Lying About 9/11? Easy as ABC by Eric Alterman

From the October 2, 2006 issue of The Nation magazine (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061002/alterman):

The network initially trumpeted the program in full-page ads as “based
on the 9/11 Commission Report.” But it explicitly contradicts the
findings of almost every part of that report, in order to cast blame on
the Clinton Administration–inventing scenes, characters and dialogue
along the way. To take just one of many examples, as Editor &
Publisher
reported, the film “explores the terrorist threat starting
with the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center, and there is little
question that President Clinton is dealt with severely, almost
mockingly, with the Lewinsky scandal closely tied to his failure to
cripple al-Qaeda.” The commission concluded exactly the opposite.
Clinton instructed his staff to ignore his domestic troubles and, as the
report explains, “All his aides testified to us that they based their
advice solely on national security considerations. We have found no
reason to question their statements.”

Former National Security Council senior director for
counterterrorism Roger Cressey has added in a Washington Times
op-ed that Clinton “approved every request made of him by the CIA and
the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al Qaeda.”
Recall that most Republicans and many in the media were themselves
obsessed with the President’s penis at the time and accused Clinton of
playing “wag the dog” with every attempt to take action against Al
Qaeda.

And a little more:

ABC execs offered up one Mickey Mouse excuse after another. One day they
defended their depiction as true; the next they claimed it was a
“dramatization, not a documentary.” But as Max Blumenthal reports on the
Huffington Post and TheNation.com, the program is part of a plan hatched
by a group of right-wing extremists dedicated, in the words of the
organization founded by the film’s director, David Cunningham, “to a
Godly transformation and revolution TO and THROUGH the Film and
Television industry.” The scriptwriter, a young friend of Rush
Limbaugh’s named Cyrus Nowrasteh, was a featured speaker at the Liberty
Film Festival, an annual event founded to promote right-wing films,
which calls itself “A Program of the David Horowitz Freedom
Center.” ABC also passed along hundreds of advance screeners to
right-wing taste-makers like Limbaugh but refused to allow even the
ex-President to have an early look.

What Liberal Media?

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