McGentrix wrote:Ah yes, that old first amendment can be a heavy burden. Especially when it's being used against you, huh?
It can be annoying, yes ;-)
Meanwhile, how did you react, exactly, when Fahrenheit 9/11 came out?
"Path to 9/11" Maker Has Evangelical Ties
By Justin Rood - September 8, 2006, 2:39 PM
The director of ABC's controversial "Path to 9/11" docudrama has ties to an evangelical Christian group whose goals include "transform[ing] Hollywood from the inside out," according to research by readers of prominent blogs.
"Path" director David L. Cunningham is also involved in "The Film Institute," an offshoot of the Hawaii-based global evangelical group, Youth With a Mission.
One goal of Cunningham's Film Institute is to "fast-track" students from a digital film program associated with the YWAM organization into positions "within the film industry, not to give them jobs, but so that they can begin to impact and transform Hollywood from the inside out," according to a cached version of page from a YWAM Web site. The original appears to have been moved or deleted.
nimh wrote:McGentrix wrote:Ah yes, that old first amendment can be a heavy burden. Especially when it's being used against you, huh?
It can be annoying, yes ;-)
Meanwhile, how did you react, exactly, when Fahrenheit 9/11 came out?
It angered and frustrated me. It never entered my mind though that others shouldn't be allowed to see it and form their own opinions.
They have the right to air it if they want, just as others have the right to point out all the flaws and just plain made up stuff in it. What makes it sick is that it claims to be based on the 9/11 report when it don't thereby giving it undeserved legitimacy.
ABC is using the public airwaves and has an obligation to the public to broadcast responsibly. This is not a First Amendment issue. ABC doesn't have any more right to broadcast historical fabrications than Janet Jackson has to expose her nipple on the public airwaves.
Cycloptichorn wrote:Quote:
They now paint the entire 5 hours as FICTITIOUS? They now think the majority of American are too stupid to see through some of the dramatizations?
ABC itself has claimed that the entire thing is a work of fiction, not to be confused with a documentary. So it isn't entirely the fault of the Clintonistas that they might make such a statement.
And, are you telling me that you don't think the American people are easily mislead by what they see on TV?
Cycloptichorn
No they did not.
ABC Partial statement.
"ABC responded to the brewing controversy Tuesday only by saying that its miniseries is "a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 Commission report, other published materials and from personal interviews."
Quite different from your statement.
"And, are you telling me that you don't think the American people are easily mislead by what they see on TV?"
No. The majority will NOT be misled. I know I won't and I know YOU won't. Some may.
STATEMENT from ABC Entertainment on "The Path to 9/11"
"The Path to 9/11" is not a documentary of the events leading to 9/11. It is a dramatization, drawn from a variety of sources including the 9/11 Commission Report, other published materials, and personal interviews. As such, for dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, 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. The attacks of 9/11 were a pivotal moment in our history, and it is fitting that the debate about the events related to the attacks continue. However, we hope viewers will watch the entire broadcast of the finished film before forming an opinion about it.
ABC all over the map on The Path to 9/11: "locked and ready to air"; not "final"; "get[s] it right"; "fictionalized"
Summary: ABC has issued a number of different, even conflicting statements as it has promoted -- and subsequently defended -- the miniseries The Path to 9/11.
During the course of promoting and then defending its "docudrama" The Path to 9/11, ABC has issued a number of different, even conflicting statements on the miniseries. On July 5, ABC promoted the film as an "epic" and "historic" "dramatization of the events detailed in The 9/11 Commission Report." In the July 5 press release, ABC also claimed that the film "absolutely ... get[s] it right," and touted the participation of 9-11 Commission chairman and former Gov. Thomas Kean (R-NJ) as "crucial to the project." On September 5, amid growing criticism over the film's fabrications and inaccuracies, ABC began to backpedal, emphasizing that the miniseries is "a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 Commission report, other published materials and from personal interviews;" and by September 7, ABC acknowledged that it "contains fictionalized scenes." At the same time, in that statement, ABC attacked criticism of the film as "premature and irresponsible," since "[n]o one has seen the final version of the film," a statement that itself conflicts with a prior statement quoted September 1 on the National Review Online (NRO) that the " 'Path to 9/11' miniseries is 'locked and ready to air.' " Additionally, the miniseries' director, David L. Cunningham, its writer, Cyrus Nowrasteh, and Kean have all offered evolving statements on the film.
