After Disney execs met throughout the weekend “debating what changes would be made and what concessions should be given” to the upcoming film The Path to 9/11, an email was sent to conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt from an ABC insider with the assurance that “The average viewer would not be able to tell the difference between the two versions” and “the message of the Clinton Admin failures remains fully intact.”
If you missed my post of yesterday, the “objective docudrama” in question reportedly contains several key scenes that were “completely fabricated” and intend to rewrite history by suggesting that the Clinton administration had Osama bin Laden cornered in Afghanistan at one point and let him get away.
Three top Clinton administration officials have urged ABC to revise or cancel the series. Although plenty of right-wing bloggers received advance copies of the film, requests from Clinton, Albright, and Berger were denied.
Even the film's writer has admitted that portions of what should have been treated in a factual manner had it been based completely on what was in the 9/11 Commission Report, were completely made up:
“Sandy Berger did not slam down the phone,” writer Cyrus Nowrasteh told KRLA-AM in Los Angeles, “That is not in the report. That was not scripted. But you know when you're making a movie, a lot of things happen on set that are unscripted. Accidents occur, spontaneous reactions of actors performing a role take place. It's the job of the filmmaker to say, ‘You know, maybe we can use that.'”
However, facts are apparently not a part of the right-wing agenda of this film.
A former Bush counterterrorism offical, Roger Cressey, appeared on Scarborough Country Tuesday night to talk about the film: “So, if they want to critique the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, based on fact, I think that's fine. But what ABC has done here is something straight out of Disney and fantasyland. It's factually wrong. And that's shameful.”
Reps Conyers, Dingell, Harman, and Slaughter have written to ABC demanding inaccuracies be addressed.
UPDATE:
ABC issues disclaimer, which they say will run throughout the film: “The following movie is a dramatization that is drawn from a variety of sources including the 9/11 Commission Report and other published materials, and from personal interviews. The movie is not a documentary. For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression.”
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