The Path to 9/11

As a lengthy TV movie, "The Path to 9/11" makes for rather compelling viewing at times. It's a polished, well mounted movie that begins with the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackings, and then backtracks to the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. The story essentially is a set up to what led up to the 2001 attacks.

But, frankly, it works better as a piece of fictionalized truth than an authentic telling of the official 9/11 Commission Report. ABC might be insisting that their film is a "docudrama" rather than an accurate portrayal of the report's findings, but they and the filmmakers have gone a long way in promoting this as a definitive depiction of that report. In addition to the 9/11 Report, opening credits state the film is partly based on "The Cell" by John Miller and Michael Stone, while closing credits list "1000 Years For Revenge" by Peter Lance and "Relentless Pursuit" by Samuel M. Katz.

A disclaimer at the beginning says the film compresses time and some characters, but altering facts for dramatic purposes might not have been the best thing to do with this story.

Although there are several hundred characters in this $40 million film, writer Cyrus Nowrasteh, who, apparently OxyContin Limbaugh likes to call friend, wisely chose to concentrate on a few, especially John O'Neill (Harvey Keitel), an FBI agent who helped track down the 1993 bombers, relentlessly tracked terrorists and died in the 2001 attacks when he was WTC's security chief.

The performances are good - from Keitel to Penny Johnson Jerald as Condi Rice to Mido Hamada as Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud (assassinated two days before the 9/11 attacks) to Donnie Wahlberg as a spy (likely a composite character). Some characters, however, seem tossed in for no reason, including the American ambassador to Yemen, whose motives are inexplicable and not explained.

The film bounces back and forth in time, but wasn't confusing. I wasn't bored, though how Nowrasteh opted to tell some of the story is utterly perplexing. The film also has a gritty style, reminiscent of Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic" (2000).

Where the film completely falls apart - I've no idea why Nowrasteh did this - is in crucial scenes so clearly made up for dramatic effect and to take potshots at the Clinton administration. I realize Nowrasteh calls himself a conservative, but the liberties he takes are preposterous.

Did a film about 9/11 and the events leading up to it really need additional fiction for dramatic effect? Reminded me of the 1929 film version of "The Taming of the Shrew" with the credit, "By William Shakespeare with additional dialogue by Sam Taylor."

By now, almost everyone knows the major issues in Nowrasteh's script. He intercuts scenes of federal agents working hard and being stymied in their efforts with footage of Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal, including a bit from the former president's grand jury testimony.

(Odd, isn't it, that we spent $40 million to prove our president likes sex, but the same people who clamored for justice and truth then now conveniently ignore that we've spent billions fighting a senseless war on false pretenses and that not a single person in the Bush administration has been held accountable for all the failures leading up to the invasion of Iraq and since then. Instead, Bush honored people who completely screwed up with the Medal of Freedom.)

Nowrasteh clearly implies Clinton was too distracted by the scandal to pay attention to terrorism. Nowrasteh conveniently forgets that during that period, the Republicans pounced on Clinton and said he was using missile attacks against terrorists to distract the nation from Monica! He also accuses Clinton officials of balking when the CIA, with the help of the Northern Alliance, literally were a few feet from nabbing a sleeping bin Laden in Afghanistan. We all know this is pure fiction and is nowhere in the 9/11 Report. So why put it in? The same applies to an indictment of ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who Nowrasteh accuses of thwarting the missile attack on bin Laden's camp.

I don't know what changes ABC has done for the final version. I oppose attempts to get ABC to pull the film. That's asinine. But ABC should not - as it has clearly done - promote this film as factual. Clearly this film has an agenda, one that spurts forth from the imagination of someone who seemingly decided to put almost the entire blame for 9/11 on a popular president conservatives despised and still despise.