ABC
"Absolutely critical that you get it right": In its initial promotions of the "docudrama," ABC strongly depicted the miniseries as an accurate portrayal of the 9-11 Commission's findings. A July 5 press release promoting the miniseries quoted Steve McPherson, president of ABC Entertainment:
When you take on the responsibility of telling the story behind such an important event, it is absolutely critical that you get it right. Having Governor Kean, who chaired the 9/11 Commission, as a key advisor on this movie has not only been an honor, its also been crucial to the project.
The press release noted that The Path to 9/11 is "a dramatization of the events detailed in The 9/11 Commission Report and other sources," touting the filmmakers' use of the report as "the basis" for the film. A July 31 Time magazine article on the series reported:
Executive producer Marc Platt and writer Cyrus Nowrasteh say they wanted to match the just-the-facts tone of the report. ("The report didn't use any adjectives" is a mantra both men repeat. It's exaggerated but true to the commission's spirit.)
"[D]ramatization, not a documentary": As The New York Times reported September 5, ABC responded to the outrage by emphasizing that the miniseries is "a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and from personal interviews." Additionally, CNN Internet reporter Jackie Schechner reported during the September 6 edition of CNN's The Situation Room that ABC responded to CNN's "many questions" by issuing a "very limited" statement. Schechner stated: "[T]hey [ABC] tell us that the events leading up to the 9-11 attacks are controversial, spark debate, and that it's not surprising that this film would revive that debate. They also say the miniseries will air with a disclaimer calling it a dramatization ... not a documentary." ABC's full statement was not made public.
"[T]he movie contains fictionalized scenes": ABC released another statement September 7, as Media Matters for America noted. In that statement, the network again asserted, as it reportedly did in earlier statements to CNN, the Times, and other news outlets, that the miniseries "is a dramatization" and stated that it "is not a documentary of the events leading to 9/11." In an apparent addition, the September 7 statement asserted that "for dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, and time compression." At the same time, the statement also said: "No one has seen the final version of the miniseries, because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticisms of miniseries specifics are premature and irresponsible." But, as the weblog Think Progress noted, ABC reportedly informed NRO's Stephen Spruiell on September 1 that the " 'Path to 9/11' miniseries is 'locked and ready to air.' "
Cunningham, Nowrasteh, and Kean
Cunningham: An August 29 blog posting by Cunningham stated: "We show both administrations with an unvarnished truth." On August 30, Cunningham issued a "clarification" on the miniseries, stating on the program's blog: "This is not a documentary. It is a movie told in two parts." By September 2, as criticism of the film began to mount, Cunningham gave "[e]ven [f]urther [c]larification" for the miniseries, posting:
It seems that people keep referring to this movie as a "documentary". A documentary is a journalistic format that gives facts and information through interviews and news footage. This is a movie or more specifically a docudrama. Meaning, it is a narrative movie based on facts and dramatized with actors.
In the September 2 post, Cunningham, echoing ABC, also attacked critics, stating "Watch the movie! Then let's talk. If you haven't seen the movie with your very own eyes -- don't castigate the movie out of ignorance."
Nowrasteh: In several interviews given to conservative publications, Nowrasteh consistently suggested that the miniseries was an accurate portrayal of the 9-11 Commission's findings. For instance, in a June 9, 2005 interview with the weblog Libertas -- which bills itself as "A Forum for Conservative Thought on Film" -- apparently before the project began filming, Nowrasteh described the miniseries as an "objective telling of the events" that "will be connecting the facts and telling the story as it goes back to the first World Trade center bombing in 1993." Nowrasteh continued, stating that ABC was insistent on being "as truthful and honest" as possible and had "made every effort to be objective and tell the story truthfully -- because that's what the subject matter, and our audience, deserves."
During an August 16 interview with the conservative online publication FrontPageMag, Nowrasteh suggested that he drew on sources other than the commission's report in order to obtain information for the time periods not covered in the report. Nowrasteh stated: "I also expanded my research beyond the commission report, which only goes back to 1998, concluding that I needed to go back to the first attack on the WTC [World Trade Center] in '93 and tell this story over six hours," and called the Path to 9/11 "a terror thriller as well as a history lesson."
