ABC's Path to Distortion

[babylonsister]

http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2006/09/abcs_path_to_di.html

ABC's Path to Distortion

Since the early days of the 9/11 Commission, co-chairs Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton have repeatedly emphasized the importance of togetherness in not just searching for the truth, but applying lessons learned. The truth--at least, as the Commission views it in the 9/11 report’s introduction--essentially boils down to “failure took place over many years and Administrations,” with “no single individual responsible”. The star to steer by in moving forward, they wrote, was setting aside partisan agendas and differences, uniting “in the face of common foe…We believe that in acting together, we can make a difference.”

On September 10 and 11, ABC will air “The Path to 9/11,” a miniseries that not only claims to be a “dramatization” of the 9/11 Commission Report, but also boasts Tom Kean as a producer. At first glance, it might seem odd that after so much emphasis on the spirit of bipartisanship, it wouldn’t be both Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton sharing producer credits. But having twice now seen sneak previews of the miniseries, I have, in my mind’s eye, a picture of Lee Hamilton reviewing the script and at least telling Kean he’s on his own, at most excoriating Kean (who is, by training, a historian) for aiding and abetting a bowdlerization of history and undermining the Commission’s already arguable integrity. Far from an instrument designed to explain, enlighten, heal or engender constructive change, The Path to 9/11 more closely resembles a wedge designed to polarize and warp.

Of course, what I’ve seen may not end up being what everyone else sees. As my friend and colleague Shaun Waterman from UPI reports, the network is frantically recutting the miniseries in response to a deluge of criticism, with the network going so far as to say that specific criticisms are “premature and irresponsible,” as “no one has seen the final version of the film.” I have to say I find this a hoot: At a special National Press Club screening of Part I a few weeks ago, an ABC flack could not have been more effusive about the film, and left little doubt that what we beheld was in fact the final version. Indeed, as the network had even gone so far as to team up with educational resource manufacturer Scholastic to market the film as a teaching tool accompanied by lessons plans and discussion guides, I think it’s safe to say ABC considered its product securely in the can.

So why all the sturm und drang about The Path To 9/11? In one particularly engrossing set of sequences set in 1998, we bounce back and forth between two very different locales: CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where CIA Director George Tenet teleconferences via webcams with White House counterterror aide Richard Clarke and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger; and Afghanistan, where just outside Tarnak Farms a three-man CIA team and a bevy of Afghan Northern Alliance fighters--including Ahmad Shah Massoud himself!--are poised to raid the compound and snatch bin Laden.

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