www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/arts/television/08path.html
Forum: Television Correction Appended THE first words spoken on The Path to 9/11 are at check-in at Logan Airport at 7:13 am OK, Mr Atta, an American Airlines agent says over the clickety-clack of computer keys. Moments before American Airlines Flight 11 hits its target, ABCs mini-series pivots back 8 years to a Ryder rental van that blew up in the parking garage of the World Trade Center on Feb. And the events leading up to disaster unfold like a spy thriller.
Osama bin Laden threat seriously and devoted their careers to battling it. Many are real, like the former FBI counterterrorism expert John P ONeill, who died at the World Trade Center on Sept.
A few are composites, like an intrepid CIA officer with the code name Kirk (Donnie Wahlberg). Some foreign informants and obscure civil servants turn out to be inspiringly tough-minded and smart: low profiles in courage. But The Path to 9/11 is an unsparing, and at times hyperbolic, portrait of bureaucratic turf wars, buck passing and complacency. Senior managers at the FBI and CIA are overwhelmed and quicker to protect their own hides than national security. ABC has been under assault by bloggers and former officials who claim the film paints an unfairly censorious portrait of the Clinton administration, with a lobbying campaign reminiscent of the one that drove CBS to cancel The Reagans biopic in 2003. The Path to 9/11 is not a documentary, or even a docu-drama; Some scenes come straight from the writers imaginations. Yet any depiction of those times would have to focus on those who were in charge, and by their own accounts mistakes were made.
In 2001 President Bush and his newly appointed aides had ample warning, including a briefing paper titled Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US, and they failed to take it seriously enough, but their missteps are not equal. Its like focusing blame for a school shooting at the beginning of the school year on the students new home room teacher; the adults who watched the boy torment classmates and poison small animals knew better. In the version sent to critics, it depicted CIA operatives and their Afghan allies armed with guns and night-vision goggles creeping in the dark to snatch Mr bin Laden from his compound in 1998.
Rather than take a firm decision, Mr Berger flips off his videophone, and Mr Tenet aborts the mission. In May 1998 Mr Tenet scrapped a heavily rehearsed raid to kidnap Mr bin Laden from his compound before it was mounted. No capture plan before 9/11 ever again attained the same level of detail and preparation, the Sept. The international manhunt for the 1993 World Trade Center bomber, Ramzi Yousef, is thrilling, but those early successes, led by local FBI agents, district attorneys and the New York Police Department, also fed public complacency. It was easy for people to dismiss the terrorist threat as real but manageable. Were not safe yet, Mr ONeill laments after he has been sidelined at the bureau by rivals. Lingering serenity collapses in the second part, which opens once again with ominous fragments of Sept. and a flight attendant on Flight 11 shakily saying over a plane phone, Were flying way too low.
But in hindsight, surely the right-wing groups who drove for impeachment must look back at their partisan obsession with shame, like widows sickened by the memory of spats about dirty dishes and gambling debts. The inserted news clips of Mr Bush are not exactly inspiring. He is shown sweaty and dismissive in jogging shorts, dodging questions about tax cuts.
Condoleezza Rice who is impersonated by Penny Johnson Jerald, who played the conniving wife of David Palmer in 24 cannot be too thrilled with her moment on screen either.
Madeleine K Albright has also objected to her portrayal, and Mr Clarke, who is the Cassandra of Al Qaeda and one of the films heroes, has complained about factual distortions. But there is no dispute that in 2000, the destroyer Cole was attacked, Washington dithered and Mr bin Ladens men kept burrowing deeper and deeper into their plot to attack America on its own soil. Dramatic license was certainly taken, but blame is spread pretty evenly across the board. Its not the inaccuracies of The Path to 9/11 that make ABCs mini-series so upsetting.
Hindsight is heartbreaking and disturbing to watch, even in a made-for-television movie. But its even harder to take when those steps continue to contaminate the present. THE PATH TO 9/11 ABC, Sunday and Monday at 8 pm, Eastern and Pacific times; Produced by UHP Productions and distributed by Touchstone Television.
Madeleine K Albright) and Nabil Elouahabi (Ramzi Yousef). The commission said the accusation that President Clinton had ordered air strikes against Osama bin Laden in August 1998 to distract attention from the Monica Lewinsky scandal was one of several factors that likely had a cumulative effect on future decisions about the use of force against Mr bin Laden. It did not conclude that the scandal distracted the Clinton administration from the terrorist threat.
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