Entire article here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2006/09/08/path_to_9_11/It would be uplifting to believe, as the producers of ABC's "The Path to 9/11" have claimed, that the network spent $40 million on its anniversary docudrama to educate the American people and improve the nation's defenses. And it would be reassuring to believe, as the producers have insisted in recent days, that "our ambitions and our goals and our standards were all about accuracy." But it is impossible to believe, after viewing their somewhat cheesy, sometimes incomprehensible and severely distorted version of the events leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that they acted in good faith on either of those motivations.
Whether "The Path to 9/11" succeeds in cinematic terms will be judged by professional critics, who may or may not find the performances convincing, the script compelling, the visuals effective and the direction competent. Certainly the movie benefits from the presence of actors such as Harvey Keitel, who plays legendary FBI agent John O'Neill, and from location shooting in Morocco, New York and Washington, but these filmmakers are not about to displace Bernardo Bertolucci, Richard Attenborough or even Oliver Stone.
Part of the problem faced by the makers of "The Path to 9/11" was the sheer scope and complexity of the story they attempt to tell, which begins with the first bombing of the World Trade Center by Islamic terrorists in February 1993 and concludes with the catastrophic second assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon. The main narrative thread traces the often frustrating campaign by O'Neill, a truly heroic cop's cop, and his ally, former White House counterterrorism director Richard Clarke, to stop al-Qaida's myriad plots against the United States.
That story deserves to be told well -- and has been recounted already with considerably more care in Clarke's own book and in "The Man Who Knew," a PBS "Frontline" documentary about O'Neill that first aired in October 2002. The ABC dramatization, of course, is intended to reach millions of viewers who don't read books, let alone government reports, and don't watch documentaries. The danger is that this false version -- which popularizes favorite right-wing myths -- will be seen by millions and accepted by them as truthful. (On Thursday, Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., called on ABC to make clear that "The Path to 9/11" is not an official account of the facts surrounding 9/11, noting, "We have yet to establish the impartiality and accuracy of the people behind this film and the claims it advances, and the American people need to know that.")
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