The Path To 9/11: Night One
Well, I have to hand it to ABC; they didn’t cave much. And it’s clear from the previews that just aired for night two that the Bush Administration is going to take their lumps in the second part. I expect the howling from the lefty blogs is off the charts about now: Sandy Berger and Madaleine Albright (and Clinton) came off looking very bad indeed.Â
The first part of the film was excellent, perhaps because it was pretty straightforward from a narrative standpoint: the bad guys bombed the WTC (this is 1993 we’re talking about, not 2001), and the good guys got ‘em. It was well-told, and despite some early reviews, not at all boring.
The second part, beginning in 1998 and covering the embassy bombings, ABC’s interview with bin Laden, and the CIA/Northern Alliance attempts to kidnap or kill Osama, was more problematic. We all know the controversy over the scene where the Northern Alliance and CIA operatives are on the ground, outside the camp where bin Laden is located (and despite one character’s disclaimer that no intelligence is 100%, the film portrays this intelligence as 100%). Sandy Berger is instructed by a weaselly Bill Clinton (believe me, this is a fair interpratation, even though Clinton isn’t shown actually doing the instructing) to avoid responsiblity, he passes the buck to Tenet with the implication that Tenet will be hung out to dry if the operation fails, and Tenet passes, as does the chance to kill Public Enemy #1.
Later, after the bombings, and in the full bore of MonicaGate, Clinton jumps at the chance to act on far iffier data (and, as our liberal friends point out, to a chorus of accusations of wagging the dog from the right), and bombs a medicine factory and totally flubs a lame attempt to get bin Laden, to boot.
So yeah, I can completely see why the Clinton Administration is a bit peeved, because they do come off as a bunch of knuckledragging pencil pushers. The problem, as we all know by now, is that much of what I just described is, to use a phrase from the thrice-repeated disclaimer, a ‘compression’ of events that serves the narrative flow with ‘fictionalized composite characters’, such as Donnie Wahlberg’s omnipresent CIA operative who is, literally, on the scene at every major happening in the early, undeclared War on Terror.
Harvey Keitel’s John O’Neill is the hero of the flick, and he benefits from being played by such an accomplished actor. Keitel is, of course, one of the big screen’s legendary tough guys, and he has no problem convincing you that he is totally commited, totally in charge, and totally on top of everything. I seriously doubt that the real man (may he rest in peace) could measure up to his on-screen counterpart, though (for the simple reason that he’s too good to be true); this feels like a fictionalized composite of a real person.Â
Nevertheless, it was, if not gripping, pretty darn good for a TV docudrama, and I was interested enough to stick around for part two tomorrow. With the prominence of the disclaimers, I seriously doubt that anyone is going to mistake this for the gospel truth, though I don’t doubt those disclaimers were added after all the shreiking and wringing of hands. I say kudos to ABC for not withdrawing the film, despite my initial misgivings. I still would have much preferred a straightforward telling of the middle section without the compression and composite characters – it might have presented some difficulties, but it could have been done.Â
That, however, is a criticism of the filmmakers and not the network. Keep that in mind as the howls of protest no doubt continue…
no hd though…
How did they get Mario Cuomo to go on the air and dismiss wtc93 with the phrase “it was just five people…”?
Wonder why he isn’t complaining. and when he said ‘five’ is he using democratic math, where the pregnant girl in the garaghe only counts as one person? wonder if her family counts her as one person.
Seeing Mario and his Larry Johnson-esque dismissal I had a small epiphany. Clinton never had his bullhorn on the rubble moment because the NY dems told him to stay away. He was grateful for their pivotal role in his nomination(2nd, I think) and they might have told him to stay away at the least, and possibly ‘don’t rock the boat’, ignore the Kahane assassins’ involvement-this is a local matter.
Telling sign of the WJC’s deference to the NY State party? No death penalty. In ceding the matter to the State, he avoided the nationalization of our effort to fight terrorism.
Kinda bizarre, becuase the dems wanted Bush in New Orleans…but their hero never even made it to the sight of the WTC.
To add to the conspiracy of keeping the national heat off the matter:
Ramzi Yousef is captured in 95. By this time HRC is looking at a run in NY senate. If Clinton had sought the death penalty, it would jeopardize hillary’s run.
This wasn’t just a matter left to law enforcement-it was left to ‘local’ law enforcement.
The Path To 9/11 Is Great! Dems Are Weenies
The Democrats have really come off looking like fools regarding their outrageous uproar about The Path to 9/11. Look, the fact of the matter is that most Americans don’t give a crap about what political party someone is in when…
Perhaps I’m just soft, but I believe the film accurately demonstrates that the culprits are our system of government and our culture.
Our form of democracy is, by design, deliberative (aka: slow) and purposely includes power sharing and distributes decision making. Our culture includes a bias toward assuming the best of intentions in people, not the worst, and we favor cooperation and collaboration over confrontation. These, to me, are the real causes of the lack of action and immagination that could have led to the thwarting of the 9/11 attacks.
The characters in this dramatization, as representative of real people, act as I believe most would have pre-9/11. The more frightening thing to me, now, is how many people have reverted to this way of thinking. A good example of this regression is the view of John Kerry who is touting a new proposal for success in Iraq and the GWOT. It is long on talking, dialogue, understanding, and cooperation and short on the sort of aggressive kill-or-be-killed tactics I believe we need to employ if we are to succeed.
So, hopefully this film reminds people, enrages them, and motivates them to support clear thinking in the prosecution of the fight against our enemies.
Taking a lsightly different tack on the observation that Steve makes above, I think the best line in Part I comes at the end of the sequence in which Tenet and Berger pass the potato, and the Warlord back in Afghanistan asks Wahlberg, “Are there any men left in Washington?”
SEPTEMBER 11, 2006
Decision ’08 weighs in with The Path To 9/11: Night One: Well, I have to hand it to ABC; they didn’t cave much.