Talk:"The Path to 9/11" (2006 Docudrama)
Explanation on Revert & Change
The changes made by User:Matt Stoller were reverted for the following reasons:
- The source for the opening info, which was a FrontPageMag.com article, has been added.
- The comment "In fact, the film shows outright fabrications, and is the subject of controversy for its right-wing slant." has been deleted and should be appropriately addressed in a discussion section within the article. As it stands, it is an opinion and not a referenced comment. As a referenced comment, it should be backed with appropriate sources.
Artificial Intelligence 13:44, 5 Sep 2006 (EDT)
Interesting: Even the actors bought into the script
October 27, 2005, posting from Google Groups: L.A. DAILY NEWS/ Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith [1] --Producer Marc Platt's upcoming "Untitled History Project" about the World Trade Center attacks "is not going to bode well for a few people," reports Donnie Wahlberg who plays a CIA operative in the miniseries. Wahlberg says the "Project" is "really heavy-duty stuff that all comes right out of the 9-11 Commission Report." He's been shooting the mini in Toronto with Harvey Keitel, Patricia Heaton and Amy Madigan, and is scheduled to head to Morocco next month. "We're shooting there to double as Afghanistan, and that's going to be pretty heavy. I'm playing a CIA operative, one of the fictional characters in the show. He's actually a combination of three real people I can't name because they're still operatives, but they worked very closely with the head of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Massoud," he says, referring to the controversial leader who was killed by assassins posing as reporters with a bomb hidden in a television camera. "He was at war with (Osama) bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan and had been warning my character that something big was coming - and if we could just help him, he could help us to prevent it. But the government wouldn't listen, and he ended up getting assassinated two days before 9-11." He adds, however, that, "The good part is, it shows people who are just names to most Americans in a little bit more of a human way. You see that they're actually people who did want to do their jobs."
Why to See Path to 9/11
"Yes, the sections that portray the Clinton Administration bungling the capture and/or murder of Osama bin Laden are unconscionably irresponsible and historically inaccurate (just ask Madeleine Albright, or Sandy Berger, or President Clinton himself -- they were there); and certainly ABC should excise these egregiously reckless portions of the movie before it airs -- which I presume they are doing, even as I write this post," Bruce Kluger wrote September 9, 2006, in The Huffington Post.
"But the reason the film itself should not be cancelled is because it includes scene after scene that those of us who deplore this Administration will want the rest of America to see," said.
"It shows how former White House anti-terror adviser Richard Clarke's complex strategy for dealing with Al Qaeda was arrogantly spiked as the Clinton Administration moved out of the White House, and the Bush posse moved in.
"It shows how Condoleezza Rice patronizingly blew off those who'd work tirelessly for years on end dealing with the terrorist threat, and how the narrow-minded and insular officiousness of the incoming Administration helped lead us down the road to that awful day in September 2001.
"It shows how middle management muddle at the FBI and CIA (all paid for with our tax dollars, thank you very much) effectively buried a memo from an FBI field officer in Phoenix, warning that Arabs who were under watch were suspiciously enrolled in flight training schools.
"And it shows how FBI Agent John O'Neill -- arguably the man front and center in the fight against terrorism -- was so consistently hobbled by political infighting within the agency and the government, that with the arrival of the Bush presidency, he left his job (or was squeezed out of it) and took a new assignment as chief of security at New York's World Trade Center -- where he died on September 11, 2001.
"These and many other scenes in Path to 9/11 are the reason it's important for America to see this movie. As long as ABC deletes the controversial passages -- which it would be wise to do -- the rest of the film makes a convincing case why the Bush regime should be sent packing, beginning this November."