What's strange about the furor is that the conservatives who are crying foul over some liberals being upset about the film are the same people who were livid beyond description and successfully got CBS to cancel the airing of the TV movie, "The Reagans" (2003), on the network because of one line of dialogue in the film. And remember when conservatives asked theaters not to screen "Fahrenheit 9/11" (2004)? I suppose it's too much to expect Mr. OxyContin and his dunderheads to acknowledge their own hypocrisy.

As a thriller, "The Path to 9/11" occasionally clicks. Hence, me giving it a 5-star rating. It keeps the viewer interested and intrigued. But it's outrageous for ABC to imply this film sticks to the facts. Nowrasteh and Cunningham have taken the 9/11 Commission Report, tossed in a smidgen or two from other books, and then added their own imagination to a story that is still fresh in everyone's mind.

There's plenty of blame to go around regarding the government's failure to connect the dots that led up to the 2001 attacks. The commissioners attributed the inability to make the links to a lack of imagination.

You can't accuse Nowrasteh or Cunningham of lacking imagination, that's for sure.

Wanna see an accurate film on the lead-up to the attacks? Watch the History Channel's documentary, "The 9/11 Commission Report."

Honestly...if you remove all the political banter that surrounded this production & actually viewed the broadcast for what it was, which was a 'dramatization' of events that led up to the 9/11 attacks, then anyone could see that this wasn't a 'bad', 'evil' or 'smear' movie. On the contrary, it provides a very intriguing commentary on how the terrorists pulled this off, how we tie our own hands through bureaucratic inaction & red tape, and can be distracted, while bickering along party lines (which continues to this day). What's dishonest is to deny that the 'path' to these events occurred during both the Clinton and Bush administrations (from 1993 - 2001, which is the time frame for this documentary). Things were overlooked & mistakes were made by all parties...the signs were there, but we dropped our guard. And what is unfounded is why we're still not allowed to further scrutinize this production through a DVD release? Step up Disney/ABC...be bold & brave...this is not the era of informative oppression...this is an important piece of work that we should be allowed free & open opportunity to see/buy/discuss, IMHO.

I think most people who follow American politics would agree that the Clinton administration was not hawkish. Many of his opponents criticized him for this, while many supporters applauded him – especially as he drastically reduced defense spending shortly after taking office in 1993. There is not a lot of controversy there, and whether you supported this or not, it was intelligible to a certain degree, since a US territory had not been attacked since WWII. Many Americans did not see a threat, and most were caught off-guard on 9/11.

Therefore, by depicting the Clinton Administration's political cautiousness to not go on the offensive without precedence, especially during a scandal, and later a heated election between Gore and Bush, was not a political attack on Clinton, but a fair assessment of what was happening in Washington at the time. Clinton may have been weak on national security, and fearful of creating turmoil in the Middle East, but he certainly would have been criticized from the right by putting boots on the ground while campaigning for Gore. This was even acknowledged in the movie.

As far as the dialog, I'm not sure if anyone involved with this movie had any first or second-hand knowledge of comments made by Secretary Albright or George Tenet; or if Barbara Bodine was really that nasty. However, I think the general description of where the main players stood was generally accurate, and is supported by the 9/11 report and what facts are known.

Overall, I think this was a great movie, and if anything, I hope people realize that the real enemies are the terrorists, who are still a threat, and will attack if left alone.

ABC's "Path to 9/11" really isn't all that bad as a movie. It's actually quite entertaining, and at times nostalgically takes you back to the early-mid 1990s. But the movie is clearly biased and implies that the Clinton Adminstration bumbled their way through the handling of terrorism, which ultimately led to the attacks of 9/11. Former President Bill Clinton and his aides are portrayed here as either buffoonish and/or soft.

Surely Republicans will think this is a great movie, as it portrays Clinton in a bad light. So of course conservatives will hail this movie as a masterpiece of factual truth-telling. The movie hints that former President Bill Clinton was so marred in his public scandals that he neglected going after Osama bin Laden and other Islamic extremists. The movie makes no secret of it's views that the administration blundered attempts at nabbing Osama bin Laden. Bill Clinton, the supposed root of all evil in America is of course the man we should be pointing our fingers at.

