composite characters and manipulates the time of events for a better movie experience. As a "docudrama" it has taken certain poetic license with history.

The reality is that none of us knows all of the details surrounding this event, or leading up to it. Anyone that watched the 9/11 Commission hearings has to be aware that many of the witnesses from both administrations appeared unwilling to be completely candid. Was this due to a need to protect national security, or to cover one’s backside? Who knows? But, this Commission and everything surrounding it was highly politicized, and, as a result, we might never know all the facts.

In the end, “The Path to 9/11” is just a made-for-television docudrama…nothing more, nothing less. As such, rather than its existence further dividing our nation on the fifth anniversary of this solemn event, maybe we should all just watch it, and decide for ourselves its merit and veracity.

 

393 posted on 09/08/2006 6:54:53 PM PDT by HawaiianGecko (Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.)
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To: Sir Gawain

ABC Exec's strappin' em' on once more
for der fuhrers Slick Willy and Hildebeast Clinton.

394 posted on 09/08/2006 7:00:17 PM PDT by harpo11
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To: tcrlaf

BRAVO!!! Like your tagline too.


395 posted on 09/08/2006 7:02:10 PM PDT by harpo11
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To: paudio
Why do I want to see a movie that has been tweeked as it is put to make Clinton look better when Bush won't? Excuse me, that isn't right, and it isn't right that ABC allowed themselves to be blackmailed by the worst President in our history. He is the real LIAR!
396 posted on 09/08/2006 7:04:35 PM PDT by ladyinred (Leftists, the enemy within.)
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To: GianniV

"Can you imagine if the Bush Administration called any network and asked it to edit out scenes on a TV show?"

Who was responsible for the pressure that led to the canceling of the Ronald Reagan TV movie?


397 posted on 09/09/2006 1:11:55 AM PDT by gleeaikin
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To: CottonBall

Yes! The Democrats will have to censor that too.

Some would try.


398 posted on 09/09/2006 2:57:02 AM PDT by cvq3842
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To: Sir Gawain

I WAS looking forward to this movie- I will not watch it now. I'm just sorry there aren't any sponsors to boycott.

None of us should be surprised at the left's campaign to censor this and I don't think we should forget this should any be tempted to vote for a demonRAT next time. What do you imagine it would be like IF we EVER allow them to gain any power again?


399 posted on 09/09/2006 3:03:08 AM PDT by 13Sisters76 ("It is amazing how many people mistake a certain hip snideness for sophistication. " Thos. Sowell)
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To: lugsoul
The details are almost insignificant when considering the real picture: Clinton wouldn't do anything beyond using lawyers. If OBL were being offered, he didn't think it important enough to figure out how to get the lawyers to do it. Period. End of story. It was NOT on his agenda as Richard Clarke himself told reports shortly after Bush took office (back when he wasn't a kool aid drinker and was happy that Condi was making plans to go after Al Qaeda - of course, he was also mostly obsessed with cyber-terrorism and not actually blowing stuff up terrorism according to his own memos).

I don't think that the people who did this ABC movie were trying to help any cause. There is undoubtedly stuff in this which makes Bush look bad too - except Bush doesn't care about his 'legacy' so he doesn't have a team of lawyers dedicated to spinning bad news and destroying potential enemies. (You think Clinton would have let Cindy Sheehan run around alive and uninjured? Not likely)

400 posted on 09/09/2006 3:23:25 AM PDT by bpjam (Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaida - The Religion of Peace)
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