Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] last days

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Wed, 6 Sep 2006, Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:

> > No.  I was asking -- I forgot to put a question mark after "concerns 
> > you." My guess is that you think ABC can get scientist who will say 
> > whatever they want to hear, but I think they are more honest than that.
>
> Yes, but later in your post you said I was predictable.  I was wondering 
> why, since I was so predictable, why you couldn't predict this one.

Apparently I could predict correctly but I just hadn't bothered to do it.


> I don't know why ABC would bias their report, as I cannot read their 
> mind. But I have seen them bias reports, and so my presumption is that 
> when I hear an ABC report that I assume that it has some strong bias, 
> unless there is strong alternative evidence to support that particular 
> report.  (Because the argument "ABC says so" cannot be used as an 
> argument against a particular point of view, either.)

Interesting.  Maybe we can agree.  Check this out:

http://abc.go.com/movies/thepathto911/index.html

It was made by a friend of Rush Limbaugh, which makes me doubt its 
credibility from the start.  Here's a news story with much more detailed 
information:


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/us/06path.html

N.Y. Times
September 6, 2006

9/11 Miniseries Is Criticized as Inaccurate and Biased

By JESSE McKINLEY

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 5 -- Days before its scheduled debut, the first major 
television miniseries about the Sept. 11 attacks was being criticized on 
Tuesday as biased and inaccurate by bloggers, terrorism experts and a 
member of the Sept. 11 commission, whose report makes up much of the 
film's source material.

The six-hour miniseries, "The Path to 9/11," is to be shown on ABC on 
Sunday and Monday. The network has been advertising the program as a 
"historic broadcast" that uses the commission's report on the 2001 attacks 
as its "primary foundation."

On Tuesday, several liberal blogs were questioning whether ABC's version 
was overly critical of the Clinton administration while letting the Bush 
administration off easy.

In particular, some critics -- including Richard A. Clarke, the former 
counterterrorism czar -- questioned a scene that depicts several American 
military officers on the ground in Afghanistan. In it, the officers, 
working with leaders of the Northern Alliance, the Afghan rebel group, 
move in to capture Osama bin Laden, only to allow him to escape after the 
mission is canceled by Clinton officials in Washington.

In a posting on ThinkProgress.org, and in a phone interview, Mr.  Clarke 
said no military personnel or C.I.A. agents were ever in position to 
capture Mr. bin Laden in Afghanistan, nor did the leader of the Northern 
Alliance get that near to his camp.

"It didn't happen," Mr. Clarke said. "There were no troops in Afghanistan 
about to snatch bin Laden. There were no C.I.A. personnel about to snatch 
bin Laden. It's utterly invented."

Mr. Clarke, an on-air consultant to ABC News, said he was particularly 
shocked by a scene in which it seemed Clinton officials simply hung up the 
phone on an agent awaiting orders in the field. "It's 180 degrees from 
what happened," he said. "So, yeah, I think you would have to describe 
that as deeply flawed."

ABC responded Tuesday with a statement saying that the miniseries was "a 
dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, 
including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and from 
personal interviews."

"The events that lead to 9/11 originally sparked great debate," the 
statement continued, "so it's not surprising that a movie surrounding 
those events has revived the debate."

Former Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey, the chairman of the Sept. 11 
commission and a consultant on the miniseries, defended the program, 
saying he thought the disputed scene was an honest representation of a 
number of failed efforts to capture Mr. bin Laden.

"I pointed out the fact that the scene involving Afghanistan and the 
attempt to get bin Laden is a composite," Mr. Kean said, adding that the 
miniseries format required some conflation of events. But, he said, "The 
basic fact is that on a number of occasions, they thought they might have 
been able to get bin Laden, and on those occasions, the plug was pulled 
for various reasons."

Mr. Kean conceded that some points might have been more drama than 
documentary. "Some of the people shown there probably weren't there," he 
said.

Online commentators seized on remarks made last week by Rush Limbaugh, the 
conservative radio host, who said "The Path to 9/11" had been written and 
produced by a "friend of mine out in California" named Cyrus. "From what 
I've been told," Mr. Limbaugh said, according to a transcript on 
rushlimbaugh.com, "the film really zeros in on the shortcomings of the 
Clinton administration."

Reached Tuesday, Cyrus Nowrasteh, the film's screenwriter and one of its 
producers, said he had met Mr. Limbaugh on the set of "24," the serialized 
thriller on Fox.

"I met him briefly," Mr. Nowrasteh said, declining to say if the two men 
were close. "And that's it."

As for criticism that his movie was soft on the Bush administration, Mr. 
Nowrasteh said, "Let the movie speak for itself."

ABC said it planned to run a disclaimer with the broadcast, reminding 
viewers that the movie was not a documentary.

But Richard Ben-Veniste, a member of the Sept. 11 commission, said genre 
confusion would not be a problem for commission members, several of whom 
saw part of the miniseries last week.

"As we were watching, we were trying to think how they could have 
misinterpreted the 9/11 commission's finding the way that they had," Mr. 
Ben-Veniste said. "They gave the impression that Clinton had not given the 
green light to an operation that had been cleared by the C.I.A. to kill 
bin Laden," when, in fact, the Sept. 11 commission concluded that Mr. 
Clinton had.

Mr. Ben-Veniste said he did, however, approve of the casting. "I like 
Harvey Keitel," he said of the actor who plays John O'Neil, the onetime 
F.B.I. counterterrorism expert who died in the attacks. "I liked him in 
'Mean Streets.' I'm a fan."


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

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