Okay, Now I’m REALLY Going To Watch That Miniseries
The upcoming ABC dramatization of the road to 9/11 has been drawing all kinds of fire from lefties and former Clinton officials for making the drop-dead obvious point that the man in office for eight months can’t be blamed for the failures of the prior decade. Think Progress has an indignant Richard Clarke:
On September 10 and 11, ABC is planning to air a “docudrama” called Path to 9/11, billed by writer Cyrus Nowrasteh as “an objective telling of the events of 9/11.”
The first night of Path to 9/11 has a dramatic scene where former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger refuses to give the order to the CIA to take out bin Laden — even though CIA agents, along with the Northern Alliance, have his house surrounded. Rush Limbaugh, who refers to Nowrasteh as “a friend of mine,” reviews the action:
So the CIA, the Northern Alliance, surrounding a house where bin Laden is in Afghanistan, they’re on the verge of capturing, but they need final approval from the Clinton administration in order to proceed.
So they phoned Washington. They phoned the White House. Clinton and his senior staff refused to give authorization for the capture of bin Laden because they’re afraid of political fallout if the mission should go wrong, and if civilians were harmed…Now, the CIA agent in this is portrayed as being astonished. “Are you kidding?” He asked Berger over and over, “Is this really what you guys want?”
Berger then doesn’t answer after giving his first admonition, “You guys go in on your own. If you go in we’re not sanctioning this, we’re not approving this,” and Berger just hangs up on the agent after not answering any of his questions.
ThinkProgress has obtained a response to this scene from Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar for Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and now counterterrorism adviser to ABC:
1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.
2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Laden camp and did not see UBL.
3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.
In short, this scene — which makes the incendiary claim that the Clinton administration passed on a surefire chance to kill or catch bin Laden — never happened. It was completely made up by Nowrasteh.
Well, I happen to know a thing or two about Richard Clarke; here’s Representative Christopher Shays, Chairman of the National Security Subcommittee, on Mr. Clarke:
At a June 2000 briefing, the subcommittee heard from Richard Clarke, the Clinton administration’s antiterror czar, whose 2004 book, “Against All Enemies,” made him a hero of the Bush-hating left. The czar made a poor impression on the chairman. “[He] was the most arrogant man who’s ever come before my committee. It was a closed-door hearing. We said, ‘What’s our strategy?’ We were so excited. . . . He said, ‘We don’t have a strategy. . . . We don’t need a strategy. We know who the bad guys are, we just hunt ‘em down.’ . . . We were so shocked by it, we wrote him a letter . . . and we asked him to give us a strategy. He never got back to us.”
In March 2004, after Mr. Clark published his book, Mr. Shays released that letter to the press, along with a letter he had sent then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice two days after Mr. Bush’s inauguration. The letter to Ms. Rice faulted Mr. Clarke’s “lack of leadership” and urged the new administration to develop a comprehensive antiterror strategy.
One can see why a man with a record of failure like that might want to avoid having his flaws exposed on national television.
The real point, however, is that the ‘reality-based community’ is once again deep in the sand of denial. Sandy Berger did, in fact, place obstacles in the path of efforts to kill bin Laden, repeatedly. The 9/11 Commission was unambigious on the point:
…[L]ook now to what the 9/11 report has to say about the man to whom President Clinton, under attack by an independent counsel,delegated so much in respect of national security, Samuel “Sandy” Berger. The report cites a 1998 meeting between Mr. Berger and the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, at which Mr. Tenet presented a plan to capture Osama bin Laden.
“In his meeting with Tenet, Berger focused most, however, on the question of what was to be done with Bin Ladin if he were actually captured. He worried that the hard evidence against Bin Ladin was still skimpy and that there was a danger of snatching him and bringing him to the United States only to see him acquitted,” the report says, citing a May 1, 1998, Central Intelligence Agency memo summarizing the weekly meeting between Messrs. Berger and Tenet.
In June of 1999, another plan for action against Mr. bin Laden was on the table. The potential target was a Qaeda terrorist camp in Afghanistan known as Tarnak Farms. The commission report released yesterday cites Mr. Berger’s “handwritten notes on the meeting paper” referring to “the presence of 7 to 11 families in the Tarnak Farms facility, which could mean 60-65 casualties.”According to the Berger notes, “if he responds, we’re blamed.”
