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September 07, 2006
Richard Clarke And The Path to 9/11
Does anyone else find the current campaign to snuff the upcoming Path to 9/11 docudrama indescribably delicious? Because we do.
Frankly, this reminds us of the controversy over the cBS's Reagan miniseries, which unlike the ABC docudrama did not carry a clear label stating it is a "dramatization . . . not a documentary" and contains "fictionalized scenes" and featured several blatently made-up and defamatory quotes utterly inconsistent with the known beliefs of a man who was still alive, but sadly was unable to defend himself due to Alzheimer's disease.
Once again, the party of diversity and openness is all for freedom of expression and equal time on the airwaves... so long as all of the freedom and equal time is theirs and people are allowed to express only approved viewpoints. Let's take a trip in the old Wayback Machine:
The difference is the Republican party stepped in. Ed Gillespie of the RNC stepped in. A political party stepped in to weigh in on this. And that is when...ZOLLER: But they weigh in on things every day and so does Terri McAuliffe.
SKINNER: Teri McAuliffe does not write the executives of the network demanding that they have access to the scripts and that kind of access. It just doesn't happen in America. Why don't you just let the information flow? Democracy is so important. Let the ideas out there. Let the American public decide if they want to watch a movie about Reagan or not. We don't really need the right wing telling us what we can and cannot watch on television.
ZOLLER: Well, then you can watch it on Showtime.
Frankly we'd say there's a bit of difference in overall "scariness" between an unelected party official (who after all is not even a public servant in the pay of the federal government, but merely a private citizen) and having Democrat members of Congress lobby to change the contents of a "docudrama" with a disclaimer before it airs:
The assault on "The Path to 9/11" assumed the trappings of a campaign yesterday. Four senior House Democrats -- John Conyers Jr., Jane Harman, John D. Dingell and Louise M. Slaughter -- have written Iger to demand that the inaccuracies be corrected. Spurred by the Center for American Progress, which is headed by Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta, 25,000 people have sent letters of protest to ABC.
We are also tempted to note the words of the liberal pundit who was so outraged over "right wing interference" when it was a left wing show that was in the crosshairs. The parties have been changed for emphasis:
It just doesn't happen in America. Why don't you just let the information flow? Democracy is so important. Let the ideas out there. Let the American public decide if they want to watch a movie about 9/11 or not. We don't really need the Left wing telling us what we can and cannot watch on television.
What, really, has changed here, other than whose ox is being gored, we wonder?
And let us remind the half vast readership that the Clintonistas who are objecting so vociferously to this special have what might be termed a slight conflict of interest... not to mention more than a slight credibility problem on this particular issue.
First of all there is Sandy the PantsBurglar, convicted of knowingly removing and destroying classified documents from the National Archives:
Former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger was sentenced Thursday to community service and probation and fined $50,000 for illegally removing highly classified documents from the National Archives and intentionally destroying some of them.
If Mr. Berger had any credibility left, it would surely be impeached by his having denied that Bill Clinton refused the Sudanese offer to extradite bin Laden. There's just one problem with this. His boss has admitted it. On tape.
Then there is Richard Clarke, the comedy gift who just keeps on giving:
And Mr. Clarke, who today seems hell-bent on convincing us that the Bush administration bungled the job of national security, was singing a different tune in 2002.RICHARD CLARKE: Actually, I've got about seven points, let me just go through them quickly. Um, the first point, I think the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration.Second point is that the Clinton administration had a strategy in place, effectively dating from 1998. And there were a number of issues on the table since 1998. And they remained on the table when that administration went out of office — issues like aiding the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, changing our Pakistan policy -- uh, changing our policy toward Uzbekistan. And in January 2001, the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. They were also briefed on these series of issues that had not been decided on in a couple of years.
And the third point is the Bush administration decided then, you know, in late January, to do two things. One, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings, which we've now made public to some extent.
Make up your mind, Mr. Clarke. And you might want to get with Berger, Clinton, et al, and get the story straight.
Regarding Osama and missed opportunities, in March of 2004, Lisa Myers of NBC asked some very pointed questions on that very issue:
As the 9/11 commission investigates what Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush might have done to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, one piece of evidence the commission will examine is a videotape secretly recorded by a CIA plane high above Afghanistan. The tape shows a man believed to Osama bin Laden walking at a known al-Qaida camp.The question for the 9/11 commission: If the CIA was able to get that close to bin Laden before 9/11, why wasn’t he captured or killed? The videotape has remained secret until now.
