ABC's 9/11 Docudrama Blames Clinton and Praises Bush

[AtomicKitten]

from http://thinkprogress.org/

Writer of ABC’s 9/11 ‘Docudrama’ Is Avowed Conservative Activist

ABC will air a “docudrama” next weekend called “The Path to 9/11″ which blames President Clinton for the 9/11 attacks while praising President Bush.

The writer of the movie is an unabashed conservative named Cyrus Nowrasteh. Last year, Nowrasteh spoke on a panel titled, “Rebels With a Cause: How Conservatives Can Lead Hollywood’s Next Paradigm Shift.” He has described Michael Moore as “an out of control socialist weasel,” and conducted interviews with right-wing websites like FrontPageMag.

The problem isn’t that Nowrasteh is conservative. The problem is that Nowrasteh and ABC are representing “The Path to 9/11″ as an unbiased historical drama. Promos for the movie say it is “based on the 9/11 Commission Report.” Nowrasteh claims he “wanted to match the just-the-facts tone of the report,” and describes the project as “an objective telling of the events of 9/11.”

Here’s some of the objectivity you can expect: Nowrasteh says the film shows how Clinton had “frequent opportunities…in the 90s to stop Bin Laden in his tracks — but lacked the will to do so.” He has referenced Clinton’s “lack of response” to Al Qaeda “and how this emboldened Bin Laden to keep attacking American interests.” A review today in Salon.com says the film paints Clinton “as a buffoon more interested in blow jobs than terrorists.”

New ABC Docudrama Blames Clinton For 9/11, Praises Bush

Path to 9/11 graphic On September 10 and 11, ABC will air a “docudrama” called “The Path to 9/11.” It was written by Cyrus Nowrasteh, who describes himself as “more of a libertarian than a strict conservative,” and is giving interviews to hard-right sites like FrontPageMag to promote the film.

What will it say about President Clinton? Here’s Rush Limbaugh with a preview:

A friend of mine out in California has produced and filmed — I think it’s a two-part mini-series on 9/11 that ABC is going to run in prime-time over two nights, close to or on 9/11. It’s sort of surprising that ABC’s picked it up, to me. I’ve had a lot of people tell me about it, my friends told me about it…And from what I have been told, the film really zeros in on the shortcomings of the Clinton administration in doing anything about militant Islamofascism or terrorism during its administration. It cites failures of Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright and Sandy Burglar.

How does it deal with President Bush? Salon has a review:

Condoleezza Rice gets that fated memo about planes flying into buildings, and makes it very clear to anyone who’ll listen just how concerned President Bush is about these terrorist threats — despite the fact that we’re given little concrete evidence of the president’s concern or interest in taking action. Maybe my memory fails me, but the only person I remember talking about Osama bin Laden back in 1998 was President Clinton, while the current anti-terrorist stalwarts worked the country into a frenzy over what? Blow jobs. In the end, “The Path to 9/11″ feels like an excruciatingly long, winding and deceptive path, indeed.

The director of the film, David Cunningham, is already backtracking about its accuracy, saying “this is not a documentary.” OK, fair enough. But the movie is being billed as “based on The 9/11 Commission Report.”

[waiting for hope]

1. 67 days.....

enough said.

[1620rock]

2. And the sheep will drink this kool-ade with gusto.

[Olney Blue]

3. 9-11 happened on Bush's watch, And we still don't have Bin Laden.

[Ian David]

4. ABC Still has a network? n/t

[City Lights]

8. LOL!

Couldn't agree more.

[gaspee]

5. You gotta be freaking kidding me!

If Clinton stands for this, I will have lost all respect for him.

[AtomicKitten]

12. I would hope he would speak out

This is beyond the pale.

[petgoat]

22. Clinton sucking up to the Bushes when the Ohio electoral votes

were still in question was the last straw for me.

He should have spit on them!

I'd always regarded that right-wing story about the Mena Arkansas
drug flights and the Arkansas state troopers as bullshit, but
Daniel Hopsicker says it was a CIA operation (google "Barry Seal").
That explains a lot about Bill Clinton's recent behavior.

[Cha]

6. Hard to believe Harvey Keitel

has any part of this fascist propoganda shite..are ya broke, harvey?

