Discover the Secret Right-Wing Network Behind ABC's 9/11 Deception

[kstewart33]

From Huffington Post

By Max Blumenthal
September 8 2006

Less than 72 hours before ABC's "The Path to 9/11" is scheduled to air, the network is suddenly under siege. On Tuesday, ABC was forced to concede that "The Path to 9/11" is "a dramatization, not a documentary." The film deceptively invents scenes to depict former President Bill Clinton's handling of the Al Qaeda threat.

(snip)

In fact, "The Path to 9/11" is produced and promoted by a well-honed propaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far right activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, he is working with a secretive evangelical religious right group founded by The Path to 9/11's director David Cunningham that proclaims its goal to "transform Hollywood" in line with its messianic vision.

Before The Path to 9/11 entered the production stage, Disney/ABC contracted David Cunningham as the film's director. Cunningham is no ordinary Hollywood journeyman. He is in fact the son of Loren Cunningham, founder of the right-wing evangelical group Youth With A Mission (YWAM). The young Cunningham helped found an auxiliary of his father's group called The Film Institute (TFI), which, according to its mission statement, is "dedicated to a Godly transformation and revolution TO and THROUGH the Film and Televisionindustry." As part of TFI's long-term strategy, Cunningham helped place interns from Youth With A Mission's in film industry jobs "so that they can begin to impact and transform Hollywood from the inside out," according to a YWAM report.

Last June, Cunningham's TFI announced it was producing its first film, mysteriously titled "Untitled History Project." "TFI's first project is a doozy," a newsletter to YWAM members read. "Simply being referred to as: The Untitled History Project, it is already being called the television event of the decade and not one second has been put to film yet. Talk about great expectations!" (A web edition of the newsletter was mysteriously deleted yesterday but has been cached on Google at the link above).

The following month, on July 28, the New York Post reported that ABC was filming a mini-series "under a shroud of secrecy" about the 9/11 attacks. "At the moment, ABC officials are calling the miniseries 'Untitled Commission Report' and producers refer to it as the 'Untitled History Project,'" the Post noted.

(snip)

Nowrasteh's conservatism was on display when he appeared as a featured speaker at the Liberty Film Festival (LFF), an annual event founded in 2004 to premier and promote conservative-themed films supposedly too "politically incorrect" to gain acceptance at mainstream film festivals. This June, while The Path to 9/11 was being filmed, LFF founders Govindini Murty and Jason Apuzzo -- both friends of Nowrasteh -- announced they were "partnering" with right-wing activist David Horowitz. Indeed, the 2006 LFF is listed as "A Program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center."

(snip)

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/discover-the-secret-right_b_29015.html

[FogerRox]

1. nice.. Knr, but dig deeper, follow the money

[freedomsunshine]

2. There really is a conspiracy. The Repugnicans deny it of course

but they really want to control what we watch and hear on TV and the radio. It's all part of their plan to completely control our lives and the lives of everyone else in the world. If we don't act soon to stop the invasions of privacy, Bush and Cheney and Rove will know everything about all of us.

[City Lights]

3. Welcome to DU, freedomsunshine!

:hi:

[starroute]

4. Something odd about the timing

I was just looking at this FoxNews story from July 28, 2005:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163964,00.html

Filming has quietly begun under a shroud of secrecy on ABC’s ambitious miniseries about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The project — which has never been formally announced by ABC and will air no sooner than January 2006 — stars Harvey Keitel (search) as John O’Neill, the FBI agent who hunted Al Qaeda for years and was killed in the attacks while working as head of security for the World Trade Center. . . .

In a sad twist, the project began filming in Toronto on July 7, the day of the London terrorist attacks.

Why does it say "no sooner than January 2006"? Everybody's been assuming this was timed from the beginning as pre-election propaganda. Was the date really that uncertain at the start? (And would it be reasonable to start filming in July and have a 5-hour miniseries ready to show by January?) Or were they covering their tracks even then?

[starroute]

5. Govindini Murty

I started googling some of the names mentioned in the original post and quickly found this on Nowrasteh's friend, Govindini Murty:

The festival was organized by a husband-wife duo of young filmmakers, Jason Apuzzo and Govindini Murty, and underwritten by the Foundation for Free Markets, which likes privatizing Social Security, cutting taxes and issuing school vouchers.

Which quickly led me to this:

http://www.newshounds.us/2005/01/25/movies_death_squads_rants_oh_my.php

Then there's the issue of the Liberty Film Fest. Surprise, surprise: turns out that this obscure "fest" was founded in 2004 by the husband-&-wife team of Jason Apuzzo & Govindini Murty, who appear to be the only people involved in it. Their first fest, in Oct 2004, honored (wait for it) "Passion...". Their website officially thanks, among others, the "LA County Republican Party, The Republican Jewish Coalition, The Center for the Study of Popular Culture, ... the terrific guys at Free Republic, the Hollywood Congress of Republicans" & acknowledges that their "major sponsor" Paul Harberger, President of the Foundation for Free Markets. . .

But wait! It gets better. Start googling folks. Turns out that the Foundation for Free Markets is also called the Fondacion Francisco Marroquin, & is allied with the Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala. which is headed by Manuel Ayau (who is mentioned adoringly on radical reactionary websites). Ayau is a member of Guatemala's most ultra-conservative party, the National Liberation Movement, which is allegedly directly linked to paramilitary death squads freely operating in the country during the 1980's. He is considered to be the ideologue of the more extremist sector of the business community. After meeting Ayau in 1979, Ronald Reagan described Ayau as "one of the few people in the high political sphere who understands what is going on down there."

Wow! From Path to 9/11 to Guatemalan death squads in only three jumps! Is that some kind of record?

I think the Foundation for Free Markets and Paul Harberger might indeed be worth googling.

So perhaps might be the Republican Jewish Coalition -- a group of which Neocon Clifford May is or was vice-chairman. (May is also the head of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is deeply involved in the Iran regime chance movement. And he was the first person to claim that Valerie Plame's identity was common knowledge in DC. It would be fun to link him to this.)

[starroute]

7. Something odd in Murty's interview of Nowrasteh

At the website of the Liberty Film Fest, there's an interview of Nowrasteh by Murty which says, "Nowrasteh told us that he has always gravitated towards true stories. A Persian-American whose family had to flee Iran when it was taken over by Islamic fundamentalists, Nowrasteh’s work combines an appreciation for the intimate and the human, with a love of history and respect for America’s founding traditions."
http://www.libertyfilmfestival.com/libertas/index.php?p=462

But according to one online source and another, Nowrasteh was born in Boulder, CO in 1957, grew up in Madison, WI and graduated from high school there in 1974, attended New Mexico State University for a time on a tennis scholarship, graduated from USC School of Cinema-Television in 1977, worked as a tennis teacher for a while in LA, and then got his first assignment from Universal Studios in 1983.

So at exactly what point in all this was it that his family had to flee Iran? Did his parents perhaps leave him teaching tennis in LA as a 20 year old while they went back home, just in time to be forced out again by the Islamic revolution in 1979? Was it actually his grandparents and a cousin or two who did the fleeing? Or could it be that the entire account was made up out out of whole cloth?

Whatever the real situation, there is something about this assertion that squares poorly with the "gravitated towards true stories" part. If his 9/11 movie is "true" in the same way as the story about his family fleeing from Islamic fundamentalists is "true," it would explain a lot...

[EVDebs]

6. What to watch and read while ABC airs its docudrama....pass it on

Loose Change 2nd edition
http://www.loosechange911.com /

David Ray Griffin on the 9-11 Commission Report
http://911review.com/articles/griffin/commissionlies.html