On September 1, Nowrasteh added "[f]urther [c]larification" to Cunningham's August 30 blog posting:
This movie is well-supported and well-documented. But everyone should be aware, and we say so upfront in a long legend -- "The following dramatization ... has composite and representative characters and incidents, and time compressions have been used for dramatic purposes."
By September 5, Nowrasteh was saying less. When asked by the Times for comment on the miniseries' alleged inaccuracies, Nowrasteh simply stated: "Let the movie speak for itself."
Kean: ABC has repeatedly trumpeted the miniseries' connections to the 9-11 Commission report and to Kean. After its July 19 press screening, Newsday staff correspondent Diane Werts noted that "ABC not only screened its powerful fall miniseries 'Path to 9/11' for TV critics yesterday at press tour [sic], it also brought in former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean Sr. to tout the drama's authenticity." Werts quoted Kean as describing the "spirit" of The Path to 9/11 as being "absolutely correct," and reported that ABC consulted Kean "to ensure production accuracy."
On September 5, the Times reported that Kean "defended the program" and called its fabricated depiction of former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger's refusal to issue an order to kill Osama bin Laden as "an honest representation;" while simultaneously "conced[ing] that some points might have been more drama than documentary. 'Some of the people shown there probably weren't there,' he [Kean] said." Later reports quoted Kean admitting that portions of the program were "fictionalized" for "dramatic" purposes. By September 8, Kean, too, was chiding critics of the series, claiming (falsely in some cases), "those people haven't seen it."
nimh wrote:Meanwhile, how did you react, exactly, when Fahrenheit 9/11 came out?
It angered and frustrated me. It never entered my mind though that others shouldn't be allowed to see it and form their own opinions.
Clinton aide says 9/11 film 'correct'
Producer consulted with military attaché who saw aborted attacks on bin Laden
September 8, 2006
Art Moore
A former military aide to President Clinton who claims he witnessed several missed opportunities to capture or kill Osama bin Laden says the producer of the ABC mini-series "The Path to 9/11" came to him in frustration after network executives under a heavy barrage of criticism from former administration officials began pressing for changes to the script.
In an interview with WND, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson said producer and writer Cyrus Nowrasteh called him the morning of Sept. 1, explaining he had used Patterson's book "Dereliction of Duty" as a source for the drama.
Later that day, Nowrasteh brought a preview copy of "The Path to 9/11" to Patterson for him to view at home. Patterson, who says he has talked with the director seven or eight times since then, also received a phone call from an ABC senior vice president, Quinn Taylor.
Patterson told WND he recognizes the television production conflates several events, but, in terms of conveying how the Clinton administration handled its opportunities to get bin Laden, it's "100 percent factually correct," he said. "I was there with Clinton and (National Security Adviser Sandy) Berger and watched the missed opportunities occur," Patterson declared ...
... As a military aide to President Clinton from 1996 to 1998, Patterson was one of five men entrusted with carrying the "nuclear football," which contains the codes for launching nuclear weapons ...
... Democrats have been particularly critical of a scene that depicts Berger refusing to authorize a mission to capture bin Laden after CIA operatives and Afghan fighters had the al-Qaida leader in their sights.
Nowrasteh acknowledges this is a "conflation of events," but Berger, in a letter to Iger, said "no such episode ever occurred, nor did anything like it."
Patterson contended, however, the scene is similar to a plan the administration had with the CIA and the Afghan Northern Alliance to snatch bin Laden from a camp in Afghanistan. The scene in "The Path to 9/11," as Patterson recalled from the preview version, unfolds with CIA operatives at the camp on the phone with Berger, who is expressing concern that an attack could result in innocent bystanders being killed. An agent says he sees swing sets and children's toys in the area. The scene ends with Berger hanging up the phone.
Patterson says his recollection is that Clinton was involved directly in several similar incidents in which Berger was pressing the president for a decision. "Berger was very agitated, he couldn't get a decision from the president," Patterson said.
Patterson noted he wasn't sure what Berger wanted to do - whether the national security adviser wanted the answer to be yes or no - but the frustration, at the very least, was based on the president making himself unavailable to make a decision.
In "Dereliction of Duty," published by Regnery in 2003, Patterson recounts an event in the situation room of the White House in which Berger was told by a military watch officer, "Sir, we've located bin Laden. We have a two-hour window to strike." Clinton, according to Patterson, did not return phone calls from Berger for more than an hour tthen said he wanted more time to study the situation.
