Bush wants speech to interrupt 9/11 film

[Mark Gobell]

Can you believe this. Desperate or what ?

Bush wants speech to interrupt 9/11 film

http://www.onelocalnews.com/prescottherald/ViewArticle.aspx?id=5197&so urce=2

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer 19 minutes ago

NEW YORK - ABC, still trying to deal with angry former Clinton administration officials about their Sept. 11 miniseries, was also faced Friday with a request from President Bush to interrupt the film for a speech.

The network did not immediately say what it will do. It has said the film, which stretches to five hours running commercial-free Sunday and Monday, is still being edited amid concerns by Clinton officials that it drastically distorts history.

Former administration officials and Senate Democrats said the movie was "terribly wrong." Former President Clinton , speaking with reporters after a Democratic fundraiser in Arkansas on Thursday, said he hadn‘t seen the film but that "I think they ought to tell the truth."

A group of historians, including Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Princeton University‘s Sean Wilentz, wrote to ABC parent Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger on Friday, urging him to scrap the series. They said that permitting inaccuracies to heighten drama is "disingenuous and dangerous."

Harvey Keitel , one of the actors in "The Path to 9/11," also said he had questions about whether some of the material was accurate.

Scenes being reviewed by the network and producers involve Samuel R. Berger, the former national security adviser, and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and efforts to capture Osama bin Laden , according to an official close to the film who spoke on condition of anonymity, who stressed the editing was ongoing.

A cut of the film distributed to TV critics depicts a team poised in darkness outside bin Laden‘s cave fortress in Afghanistan , while an actor portraying Berger in Washington stalls on giving the final go-ahead to carry out the seizure. He confers via video phone to CIA chief George Tenet.

Tenet responds angrily, then Berger‘s screen goes blank. He has hung up.

The next scene shows archival footage of Clinton‘s video testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

Another scene in the movie depicts counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke explaining to FBI agent John O‘Neill that he doesn‘t believe Clinton will take chances to kill bin Laden at a time Republicans were pressing for impeachment.

If Monday‘s portion of the film is interrupted by Bush‘s speech, the break will come as O‘Neill is shown leaving the FBI, his warnings about bin Laden largely ignored and his career stalled by politics, to take his job as security head at the World Trade Center. He died weeks later in the attack.

Democratic senators protesting the movie suggested it "could be construed as right-wing political propaganda. Albright objected to a scene that reportedly shows her warning the Pakistani government before an airstrike on Afghanistan, which she said was false and defamatory.

The film quotes the actor playing Tenet responding to the notification by saying: "The end result being that we‘ve enhanced bin Laden‘s stature in the Islamic world. He‘s thumbing his nose at us."

Director David Cunningham, in an earlier interview with The Associated Press, said people putting the film together would hear conflicting reports all the time. "These might be from experts who were there in the same room, and they‘re telling us completely opposite things." He said he would use the 9/11 commission report to try to resolve those disputes.

"There was no agenda for this movie to go after a particular party or person," Cunningham said. "We were showing what happened, and the people who were involved along the way. This is not a blue-state/red-state movie."

Thomas Kean, the former Republican New Jersey governor who led the commission, defended the miniseries.

"It‘s something the American people should see," he said in an interview on ABC‘s "Good Morning America" Friday. "Because you understand how these people wanted to do us harm, developed this plot, and how the machinations of the American government under two administrations not only failed to stop them, but even failed to slow them down."

Kean said he hoped people would watch the miniseries to "understand better what went on, and hopefully understand what still needs to be done."

The film had a budget of $40 million. Besides Keitel, it stars Patricia Heaton and Donnie Wahlberg .

The controversy is reminiscent of the one that erupted over a 2003 CBS miniseries about President Ronald Reagan . In the face of political pressure over that film‘s accuracy, CBS canceled it, and it later aired on the Showtime cable network.