What "The Path to 9/11" is Paved With

Poor ABC. They try their hardest to do justice to a complex and horrifying historical event--the terror attacks of 9/11. They work night and day to produce a solid finished product. And what happens? Clintonistas bash them to pieces during a time when we should be concentrating on national healing.

And if you believe that little narrative, I have some swampland in Florida to sell you.

The Path to 9/11's "Fair and Balanced" Release Strategy

Of course, a person can hardly be blamed for believing it. After all, ABC originally billed The Path to 9/11, both in its promotional materials and in the press, as "based on the 9/11 Commission Report." Long after ABC changed the show's official status in the US to "docudrama," Network Seven in Australia was still billing it as "the official true story."

And it is certainly true that Clintonistas, as ABC News likes to call them, have bashed this miniseries, often before having actually seen it.* Of course, it is difficult to see a film before it has aired when the network will not provide you with advance copies. As late as September 6, Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and former National Security Adviser Samuel Berger all had yet to receive advance copies--though Rush Limbaugh had no trouble getting his hands on one, extolling it on the September 5 edition of his radio show. And neither, oddly enough, did small-time right-wing blogger Patterico. Considering that the film apportions a heavy share of the blame for 9/11 to Clinton, Albright, and Berger--and none at all to Limbaugh or Patterico--this is a bit puzzling.

Not that this release strategy worked particularly well for ABC. In addition to various Clinton officials and Congressional Democrats, conservatives like John Podhoretz, FOX News's Chris Wallace, Bill Bennett, Brent Bozell, Bill O'Reilly, and even Richard Miniter have all publicly expressed concern about the way this miniseries plays fast and loose with the facts. Yes, that Bill O'Reilly. Yes, that Richard Miniter.

And I haven't even mentioned the journalists and 9/11 Commission members (Jamie Gorelick, Richard Ben-Veniste, Tim Roemer, and Bob Kerrey) who have taken issue with the film's portrayal of the events leading up to that day.

So how badly does this film get its facts wrong?

Path to 9/11's FOX-y Revisionism

The answer is, pretty damn badly:

• Madeleine Albright's name is not spelled Madeline. I know it's hard for red-blooded, patriotic Americans to spell the Frenchified names of limousine liberals, but come on!
• Terrorist Mohammed Atta should have been stopped by a U.S. Airways employee for a search, but was not. In the film, the blame is shifted to an American Airlines employee. Oddly enough, American Airlines has threatened to sue and to withdraw advertising from ABC (props to Americablog for the link). How much did ABC spend on this picture?
• On the miniseries's second night, a CIA operative says that "ever since the Washington Post disclosed that we intercepted his calls, [Osama bin Laden] stopped using phones altogether." Because of this, the film argues, the hunt for bin Laden was made more difficult. However, it was not the Post which first reported this, but the ultra-conservative Washington Times (how much did they spend on this movie?). None of this really matters, however, since the interception of bin Laden's phone calls had already been made public (by the even more conservative Taliban) well before the Times's August, 1998 report.

But perhaps the film's worst factual inaccuracies come from its attempt to portray the Clinton administration as being single-handedly responsible for allowing the September 11 terrorist attacks to occur.

In one scene, troops on the ground in Afghanistan have surrounded bin Laden and are closing in for the kill. National Security Advisor Samuel Berger dithers, hems, and haws when asked for the order to finish the job. Finally, bin Laden gets away. Needless to say, no such incident ever took place.

In another scene, Madeleine Albright foolishly warns Pakistan about a missile attack against Afghanistan which is intended to wipe out bin Laden. Even though CIA Director George Tenet warns her not to do this, the stupid cow does it anyway--and bin Laden gets away again. In real life, it was a senior member of the Joint Chiefs of staff who warned Pakistan, so they would not think that the missiles were coming from India. I guess Maddallin AllBrite (sp?) wasn't such a stupid cow after all.

And so on and so forth. And then some more.

The Politics of Path to 9/11

I hope I've made my case that The Path to 9/11 is unvarnished propaganda straight from the horse's ass, put out less than sixty days before one of the most hotly contested midterm elections in American history in the hopes that gullible voters will come back to the (questionable) view that national security is what Republicans, and not Democrats, are good at. I think that Americablog puts it best: "I cannot think of a greater libel than to tell millions of people worldwide that you [sic] are responsible for Osama bin Laden not being stopped before September 11. Disney/ABC just put the blood of 3,000 Americans on Sandy Berger's hands."

But, as Columbo might say, there's just one thing that still puzzles me: why would Thomas H. Kean, the Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, stand behind such transparently obvious horse pucky when he would be in the best possible position to see its many falsehoods and distortions? If you want credibility for a show about 9/11, it's hard to imagine a better way to get it than to have him on board.

Well, maybe--and this is just a theory--maybe Kean backed Path to 9/11 because his son, Thomas H. Kean, Jr., is running for a Senate seat in New Jersey this November. Against a Democrat named Bob Menendez. Who has been backed in his campaigning by none other than William Jefferson "I caused 9/11" Clinton.

Or maybe Kean is just a halfwit. I could see it either way.

I hate it when this kind of thing happens. I can't remember a time when this country was more divided by idiotic squabbling and bullshit. We know very well who caused 9/11. Terrorists. Not Bill Clinton, not George Bush, not Michael Moore. Terrorists. Are terrorists more happy or less happy when we squabble amongst ourselves like schoolchildren? Are they more happy or less happy when we work resolutely and in a bipartisan way towards the elimination of terrorist threats and the improvement of our nation's security? Are they more happy or less happy when our leaders and our journalists mislead us into ways of thinking and acting which have no effect on their demonic and homicidal operations?

Don't worry. This type of nonsense will happen again. There will be other "docudramas," other "official true stories," other "Paths to 9/11" thrown at us in this election season, and the next, and the next.

All we can do is work against them.

And avoid, somehow, with God's help, becoming vituperative partisan hacks in the process.**

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*ABC's "Clintonistas" story has a revealing history. At first, this story--not editorial, but story--was titled "Clintonistas Claim Foul Over ABC 9/11 Film." I know this because I saw the title myself on September 9, because this is how the title still sometimes appears in Google search results, and because this title also appears in stories by both Democratic Underground and Daily Kos. Now ABC has changed the title to "Clintonistas Decry ABC Entertainment 9/11 Film." The word "Entertainment" appears so that you'll realize that ABC News had nothing to do with the film--indeed, according to the Internet Movie Database's September 11th story, ABC News has taken Path to pieces. The change from "Claim Foul" to "Decry" is apparently an attempt to soften the obvious bias in the title so that the piece is more in keeping with ABC's high standards of journalistic integrity. I have been told, by the way, that the term "Clintonistas" is a Rush Limbaugh coinage.

** I would like to thank the many progressive blogs which provided information and inspiration for this post, and which also performed their watchdog function to a T. These include: Media Matters, Huffington Post, ThinkProgress, Crooks and Liars, AmericaBlog, and FireDogLake. Kudos, and thank you.