[gatorboy]

7. Harvey "I'll show you my balls in every film" Keitel?

Who does he play?

[Cha]

16. Or his butt. I know nothing, I just

saw his picture up in OP ad.

[Nevernose]

9. Harvey "Bad Lieutenant" Keitel is in this?

Say it ain't so!

[Cha]

17. He was so good in

Pulp Fiction.

[helderheid]

10. here's contact info at the end of this

Right wing uses ABC docudrama to push debunked claim blaming Clinton administration for 9-11

http://mediamatters.org/items/200609010012

In anticipation of the September 10 premiere of the first part of the ABC miniseries The Path to 9-11 -- a six-hour docudrama reportedly based on the findings of the 9-11 Commission Report -- the right-wing media have resurrected an already-debunked claim that attempts to place the blame for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the feet of the Clinton administration. Specifically, a review of the film on the right-wing website Human Events Online recounted a scene in which the CIA withholds from the FBI "crucial information identifying some of the 9/11 hijackers" and asserted that this occurred because of "the 'wall' put up by certain Democrat officials to prevent information sharing between government agencies." While conservatives have repeatedly claimed that this "wall" was erected during former President Bill Clinton's tenure, it in fact long predated his administration, as Media Matters for America has noted.

ABC describes The Path to 9-11 as "a dramatization of the events detailed in The 9/11 Commission Report and other sources" and will air over the course of two nights -- September 10 and 11. As noted by the weblog Think Progress, the film was written and produced by conservative activist Cyrus Nowrasteh. In recent days, members of the right-wing media, including syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh and conservative websites FrontPageMag and Human Events Online have begun promoting The Path to 9-11 as a film that "really zeros in on the shortcomings of the Clinton administration" and "honestly and fairly depict how Clinton-era inaction ... allowed the 9/11 conspiracy to metastasize." The September 1 Human Events Online review described one scene that purportedly shows how 9-11 occurred "in part" because Democrats under Clinton purportedly created a firewall between U.S. intelligence agencies and U.S. law-enforcement agencies that prohibited critical information-sharing:

The miniseries also has a scene in which the CIA has crucial information identifying some of the 9/11 hijackers in advance of 9/11, but refuses to share the information with the FBI because of the "wall" put up by certain Democrat officials to prevent information sharing between government agencies. The CIA is depicted as sitting in a meeting with the FBI (with John O'Neil present), and showing the FBI surveillance photos of terrorism suspects -- some of whom will later turn out to be the 9/11 hijackers. The CIA asks the FBI for help in identifying the men in the photos, but refuses to give the FBI any of the information they have on who the men are. John O'Neil protests that it's impossible for the FBI to help the CIA identify the men if they won't provide any information whatsoever on them. When O'Neil tells the FBI to keep the photos so they can at least work on them, the CIA becomes hostile to O'Neil and takes the photos back. Tragically, John O'Neil himself will later die in the 9/11 attacks, in part because agencies like the CIA refused to share crucial information like this. Scenes like these really challenge the prevailing liberal media and Hollywood mindset by showing that the Patriot Act's information-sharing and surveillance provisions are crucial to the safety of this country, and that political correctness and bureaucratic inefficiency are Islamic terrorism's greatest friend.

The suggestion that Clinton administration officials erected the so-called "wall" echoes a similar accusation popular among conservative media figures: that a 1995 policy, instituted by former deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick and former Attorney General Janet Reno, prohibited Defense Department officials from sharing with the FBI military intelligence purportedly identifying lead 9-11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. But as Media Matters has noted, the memo and guidelines in question merely clarified long-unwritten restrictions on the sharing of information between the FBI's intelligence arm and the Justice Department's criminal division. Indeed, the 1995 documents had no bearing on the military's ability to share information with other intelligence agencies.

Former Sen. Slade Gorton , a 9-11 Commission member, specifically addressed and debunked the theory that Gorelick's memo prevented such intelligence-sharing in an August 18 letter to the editor in The Washington Times:

The one witness who did name Atta came to our staff shortly before the commission's report went to the printer. He said he thought he had seen something showing Atta in Brooklyn early in 2000. We knew, in fact, that Atta first arrived in the United States in June 2000 with a visa. For this and other reasons, the witness simply was not credible on this subject.