For years Republicans would blame Clinton for everything. And they are obviously still doing it.

1.If the economy is doing bad, it can't possibly be because of sitting President George W. Bush, no it's because Clinton's evil policies in the 90s are finally catching up to us. And conversely, the good economic times under Bill Clinton had nothing to do with him, no they were because of all the fantastic economic theories that former Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr. implemented in the 80s and early 90s that took their sweet time to catch up to President Clinton.

2.The moment September 11th happened, there were cries that Clinton was responsible. Clinton is to blame for everything.

3.Clinton flew the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

4.Clinton fought with the passengers of United flight 93.

5.Clinton is best friends with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden

6.Clinton blew up the space shuttle.

If the terrorists attacks happened under Clintons watch, Republicans would make you think that Clinton would assuredly have acted like some burnt out old hippie chanting "make love, not war" while marching in a gay and lesbian parade. Lord knows what the conservative reaction would have been if Clinton actually was president when the attacks had happened. It would have been even MORE Clinton's fault. Would Republicans have rallied around President Clinton? That's a tough sight to picture. So here is a movie to vilify the radical neo-conservative thought process. People will obviously compare this movie to Michael Moore's "Farenheit 911", but Moore is a man with a reputation for being a grade A nut-burger. Moore is known for distorting the truth and people walk into his films knowing that he is entertainment. ABC is supposed to a be a reputable network.

So how can a supposedly TRUSTED and REPUTABLE network like ABC promote a movie like this? It's even being pushed as an educational tool, which is outrageous. Here we are 5 years AFTER September 11th and the Bush Adminstration still hasn't found Osama bin Laden! Of course it's all Clinton's fault. Look if conservatives didn't want that Showtime movie about Ronald Reagan aired, then why do they want this film pushed onto the public and especially our schools? Yeah, you conservatives can keep hitting the "not useful" feature for my article so as to bury it in the back pages, but you know what I say is true and you know you are not being fair to the former President.

The ruckus raised by Clinton supporters and leftists over this movie has been surprising.

In a previous comment, IMDb user "Ed" wrote "Regardless of ones political leanings, I think it is despicable for 9/11 to be fictionalized and history rewritten simply for political gain." I'd ask Ed a number of questions: How does broadcasting a movie qualify as rewriting history? In your opinion, do movies such as "Fahrenheit 9/11," for instance, qualify as rewriting history? Have you seen this TV movie, read the script, read a treatment of the script, or had any access to this material prior to the movie's upcoming broadcast? For years, the American left has been sympathetic to any artistic expression that offends conservatives or religious people. Now there's a movie that, according to some, might portray their Golden Boy, Clinton, in a less than amorous light. None of us have seen the movie yet, but at the mere suggestion, the left is up in arms.

I'd suggest that those on the left take the same advice they've given others for years: "If you don't like the content, don't watch the movie." I'd also suggest that you'd be ahead to see the film before you decide if you like it, if it's factual, etc. Meanwhile, there are many people who are interested in seeing the film, who remember the historical events (pre and post 9/11) that it proposes to portray, and who are capable of checking other resources and deciding for ourselves if the movie is accurate or not.

Any movie about this subject matter is going to encourage debate. I'd ask those on the left who don't want this movie shown to consider the transparency of their actions. Why is the prospect of debate so threatening? Why do you want the debate strangled before it starts? Are you afraid that it's a debate you can't win?

Ed writes: " But to completely falsify information, and then LIE about falsifying it, especially about an event still so painful to many people, is just way below acceptable." I'd like the chance to see the film and decide for myself if that's the case, Ed. Why do you find that prospect so threatening?

Honestly, Ed, the idea that Hollywood (of all places) would really do anything to tarnish the legacy of their favorite President is, at best, amusing.