Over the next three nights, NBC News will present this incredible spy footage and reveal some of the difficult questions it has raised for the 9/11 commission.
The answers lie buried in the 9/11 commission report:
Senior NSC staff members told us they believed the president’s intent was clear: he wanted Bin Ladin dead. On successive occasions, President Clinton issued authorities instructing the CIA to use its proxies to capture or assault Bin Ladin and his lieutenants in operations in which they might be killed. The instructions, except in one defined contingency, were to capture Bin Ladin if possible. Senior legal advisers in the Clinton administration agreed that, under the law of armed conflict, killing a person who posed an imminent threat to the United States was an act of self-defense, not an assassination. As former National Security Adviser Berger explained, if we wanted to kill Bin Ladin with cruise missiles, why would we not want to kill him with covert action? Clarke’s recollection is the same.But if the policymakers believed their intent was clear, every CIA official interviewed on this topic by the Commission, from DCI Tenet to the official who actually briefed the agents in the field, told us they heard a different message. What the United States would let the military do is quite different, Tenet said, from the rules that govern covert action by the CIA. CIA senior managers, operators, and lawyers uniformly said that they read the relevant authorities signed by President Clinton as instructing them to try to capture Bin Ladin, except in the defined contingency. They believed that the only acceptable context for killing Bin Ladin was a credible capture operation.
“We always talked about how much easier it would have been to kill him,” a former chief of the UBL Station said. Working-level CIA officers said they were frustrated by what they saw as the policy restraints of having to instruct their assets to mount a capture operation. When Northern Alliance leader Massoud was briefed on the carefully worded instructions for him, the briefer recalls that Massoud laughed and said, “You Americans are crazy. You guys never change.”
Massoud was assassinated two days before 9/11. What are the chances of that?
The Washington Post is running a series by Steve Coll on the CIA's unsuccessful efforts, prior to Sept. 11, 2001, to capture or kill bin Laden. This piece ran yesterday, along with this shorter one that focuses on the actions (or inaction) of Clinton's White House security team. Taken together, these two pieces argue that "legal disputes over the hunt [for bin Laden] paralyzed Clinton's aides." Specifically, the Clintonistas, while willing to approve the capture or killing of bin Laden in principle, always used "compromise wording" with so much "ambiguity about how and when deadly force could be used" that the CIA became "paralyzed by fears of legal and political risks." When the CIA did develop a plan to attack bin Laden, "members of the White House counterterrorism team reacted skeptically" because they feared that women and children would die, thus undermining U.S. interests in the Muslim world, while bin Laden might escape. In this environment, the CIA's top leaders recommended against going forward. Two months later, two al Qaeda suicide teams attacked U.S. embassies in Africa, killing more than 200 people and wounding more than 4,000.Today's piece focuses on the CIA's relationship with Afghan freedom fighter Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated two days before 9/11. The CIA viewed Massoud as a flawed ally but also its best hope of capturing or killing bin Laden. In October 2000, after the deadly bombing of the USS Cole, the CIA revived plans to supply Massoud with "extensive and lethal aid." The Clinton White House nixed these plans. They were again revived following the election of President Bush, but the bureaucratic process moved so slowly that the plans were not approved until Sept. 4, five days before Massoud's assassination, and a week before 9/11.
In less than a week it will be the 5th anniversary of 9/11.
My husband was inside the Pentagon on that too-bright September morning, and on the anniversary I will remember Lydia Estelle Bravo.
I could be remembering my husband. The love of my life. I could go on without him, but somehow I do not think I would want to.
Someone could not afford to lose Lydia. I see her face too often, these days. I am angry that her fiancee must live with that pain.
Let the nation talk. Let us remember. Let us debate. It is time.
We can stand a little dissention, a little inaccuracy, a little clash of ideas, especially in a "docudrama" with a visible disclaimer. We can stand a different view, for once. We can stand up to the received view of things, and we can stand for the inevitable attention, discussion, and corrections that will come from this debate. It is all good. It is democracy.
It is America.
Update: The DNC has threatened to pull ABC's broadcasting license. But they have a documented history of attempting actual government censorship of conservative ideas. Why does the DNC fear free speech?