On December 4, 1999, the National Security Council’s counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, sent Mr. Berger a memo suggesting a strike in the last week of 1999 against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Reports the commission: “In the margin next to Clarke’s suggestion to attack Al Qaeda facilities in the week before January 1, 2000, Berger wrote, ‘no.’ ”
In August of 2000, Mr. Berger was presented with another possible plan for attacking Mr. bin Laden.This time, the plan would be based on aerial surveillance from a “Predator” drone. Reports the commission: “In the memo’s margin,Berger wrote that before considering action, ‘I will want more than verified location: we will need, at least, data on pattern of movements to provide some assurance he will remain in place.’ ”
In other words, according to the commission report, Mr. Berger was presented with plans to take action against the threat of Al Qaeda four separate times — Spring 1998, June 1999, December 1999, and August 2000. Each time, Mr. Berger was an obstacle to action. Had he been a little less reluctant to act, a little more open to taking pre-emptive action, maybe the 2,973 killed in the September 11, 2001, attacks would be alive today.
That’s a harsh bottom line, but it’s solidly anchored in reality…
The more the Left squawks over this the higher the ratings are going to be to see what the big deal is.
And the more people will be reminded why Democrats can’t be trusted with national security.
[...] UPDATE: Decision08 with a smackdown of Clarke. [...]
Mark, I’m sure there are plenty of good reasons to be critical of Sandy Berger (or Richard Clarke for that matter), but you kind of ignored the point of the Think Progress post, i.e., that the event depicted in the film didn’t happen. There were no CIA agents on the ground, and the intelligence wasn’t nearly as solid as is depicted in the film.
Plus, I think you’re kind of missing the broader point. Imagine there was a t.v. movie about 9/11 that had been written by someone with well-documented left-wing leanings that was set to air just before a crucial election. And suppose that the producers of the movie had only allowed left-wing bloggers and pundits to screen the movie. And suppose further that those left-wing bloggers and commentators were absolutely raving about the moving and saying how much it really sticks it to the Bush administration. Can you even imagine the sh**storm that would ensue? Right wing bloggers and commentators would be apoplectic with rage and would exert all kinds of pressure to get ABC to cancel it. You know that’s true. Remember when that t.v. movie about the Reagans was set to air and the right wing bloggers threw such a fit that CBS eventually cancelled it and moved it to Showtime? And that was a movie about a dead president that was set to air in a non-election year. Moreover, every contested scene in that movie was backed up by at least one source. That’s more than this 9/11 “docu-drama” can claim. Some of its scenes, such as the one described above, are just demonstrably inaccurate.
Well, this is not some made-up movie, it comes from the 9/11 Commission Report. I haven’t seen the film. If I take the Think Progress report at its word, I am taking Rush Limbaugh at his word (and I don’t want to do either). I will watch the movie and judge for myself.
Nevertheless, I think it’s amazing how concerted the effort from certain quarters is to discredit this documentary sight unseen. Let’s see the finished product before we go too far in our criticisms one way or another.
However, I feel confident that most of the screaming from the left is because the film depicts the intelligence failures leading up to 9/11 as largely occurring prior to the Bush Administration’s watch, and I feel equally confident in saying that this is completely true, and completely obvious to anyone beyond the age of 6…
When a central scene is totally fabricated, the category of the film becomes Fiction, not Documentary.
I should be labeled as such.
I couldn’t agree more. Fiction is the classification into which ‘Bowling for Columbine’, ‘Fahrenheit 911′, and the Bush National Guard memos are properly placed. The story is what it is and should be told factually with honesty and integrity. If it is not, then it has no credibility.
I’ll watch and see. The blog-O-sphere, I’m sure, will provide the fact checking.
Well, not the senator has a point. This is not a documentary; my mistake in labelling it as such…however, my sincere hope is that it will be, like United 93, a good faith effort to describe the events without a partisan spin.
Believe me, if it has such a spin, even if it is a pro-Republican spin, I’ll be the first to say so. As I said, I reserve judgement until I’ve seen the finished product…
Mark, the same exact thing happened with the Reagan movie. No one had seen it, yet it was cancelled under pressure from right-wing bloggers and commentators. And that was a far less inflammatory subject at a far less crucial moment. Plus, doesn’t it raise any red flags with you that seemingly everyone on the right-wing side has been given a free screening copy of this film and no one on the left has, despite repeated requests? Wouldn’t you be a little troubled by that if the situation was reversed?
