Bill Clinton upset over the 9/11 Mini Series

[Midnight Mike]

September 7, 2006 -- WASHINGTON — A furious Bill Clinton is warning ABC that its mini-series "The Path to 9/11" grossly misrepresents his pursuit of Osama bin Laden — and he is demanding the network "pull the drama" if changes aren't made.

http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews ... ondent.htm

[Matt Molnar]

I read a book a couple of years ago by the Secret Service officer who carried the nuclear "football" for Clinton (sorry, I don't remember the name of the book or the guy). The book portrays the events Clinton is complaining about in the miniseries the same way: indecisiveness by Clinton, Sandy Berger and others cost them chances to capture or kill bin Laden. On one occasion, after weeks of planning a bombing mission to kill him, they learned his precise location and sought the green light from Clinton. With a window of only a couple of hours to make it happen, Clinton, at a golf outing, stalled several times, and finally refused to make a decision in favor of continuing his game, resulting in the opportunity being lost and hundreds of hours of planning wasted.

[Midnight Mike]

Now the Senate if hopping on the bandwagon:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/09/0 ... index.html

Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada commented on the controversy at a morning news conference.

"I haven't seen it, but from everything I've heard it's not down the middle. It's not fair at all. And to have a film that seems to be biased and take one side put on by a network seems to be the wrong thing to do," said Schumer. "You can't take a film that's supposed to report on something that's so real and so close and make it into fiction. That's beneath ABC's dignity."

"They started off this as being a documentary," added Reid. "They changed it to a docudrama and now it's a work of fiction and that's what it is. And, yes, they should pull it."

[PhilDernerJr]

Funny how the Dems are suddenly bothered by news actually biased against them for once.

[Midnight Mike]

Funny how the Dems are suddenly bothered by news actually biased against them for once.

Yep!

Remember fahrenheit 911 was just a movie!

[moose135]

The problem is people will believe what they see here, while even ABC admits it's not a true representation of the facts. From ABC's statement:

"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."

From a Chicago Sun-Times article:

James Bamford, an author who writes about national security agencies, told MSNBC an FBI agent hired as an adviser on "Path" quit halfway through production "because he thought they were making things up."

Most of the furor concerns a few key scenes.

Scene: The CIA and Northern Alliance come within killing distance of Osama bin Laden, but former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger is portrayed saying they don't have the presidential authority to kill. ABC reportedly has toned down this scene in recent days.

Reaction: None of that happened, according to the film's senior adviser, Thomas Kean, a Republican who chaired the 9/11 Commission. He admits the scene is a "composite," as are some agents in the film.

"It's utterly invented," President Bush's former terrorism czar Richard Clarke said this week.

"No such episode ever occurred -- nor did anything like it," Berger wrote to ABC. "In no instance did President Clinton or I ever fail to support a request from the CIA or U.S. military to authorize an operation against bin Laden or al-Qaida."

Scene: Agents complain Clinton is too caught up in the Republicans' impeachment effort to act against bin Laden.

Reaction: Citing the 9/11 Commission report, the Clinton letter insists that he and Berger told former CIA Director George Tenet to get bin Laden. "Secondly," the letter says, "Roger Cressy, National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism from 1999-2001, has said, on more than one occasion, 'Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaida.' "

Scene: Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, is portrayed as giving Pakistan a heads-up about a U.S. air strike against bin Laden, allowing him to get away. The strike failed, and Republicans complained it was a political ploy.

Reaction: "It is my understanding that the notification to Pakistan was delivered once the missiles were already in the air," Albright says in a letter to ABC. "At no time did I inform the Pakistanis independently that a strike was to take place. The scene as explained to me is false and defamatory."

The 9/11 Commission report claimed the alert came from someone on the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Anybody remember the furor from the Right when CBS was doing the same thing in a TV movie about Ronald Reagan? They were so upset about "fictionalized" and "composite" scenes that CBS pulled the movie and ran it on the Showtime pay cable channel.

[Matt Molnar]

Also remember that Sandy Berger was caught stealing 9/11 documents from the National Archives in his pants.

[Midnight Mike]

Anybody remember the furor from the Right when CBS was doing the same thing in a TV movie about Ronald Reagan? They were so upset about "fictionalized" and "composite" scenes that CBS pulled the movie and ran it on the Showtime pay cable channel.

Slight difference, people were upset, because President Reagan had just died recently, they felt it would have been respectful, to wait a little while till the body cooled down.....

[Tom_Turner]

Also remember that Sandy Berger was caught stealing 9/11 documents from the National Archives in his pants.

Oh yeah, thats right.. he took those documents "by mistake"... :roll:

[moose135]

Oh, by the way, ABC also falsely blames American Airlines in this movie too:

From http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09 ... r-911.html

Here's what the "Path to 9/11" claims American Airlines did on the morning of September 11. According to Disney/ABC, American Airlines at Boston Logan had Mohammad Atta at its ticket counter and a warning came up on the screen when he tried to check in. The AA employee called a supervisor who kind of shrugged and said, blithely, just let him through. The first employee, shocked, turned to her supervisor and said, shouldn't we search him? The American Airlines supervisor responds, nah, just hold his luggage until he boards the plane. The scene is clearly intended to make American Airlines look negligent.

Only problem? It never happened.

First off, Disney/ABC got the airport wrong. The warning for Mohammad Atta's ticket popped up in Portland, Maine, not at Boston Logan as the tv show claims (this is on page 1 of the September 11 Commission report).

Second, the security rules at the time said nothing about searching a passenger who has a "warning" pop up, they only required that the bags be held until the passenger boarded. The Disney/ABC tv show, on the other hand, clearly tries to imply that American Airlines violated the security rules in letting Atta go. This simply isn't true. (This is also on page 1 of the report.)

But most importantly, Disney/ABC implicated the wrong airline. And I quote the Director of the FBI:

"On September 11, at 6:00 AM, Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari boarded a U.S. Airways flight leaving Portland, Maine en route to Boston's Logan Airport."

The 9/11 Report, on page 1 of all things, makes clear that it was in Portland that Atta's warning came up. And FBI director Mueller makes clear that Atta flew US Airways Express from Portland to Boston. So, Disney/ABC, in the first ten minutes of its error-riddled tv show - a show about to be broadcast to the entire English-speaking world this Sunday - paints American Airlines as one of the most irresponsible air carriers on the planet. An air carrier that is directly responsible for killing 3,000 Americans because its own employees are too lazy to follow safety rules.

And Disney/ABC got it totally wrong, defaming one of the largest airlines in the world.