Posted by Cassandra at September 7, 2006 08:12 AM
Comments
Wouldn't it be great if this TV special caused [S]Hillary to lose her bid for re-election?
A fella can dream, right?
Posted by: camojack at September 7, 2006 09:38 AM
I don't know whether I will be able to survive this week if, even once, I turn on the TV.
Posted by: spd rdr at September 7, 2006 10:01 AM
I think they should have been accurate when they knew the truth (e.g., I excerted this from an article linked by Drudge: "The third contested scene focuses on Albright, who is depicted alerting Pakistani officials in advance of a 1998 U.S. missile strike against bin Laden in Afghanistan - over the objections of the Pentagon. The movie claims the tip-off allowed bin Laden to escape.
But the 9/11 commission reported that it was a member of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff - not Albright - who met with a senior Pakistani Army official prior to the strike to "assure him the missiles were not coming from India.")
Assuming that is true, I don't see why you make Albright the bad gal when we think we know "who," if not an individual at least the department, did it.
But total accuracy wouldn't matter. It is nice to see a little more evenhandedness though.
If they air it.
Posted by: KJ at September 7, 2006 11:18 AM
I agree.
But this is par for the course in screenplays. Often you have a fairly limited cast of characters and one who has been a major "player" is substituted for another instead of having to complicate things by introducing someone new.
Inaccurate. Not unprecedented.
On the whole I'd prefer the unvarnished truth.
I also think it's good to have this all come out, and the inaccuracies are causing people to discuss, to write about, and to rehash the events leading up to 9/11: to challenge the received wisdom.
Not altogether a bad thing, n'est pas?
Posted by: Cassandra at September 7, 2006 12:36 PM
Remember, Party-approved Truth can change from day to day depending upon the needs of the Revolution. Your thread is filled with counterrevolutionary ideas, and is certainly not in accordance with Dimocratic Party-approved Truth on these issues.
Are you trying to be denounced as a Class Enemy? Don't think for a moment that Schumer, Pelosi, Olberman, Rather, etc., i.e. the "People's Kommissars", will hesitate to do so.
Posted by: a former european at September 7, 2006 01:22 PM
I don't have time today to check all dates relating to the story about having Osama in their sights waiting for the approval to attack. But I recalled Buzz Patterson's book Dereliction of Duty had a discussion of two times Clinton fiddled and hem-hawed to keep from making a decision on an attack. The first one in the book, starting about page 25, through page 30, explain how he played golf and refused to talk to Sandy Berger about a strike that was to take place in Iraq under cover of darkness. Clinton delayed until it was past daylight, preferring to watch a golf tournament.
But one in Chapter 7, The War on Terrorism, recounts another time Berger was in the Sit Room, trying to get a go-ahead on a hit on Bin Laden. This sounds like the situation being discussed, about who hung up or didn't hang up on the people trying to get approval for the hit. There is no date associated with this failed plan, but the details are on page 129-131. I wonder if this is the same situation Berger is upset about. The story by Patterson is pretty damning - Berger trying to get a decision out of Clinton, Clinton wanting more and more discussion on it, finally losing by default, studying the issue until it was too late.
If Patterson was an observer in this situation, I think it would help for him to weigh in on that fact. If he has knowledge of who was an observer, that would help, too.
Posted by: MathMom at September 7, 2006 01:25 PM
I thought of Buzz right away, MathMom. Click my name for more:
On Feb. 8, 1999, the Pentagon and the CIA were preparing a military strike on a luxury hunting camp in the desert south of Kandahar, Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden had been sighted.
There were problems, however.
Satellite imagery revealed the presence of a military aircraft belonging to the U.A.E., and "policymakers were concerned about the danger that a strike would kill an Emirati prince or other senior officials who might be with bin Laden or close by," according to the 9/11 Commission report.
Who were these U.S. "policymakers" mentioned in the 9/11 report who thwarted the opportunity to kill one of the world's most wanted men?
The report does not say.
Coincidentally, the Clinton administration National Security Council advisor, Richard Clarke, had just returned to the United States from consultations with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, chief of staff of the U.A.E. armed forces, regarding a proposed sale of F-16s to the Gulf state as well as counter-terrorism issues, according to the report.