The movie is “based on the 9/11 report”, whatever that means. But it was written by someone with well-documented right-wing leanings, and is being actively pitched to the right-leaning side of the blogosphere and pundit world. Again, wouldn’t that raise some red flags for you if the situation was reversed? Especially just months away from an important election which is likely to hinge on these very issues? I am confident that if the shoe was on the other foot, the right-leaning side of the blogosphere would be up in arms.
I’m all for withholding judgment until I’ve seen something, but by then the damage might already be done. It’s just totally irresponsible to air something like this, without bipartisan vetting, so close to a pivotal election. ABC should, at the very least, postpone the airing of this “docu-drama” until after the November elections.
I do think you doth protest too much, with all due respect (and for the record, so did the people who got the Reagan docu-drama moved to Showtime, I’ll grant you). The vast, vast majority of the population is going to completely ignore this movie, I suspect. The audience for 9/11 material is, as Hollywood has shown, pretty limited.
Even those who do watch will likely miss most of the nuances, unlike us political junkies…then again, maybe it will only be us political junkies watching.
anonymous liberal, the scene may have changed but not the senario. It is well documented in Buzz Patterson’s book how there were planes sitting on the tarmac, engines running and a less than hour window to get Bin Laden. Clinton was at a golf tournament and refused to talk Sandy Berger and give the “go” word.
The left has made it their main goal in life to make us forget 9-11. Doubt that? Remember how the left screamed about Bush using references to 9-11 during the campaign? Why? Because the left is soft on terror and they know it.
Bill Clinton has gotten a pass on the terrorism that happened on his watch. Kobar Towers, the Cole, etc. If we remember 9-11, not matter how truthfully or how falsely it is presented in a fim, the left loses and that is the crux of their complaints. Any film, documentary or book is a reminder of just what it is we are up against.
As to the Reagan film, just how loud do you think the howling left would be if a movie was made about Clinton’s little tryst with Monica?
I think we all underestimated terrorism’s reach into the US before 9/11. Blaming Clinton for it in hindsight isn’t fair to Clinton or his administration. Good Lord, George Bush has certainly been ravaged in the polls by armchair quarterbacks.
Hopefully, this movie won’t focus on the blame game as much as it focuses on the heroic efforts of those who tried to help the victims and how the country united to come to the aid of New York and the families affected.
Or maybe the movie will make the point “Clinton: Soft on terror, hard on interns.” (Can’t resist a one-liner…)
muckdog, as much as I appreciate your sentiments, I think the movie you want to see (as great as it would be) is not the movie this is purporting to be. By ‘dramatizing’ the events that lead to 9/11, I think, as distasteful as it may be, mistakes will have to be shown.
To be sure, Bush made some, Clinton others, but if the movie is to add anything to the understanding of 9/11, its subject matter requires some degree of blame-placing, as its source is purportedly the 9/11 Commission Report…
AIR BRUSHING HISTORY
Desperate to see that the upcoming ABC mini-series Path to 9/11 places all the blame for 9/11 in the lap of President Bush and holds harmless the Clinton Administration for their massive failures in the 1990’s to kill Bin Laden, the left is in f…
When Michael Moore made a movie accusing Dubya of mishandling national security, a movie full of outright lies and camera tricks, a movie that was strategically timed to effect the 2004 election, the Dems rewarded him with a seat of honor at their convention. Anonymous Lib should quit crying.
[...] Okay, fair is fair (are you listening, Anonymous?). Think Progress and Richard Clarke apparently had a good point with their objection to the scene where Sandy Berger is shown dithering while the CIA has bin Laden in its sights. Earlier, I took them to task for what I saw as an unwillingness to face the failures of Clarke and Berger, and I stand by that part of my judgment, but to my dismay, this report in CQ confirms to my satisfaction that the scene is in the movie, and it’s as described, and it is in fact fictional: Richard Ben-Veniste — one of the 10 members of the independent Sept. 11 commission, whose final report producer Marc Platt credits with supplying much of the mini-series’ detail and narrative structure — rose to denounce the veracity of a key scene involving Clinton national security adviser Samuel R. Berger. [...]
Hold that thought Mark. In spite of Clarke’s denials, there WERE unit ops on the ground in Afghanistan, I know, I’m related to one of them.