The Sept. 11 that never was

ABC's docudrama "The Path to 9/11" is a false version of history. It popularizes right-wing myths by exaggerating Clinton's failures and Bush's successes, depicting events that never happened.

By Joe Conason

Read more: Bill Clinton, Joe Conason, ABC, Osama Bin Laden, Opinion, Condoleezza Rice, September 11th

Sept. 8, 2006 | 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.")

Suspicions of bad faith about the production of "The Path to 9/11" have less to do with the alleged personal bias of Cyrus Nowrasteh, the conservative writer responsible for the script, and more to do with what he chose to invent on-screen -- and what he and the producers chose to omit. In essence, Nowrasteh created scenes that never happened, which depict Clinton administration officials allowing Osama bin Laden to escape capture or death for diplomatic, political and legal reasons. And he left out important material about how Bill Clinton and George W. Bush confronted the terrorist challenge.

Nowrasteh's most egregious fictionalizing occurs in Act 4, which depicts a supposed strike on bin Laden's Afghan redoubt that is called off at the last second by Sandy Berger, Clinton's national security advisor, who says, "I don't have that authority." Under cover of night, a CIA agent known only as "Kirk" leads a Special Forces team into the remote mountain compound where the al-Qaida chief is hiding. "The package is ready!" cries Kirk over the satellite phone, but Berger aborts the operation because he doesn't want to take responsibility.

That incident simply never occurred. As Clarke himself would have told Nowrasteh, no CIA officer ever tracked bin Laden to his hideout. Neither did Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance leader who is shown guiding the aborted operation. The handsome, charismatic Massoud, later assassinated by al-Qaida agents, asks Kirk angrily, "Are there any men left in Washington, or are they all cowards?" That sort of rhetoric is frequently uttered by actors portraying characters such as Massoud and O'Neill, who are no longer around to dispute the script.

Had Nowrasteh consulted the 9/11 Commission report, not only would he have found no evidence to support his exciting imaginary assault on the bin Laden compound, but he would also have learned that the underlying assumptions were completely wrong. The report states explicitly, as Clarke and other senior officials have affirmed, that Clinton and Berger ordered the CIA and the military to use any force necessary to get bin Laden.

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