Clarke revealed to the 9/11 Commission that during a one-on-one meeting with Sheikh Mohammad, the sheikh had "vehemently denied rumors that high-level U.A.E. officials were in Afghanistan" hunting with bin Laden.
Clarke said the failure to strike bin Laden was a CIA decision.
The proposed air strike was called off four days later "after consultations with [CIA] Director [George] Tenet because the intelligence was dubious," Clarke told the Commission. But the CIA contested Clarke's assertions, as did former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh Shelton.
And according to Alan Parrot, an Arabist and falconry expert who became close to Sheikh Mohammad's father, U.A.E. leader Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan, there was never any question that bin Laden was present at the luxury hunting camp in southern Afghanistan along with top U.A.E. officials.
"Osama bin Laden's hunting partner was none other than Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed, the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, and a full brother of the sheikh who signed the F-16 deal," Parrot told NewsMax.
Sheikh Hamdan stayed in Afghanistan for three full weeks during the 1999 hunt, Parrot said, while supplies were ferried back and forth to the luxury camp by a U.A.E. Ministry of Defense C-130 cargo aircraft.
Falconry camps are a favorite pastime of the Arab world's elites – a place where leaders meet, and business deals are conducted. For bin Laden and his al-Qaida, falconry provided a similar networking opportunity.
"The falcon camps were al-Qaida's board room," Parrot said. "This is where bin Laden went to meet with political leaders and money men" from Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.
Posted by: Cassandra at September 7, 2006 01:31 PM
In the words of the late unlamented Gunga Dan,
"Air the documentary and be damned." Heh.
I have a feeling ABC will be forced to put up a disclaimer.
Time to get my satellite back. Dang that Bush!
Posted by: Cricket at September 7, 2006 01:41 PM
Awesome post, excellent. Thank you so much. I tried to trackback to it, but that is ok. I jsut wanted to thank you for such great writing.
Posted by: Wild Thing at September 8, 2006 03:42 AM
Well, thank you. I know trackbacks are convenient for readers and other bloggers, but I turned them off a long time ago. It is a selfish decision and I am sorry about that, but after careful consideration, I have decided they are the works of Satan and his minions - it is just too much trouble keeping spammers away and the traffic/visibility isn't worth it.
Posted by: Cassandra at September 8, 2006 05:00 AM
But the 9/11 commission reported that it was a member of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff - not Albright - who met with a senior Pakistani Army official prior to the strike to "assure him the missiles were not coming from India.")
The SoS in any administration does not personally handle everything. They tell other people to handle it. Is it possible that the State Dept told the DoD that the Pakistan military needed to be warned to prevent a war between Pakistan and India breaking out over a misunderstanding?
Who would be better positioned to warn the Paki military, State or Defense?
Just because I buy a box of Tampax doesn't mean that my wife didn't ask me to do it.
Posted by: Poor Schmuck at September 8, 2006 11:59 PM
Bullshit. Pull the fuckin' show.
Posted by: Jason-M at September 9, 2006 07:11 PM
Ah.
So your standard is that anytime Hollywood makes a movie or a docudrama, the government has final approval rights, and the standard to be applied is the official "government-approved" version of historical events, as demanded by the officials in office at the time. And nothing contrary to that version should ever be allowed to hit the airwaves.
Interesting.
It worked for Soviet Russia.
Of course you realize this means we'll need to pull Fahrenheit 911 from the shelves. There are several scenes in that movie that "never happened". And it certainly doesn't fit the official government version of events. In fact, it conflicts sharply with both the historical record and the government's version of what happened on 9/11. So clearly, Americans should not be allowed to view it.
Posted by: Cassandra at September 9, 2006 07:19 PM
"Well, of course, everything in it is true (Fahrenheit 9/11)"
So I was told with an absolutely straight face by a relative.
So, there you go. Fahrenheit 9/11 was/is absolutely true, and "The Path to 9/11" is a pack of lies.
And pigs fly, too. Just in case you had any doubt.
And censor all the right wing blogs, get that Limbaugh guy off the air, run Fox News out of buisness, and cancel Christmas.
Posted by: Don Brouhaha at September 9, 2006 10:08 PM
funny when it's liberal bias, everyone should see it, but when it's conservative bias, it must be pulled from the shelves. interesting political policies.
Posted by: peter at September 12, 2006 04:23 AM