Additionally, the assertion that the commission failed to report on this program to protect Ms. Gorelick is ridiculous. She had nothing to do with any "wall" between law enforcement and our intelligence agencies. The 1995 Department of Justice guidelines at issue were internal to the Justice Department and were not even sent to any other agency. The guidelines had no effect on the Department of Defense and certainly did not prohibit it from communicating with the FBI, the CIA or anyone else.

Moreover, the "wall" that conservatives accuse Democrats of erecting had been built well before Gorelick -- or Clinton -- took office. The joint House and Senate intelligence committees' report of pre-September 11 intelligence failures stated: "The 'Wall' is not a single barrier, but a series of restrictions between and within agencies constructed over sixty years as a result of legal, policy, institutional, and personal factors." Similarly, a ruling by the top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review -- when it met for the first time in 2002 -- traces the origin of the "wall" to "some point during the 1980s."

Nor did enforcement of the "wall" end with the Clinton administration. In his April 12, 2004, testimony before the 9-11 Commission, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft conceded that his own deputy Attorney General, Larry Thompson, reauthorized the "wall" in August 2001.

Contact:
Human Events [e-mail]
202-216-0600
HUMAN EVENTS
One Massachusetts Avenue N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001

[Touchdown]

13. Why'd you cross out 2/3rds of your post?

It's very hard to read it.:shrug:

[TahitiNut]

14. When pasted text contains a left-square-bracket-'s' ([s]) it causes ...

... the "strikeout" text effect. When copying and pasting text containing the normal editorial notes and corrections, all kinds of inadvertent text effects can happen. The bracketed text is parsed by the forum software looking at only the leading character(s) and the trailing bracket. Everything between the brackets is made 'invisible' and, if the leading character corresponds to a text effect, it's applied.

HTH

Here's the paragraph with the bracketed 's' in bold. (Using %-codes to display.)

ABC describes The Path to 9-11 as "a dramatization of the events detailed in The 9/11 Commission Report and other sources" and will air over the course of two nights -- September 10 and 11. As noted by the weblog Think Progress, the film was written and produced by conservative activist Cyrus Nowrasteh. In recent days, members of the right-wing media, including syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh and conservative websites FrontPageMag and Human Events Online have begun promoting The Path to 9-11 as a film that "really zeros in on the shortcomings of the Clinton administration" and "honestly and fairly depict[s] how Clinton-era inaction ... allowed the 9/11 conspiracy to metastasize." The September 1 Human Events Online review described one scene that purportedly shows how 9-11 occurred "in part" because Democrats under Clinton purportedly created a firewall between U.S. intelligence agencies and U.S. law-enforcement agencies that prohibited critical information-sharing:

[helderheid]

15. I didn't - just didn't realize Media Matters used brackets. Sorry

[frylock]

11. i really hate these sons of bitches..

my folks have been eating up this BS 911 porn for months now, having been to see both United 93 and WTC. Now this. I'm gonna have to go over there with my laptop, logged onto Cooperative Research, watching it with them and debunking this crap. :eyes:

[petgoat]

23. Ask your folks about those flaming yellow globs in WTC

that fell down past the PAPD guys.

Were those molten metal or yellow-hot chunks of steel? Either way,
where did they come from? Jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt
steel. Thermate does.

Ask them what are those rifle-shot sounds. Nick Cage's reaction:
"Don't think!"

About flight 93, ask them how the debris got spread over six miles
of countryside, and why the 9/11 Commission insists the crash happened
at 10:03 when the seismographic stations report a plane-crash-like
event at 10:06 and no such event at 10:03.

Do they know that the same C-130H nearly collided with flight 77 in DC
and then was 15 miles away from Shanksville at 10:03 (and thus would have
been right on top of Shanksville at 10:06)?

Take 'em to see "9/11 Press for Truth" (it's about the Jersey Girls)
on 9/10.

SEPTEMBER 10 – SAN DIEGO, CA
Haslets’, 1965 2nd Ave., #1
(FREE. 1 Day Only. 3PM)
Contact Steve Haslet for more details

http://www.911pressfortruth.com/showings


Murder will out.