Patterson writes: "We 'studied' the issues until it was too late-the window of opportunity closed." ...
... In another "missed opportunity," Patterson writes, Clinton was watching a golf tournament when Berger placed an urgent call to the president. Clinton became irritated when Patterson approached him with the message. After the third attempt, Clinton coolly responded he would call Berger on his way back to the White House. By then, however, according to Patterson, the opportunity was lost.
As WND reported, Berger was the focus of a Justice Department investigation for removing highly classified terrorism documents before the Sept. 11 Commission hearings that generated the report used for the television program.
FBI agents searched Berger's home and office after he voluntarily returned some documents to the National Archives. Berger and his lawyer told reporters he knowingly removed handwritten notes he made while reading classified anti-terror documents at the archives by sticking them in his clothing. They said he also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio.
Patterson said Berger's response to the "The Path to 9/11" is similar to his response to the accounts in "Dereliction of Duty," insisting the incidents attributed to him "never occurred."
Patterson said his book put him under intense pressure from Clinton officials - an aide even spoke of taking away his military retirement benefits - but when the title reached No. 1 on Amazon.com, "they shut up."
There are others who can corroborate his accounts, Patterson insisted, but they are still in military service and therefore legally bound not to come forward and make statements. Three of the four other military aides who rotated being at the president's side were additional sources for his book, Patterson affirmed ....
The Sept. 11 that never was
ABC's docudrama "The Path to 9/11" is a false version of history. It popularizes right-wing myths by exaggerating Clinton's failures and Bush's successes, depicting events that never happened.
Sep. 08, 2006 | It would be uplifting to believe, as the producers of ABC's "The Path to 9/11" have claimed, that the network spent $40 million on its anniversary docudrama to educate the American people and improve the nation's defenses. And it would be reassuring to believe, as the producers have insisted in recent days, that "our ambitions and our goals and our standards were all about accuracy." But it is impossible to believe, after viewing their somewhat cheesy, sometimes incomprehensible and severely distorted version of the events leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that they acted in good faith on either of those motivations.
Whether "The Path to 9/11" succeeds in cinematic terms will be judged by professional critics, who may or may not find the performances convincing, the script compelling, the visuals effective and the direction competent. Certainly the movie benefits from the presence of actors such as Harvey Keitel, who plays legendary FBI agent John O'Neill, and from location shooting in Morocco, New York and Washington, but these filmmakers are not about to displace Bernardo Bertolucci, Richard Attenborough or even Oliver Stone.
Part of the problem faced by the makers of "The Path to 9/11" was the sheer scope and complexity of the story they attempt to tell, which begins with the first bombing of the World Trade Center by Islamic terrorists in February 1993 and concludes with the catastrophic second assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon. The main narrative thread traces the often frustrating campaign by O'Neill, a truly heroic cop's cop, and his ally, former White House counterterrorism director Richard Clarke, to stop al-Qaida's myriad plots against the United States.
That story deserves to be told well -- and has been recounted already with considerably more care in Clarke's own book and in "The Man Who Knew," a PBS "Frontline" documentary about O'Neill that first aired in October 2002. The ABC dramatization, of course, is intended to reach millions of viewers who don't read books, let alone government reports, and don't watch documentaries. The danger is that this false version -- which popularizes favorite right-wing myths -- will be seen by millions and accepted by them as truthful. (On Thursday, Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., called on ABC to make clear that "The Path to 9/11" is not an official account of the facts surrounding 9/11, noting, "We have yet to establish the impartiality and accuracy of the people behind this film and the claims it advances, and the American people need to know that.")
Suspicions of bad faith about the production of "The Path to 9/11" have less to do with the alleged personal bias of Cyrus Nowrasteh, the conservative writer responsible for the script, and more to do with what he chose to invent on-screen -- and what he and the producers chose to omit. In essence, Nowrasteh created scenes that never happened, which depict Clinton administration officials allowing Osama bin Laden to escape capture or death for diplomatic, political and legal reasons. And he left out important material about how Bill Clinton and George W. Bush confronted the terrorist challenge.
Nowrasteh's most egregious fictionalizing occurs in Act 4, which depicts a supposed strike on bin Laden's Afghan redoubt that is called off at the last second by Sandy Berger, Clinton's national security advisor, who says, "I don't have that authority." Under cover of night, a CIA agent known only as "Kirk" leads a Special Forces team into the remote mountain compound where the al-Qaida chief is hiding. "The package is ready!" cries Kirk over the satellite phone, but Berger aborts the operation because he doesn't want to take responsibility.
