Former ambassador to Yemen: 9/11 Miniseries Is Bunk

[kurth]

9/11 Miniseries Is Bunk
Former ambassador to Yemen says ABC traded fact for drama in portraying events after the 2000 bombing of the destroyer Cole.
By Barbara Bodine
BARBARA BODINE was U.S. ambassador to Yemen from 1997-2001. She is a visiting scholar at MIT's Center for International Studies.

... ABC has chosen not to document but to dramatize this most critical of times. Its miniseries, "The Path to 9/11," opts for fiction when fact is needed and chooses mythmaking when the candor of history is called for. The 9/11 commission report tells the story with clear-eyed honesty, precision and studious impartiality. The ABC drama does not. The 9/11 commission spent hours interviewing virtually everyone connected not just with the events of that day but those involved in counter-terrorism over 25 years — Republican as well as Democrat. ABC did not. Many senior officials from President Clinton's administration, along with key members of the 9/11 commission, have publicly challenged the distortions and inaccuracies of "The Path to 9/11." From the part of the story I know firsthand, ABC has done the American people a disservice. Drama may be more profitable than reality, but at what cost to our national history?

One of the myths perpetuated by ABC played out in the steamy port city of Aden, Yemen, in October 2000, using an FBI agent out of New York, John O'Neill, and the U.S. ambassador to that country. According to the mythmakers, a battle ensued between a cop obsessed with tracking down Osama bin Laden and a bureaucrat more concerned with the feelings of the host government than the fate of Americans and the realities of terrorism. I know this is false. I was there. I was the ambassador.

I am not here to either defend or attack O'Neill. He was a complex man. But what happened after Al Qaeda's attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole was a complex story. Within hours, our embassy in Sana, Yemen, received support from Washington, U.S. military commands in the region and neighboring U.S. embassies. Within days, our presence in Aden went from zero to more than 300 people from the Navy, Marines, the intelligence community, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the FBI, the State Department and my embassy. We had a clear and common goal: honor those killed by finding those guilty...

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-bodine8sep08,0,7868172.story?coll=la-home-commentary