[frylock]

30. i'm going to buy 'press for truth'..

and take it over there. Mom has an open mind. Dad, on the other hand, is just not willing to listen to anything other than the company line.

[petgoat]

31. An excellent choice.

Do they know that the family members posed over 300 questions to the
9/11 Commission and 70% of them were not even addressed? Only 27
of the questions were adequately answered. Here's the list:

http://www.justicefor911.org/Appendix4_FSCQuestionRatings_111904.php

Here's a Petition of Solidarity:

http://www.justicefor911.org/index.php

[bamacrat]

18. Of couse it does, what are they going to compare the two on..

the economy, foriegn relations, prosperity, sex appeal. I mean come one * is strong on terrrrrr.

[Cha]

19. Ad & Sales addys for guys who work

for Disney courtesy of a really nice former member of DU:)

ESPN.com
John Zaccario
Vice President of Integrated Sales
ESPN.com
19 East 34th Street
New York, NY 10016
[e-mail]
[e-mail]

ABC.com
Internet Sales
ABC.com
77 West 66th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10023
[e-mail]

DisneyChannel.com
Brad Davis
VP of Advertising Sales & Marketing
Disney Online
5161 Lankershim Blvd., 4th Floor
North Hollywood, CA 91601
[e-mail]


http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:hRIQND0DOCsJ:mediak...

Thank you, Jara! We can contact these gentlemen and let them know "we are not pleased with ABC"!

I'm spamming this around on all the "The Path to 9/11" threads.

[C_U_L8R]

28. None of those are the right folks

i wish I had the right person for you.. but I don't...
you need the ad sales VPs at ABC TV

not disney.com or espn or even ABC.com...
you'll just annoy people who can't do anything about it.

[Cha]

32. Really? Someone emailed them

to me and I thought they might be good?

When that damn reagun film was going to be shown the wingnuts got all up in arms and had the thing closed and it was the truth! So why can't we keep this lyin' propoganda shite off the air?

Maybe it will backfired and get people to start thinking and will spur some more truthful docs on what Really happened leading up to 9/11? If we could EVER get them AIRED?

[WilliamPitt]

20. Clinton, 9/11 and the Facts

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/083006J.shtml

[Scriptor Ignotus]

21. the best advice I can give DU

is DONT WATCH THIS MOVIE.

If the ratings are good you can expect more of the same. Do not feed the beast. Boycott this film.

[KAZ]

33. That's about the worst advice to give.

I'm sure your heart is in the right place, but it should be watched by those in the best position to debunk it, hopefully beforehand. Fight these fucks at every opportunity.

[petgoat]

24. “based on The 9/11 Commission Report” and "not a documentary”

are not conflicted in the least.

The 9CR is a 571-page lie.

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050523112738404

[AtomicKitten]

25. which makes this a mockumentary

[Dinger]

26. Why Has Clinton Been SILENT On This???

I just asking, and waiting, . . . . . . .

[AtomicKitten]

27. this hasn't played out yet

patience

[cascadiance]

29. Where's Blank Reg and Max Headroom's Big Time Television when you need it?

We need his pirate signal to take over ABC's and put on 9/11 - Press for Truth instead!

[uppityperson]

34. dang them anyway. I watch little tv but saw an ad for this

thought there was hope since it was "based on commission report"

[petgoat]

35. The 9/11 Commission Report is a 571-Page Lie

See Dr. David Ray Griffin's list of 115 critical omissions and distortions
in the report here:

http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2005-05-22-571pglie.php

Dr. Griffin's most recent book, "Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11
A Call to Reflection and Action" is published by the Westminster John Knox
Press, the publishing arm of the Presbyterian Church USA.

https://www.ppcbooks.com/Why.asp

[Zambero]

36. Bush's 7-minute "My Pet Goat" moment was in fact 9 months in the making

He was clueless from day one, fixated on pushing through a massive tax cut for the super wealthy and nothing else, and asleep at the switch when 9/11 came down. Everything else including homeland security had been placed on the back burner or was not on the radar screen. Reports went unread, communication of vital information was zilch, scheduled meetings were routinely canceled. The non-vigilance of the Bush administration was a dream come true for the terrorists, providing them with a perfect opening for the planned attacks. So anyway, is there a listing of the corporate sponsors for this farce?