That incident simply never occurred. As Clarke himself would have told Nowrasteh, no CIA officer ever tracked bin Laden to his hideout. Neither did Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance leader who is shown guiding the aborted operation. The handsome, charismatic Massoud, later assassinated by al-Qaida agents, asks Kirk angrily, "Are there any men left in Washington, or are they all cowards?" That sort of rhetoric is frequently uttered by actors portraying characters such as Massoud and O'Neill, who are no longer around to dispute the script.
Had Nowrasteh consulted the 9/11 Commission report, not only would he have found no evidence to support his exciting imaginary assault on the bin Laden compound, but he would also have learned that the underlying assumptions were completely wrong. The report states explicitly, as Clarke and other senior officials have affirmed, that Clinton and Berger ordered the CIA and the military to use any force necessary to get bin Laden.
According to Clarke, his former assistant Roger Cressey and others with direct knowledge of the circumstances, Clinton "approved every request made of him by the CIA and the US military involving [the use of force] against bin Laden and Al Qaeda." Planned operations to take out bin Laden either by ground assault or missile strike didn't happen because senior intelligence and military officials told the president that they could not be conducted successfully.
Especially shameful, by the way, is former 9/11 Commission chairman Tom Kean's endorsement of that particular tall tale, as a consultant to the ABC production team. A nice enough man, although never the sharpest mind on the commission (or anywhere else), the former New Jersey governor may be promoting the party line on 9/11 now because his son Tom Kean Jr. is the Republican Senate nominee in his home state (and recently benefited from a fundraising appearance by former President Bush). But Kean's strange willingness to ignore his own findings does not change the facts.
The movie shows former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright -- who is played as a fussy, irritable Margaret Dumont-style matron -- thwarting a missile strike against bin Laden's desert camp by warning his Pakistani friends in advance. That never happened, either.
And in its most blatant appeal to right-wing pathology, the movie repeatedly suggests that Clinton was either distracted or prodded by the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the ensuing impeachment, taking action or deferring action for political reasons. Clarke has repeatedly denied that considerations of that kind influenced policy on any occasion. (For more on the conservative mythology of 9/11 see my answer to Andrew Sullivan on the subject in 2002.)
Clarke has said that the Clinton administration didn't fully comprehend the threat from al-Qaida until the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa in 1998. (Neither did Clinton's critics.) And it is also true that Clinton didn't mount a full-scale assault on the al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan, as Clarke advised, but that decision, regrettable as it now seems, was influenced by broad geopolitical considerations. And Bush declined that option as well, until after the 9/11 attacks.
If the producers of "The Path to 9/11" unfairly indict the Clinton administration with fabricated scenes and notions, they go out of their way to exonerate the Bush White House by ignoring certain damning facts -- and creating substitutes that make the president look better. The movie shows a smarmy, condescending Condoleezza Rice demoting Clarke in January 2001 when she takes over as national security advisor. Clarke tries to warn her that "something spectacular" is going to happen on American soil, and she assures him that "we're on it," which they assuredly were not.
Indeed, the script downplays the neglect of terrorism as a primary threat by the incoming Bush team -- and never mentions the counterterrorism task force, chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney, that never met for nine months before 9/11. The famous Aug. 6 presidential daily briefing, which warned the vacationing Bush that al-Qaida intended to strike here, is given due attention. But the movie then shows Rice telling her associates that "as a result of the Aug. 6 PDB, the president wants to take real action" against al-Qaida. But the 9/11 Commission report's section on the PDB clearly states that the August warning was not followed up on by Rice:
"We found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an Al Qaeda attack in the United States." No action was contemplated before 9/11 and the movie's attempt to claim otherwise is another distortion.
As I wrote this column, the Los Angeles Times reported that ABC had made "minor" alterations to some of the movie's most glaring errors. But for a production that rather tastelessly and gratuitously promotes ABC News in its script, no last-minute edits can restore news values that the producers never respected.
The ultimate irony is that this project -- based on the work of a commission whose bipartisan members swore to pursue and reveal the truth about a national disaster -- is likely to perpetuate old partisan canards instead of dispelling them.
-- By Joe Conason
