From Newsgroup: alt.politics.usa

A television miniseries disappeared down the memory hole. oThe Path to
9/11o aired exactly once, two decades ago. Then it vanished. ABC hasnAt
shown it since. The network has refused to release it on a disc or as a download. No streaming service carries it.

ItAs almost like someone doesnAt want you to watch it.

Millions of Americans saw the docudrama in 2006, on the fifth
anniversary of 9/11. It played across two nights, without commercials.
Its major inspiration was the final report of the 9/11 Commission, the bipartisan panel empowered by federal law to investigate the terrorist attacks.

oFew people actually read the report,o says Quinn Taylor, the former
ABC executive who conceived of the show, in an interview. oOur goal was
to put it in living rooms and make people think.o

ABC invested more than $40 million in the project. It signed up stars
such as Harvey Keitel, Patricia Heaton, Amy Madigan, Donnie Wahlberg
and others. There was talk of broadcasting oThe Path to 9/11o annually,
as a public service. The idea was to portray the national-security
lapses that allowed Osama bin Laden to deliver death and destruction to America. The hope was to keep the country alert and vigilant.

oThe Path to 9/11o is a gripping story of failure. I watched it 20
years ago and wrote about it favorably. I recently rewatched it, having
saved promotional DVDs from back in the day. It holds up well as a
dramatic chronicle of what went wrong.

Its tale begins with the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, continues
through Al QaedaAs assaults on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
and the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, and concludes with what bin Laden and his minions initially called othe planes operation.o It tracks the efforts
of John OANeill, a real-life FBI special agent who pursued Islamic
terrorists in the 1990s and, in a tragic coincidence, was killed in the
World Trade Center on 9/11. It highlights bureaucratic conflicts within
the federal government. The message of the miniseries may be summed up
in a line spoken by Mr. Keitel, who played OANeill: oDespite all the
red flags, no one is taking terrorism seriously.o

A lot of Democrats took oThe Path to 9/11o seriously. Instead of
letting it become an occasion to learn from the mistakes of past,
however, they proclaimed political grievances. They disliked its
suggestion that President Clinton was too distracted by his paramour
Monica Lewinsky. They objected to its depictions of Clinton
administration figures who blocked OANeill and others as they tried to
thwart bin Laden. They didnAt care that many of the people behind the
program were fellow Democrats. oIAm to the left of the left,o says Hans Proppe, a producer. oWe were just telling history.o

The most controversial scene involves CIA operatives and their tribal
allies in Afghanistan as they prepare to snatch bin Laden from a remote compound. With the villain in their sights, they seek a green light
from President ClintonAs national security adviser Sandy Berger, played
by Kevin Dunn. At first, Berger dithers in the situation room. He looks
weak. Ultimately, he refuses to grant the go-ahead order. When the bad
news arrives down range, an Afghan warrior asks a devastating question:
oAre there any men left in Washington or are they all cowards?o

Berger and others claimed that this never happened. Yet itAs based on
an incident described in oThe 9/11 Commission Report.o In 1998 the CIA
had identified a possible bin Laden hideout near Kandahar, Afghanistan.
For months, teams rehearsed an operation to apprehend him. The plan was
risky. Officials debated whether to approve it. Days before it would
have occurred, it was called off. oImpressions vary as to who actually
decided not to proceed,o says the report. It could have been CIA
director George Tenet. ThereAs a good chance it was Berger.

Perhaps calling it off was the right move. Maybe the mission would have failed. WeAll never know. The report makes a simple observation: oNo
capture plan before 9/11 ever again attained the same level of detail
and preparation.o

A couple of weeks before the scheduled broadcast of oThe Path to 9/11,o
ABC sponsored a screening in Washington, D.C. It showed a portion of
the program, including the scene with Berger. Almost immediately,
Democrats revolted. Harry Reid of Nevada, Chuck Schumer of New York,
and three other senators sent a letter to Bob Iger, who was the CEO of
Disney, which owns ABC. It warned him about omisinformation,o urged him
oto cancel this broadcast,o and reminded him in the manner of
extortionists who run a protection racket that ABC enjoys oa free
broadcast licenseo from the government oto act as a trustee of the
public airwaves serving in the public interest.o

It was a brazen move. It might even be described as odespicable,
disgusting, and against democratic values,o which is what Mr. Schumer
called President TrumpAs demands that ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel last year,
after the late-night host claimed that the assassin of conservative
activist Charlie Kirk was oone of them,o i.e., a member of othe MAGA
gang.o

At least the letter from the senators was a public document. The media reported on it. Americans could read it. In private, President Clinton
phoned Mr. Iger and insisted that he stop the show, according to the journalist Carol Felsenthal in her 2008 book, oClinton in Exile.o ABC responded by ordering last-minute edits. The scene with Berger was
chopped up. oThat was an important sequence,o says Cyrus Nowrasteh, the screenwriter. oWe were censored.o

Many of the blacklisters admitted that they had not watched the
miniseries. This means they missed an inconvenient truth: oThe Path to
9/11o also aims at Republicans. It implies that just as Mr. Clinton was preoccupied by a sex scandal, so were his GOP rivals as they scrambled
for partisan advantage. And in another scene, counterterrorism official Richard A. Clarke, played by Stephen Root, meets with Condoleezza Rice, President George W. BushAs national security adviser, played by Penny
Johnson Jerald. OANeill presses Ms. Rice to focus on the threat of bin
Laden. She notifies him of his reassignment and dismisses him with a patronizing smile.

Unlike the scene with Berger, this one ran in full and as its creators intended when ABC aired the miniseries on the nights of September 10
and 11, 2006. The network also flashed a disclaimer several times: oThe
movie is not a documentary. For dramatic and narrative purposes, the
movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative
characters and dialogue, as well as time compression.o

After the single showing, ABC deep-sixed oThe Path to 9/11.o The
company appears to have no plans for a revival. oIt was cancelled
before cancel culture was a thing,o says David L. Cunningham, the
director.

Other movies about 9/11 are available in the usual ways. These include acclaimed films such as oUnited 93o and oZero Dark Thirtyo as well as oFahrenheit 9/11,o the anti-Bush screed by left-wing polemicist Michael
Moore. Only oThe Path to 9/11o is absent, perhaps along with the movies
that Hollywood never made because producers witnessed the fate of those
who dared to question the legacy of Clinton 1.0 and wondered about the prospect of Clinton 2.0, as Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2008
and 2016.

Thomas Kean Sr., the chair of the 9/11 Commission, was a consultant to
oThe Path to 9/11.o Today heAs 91, and he believes Americans should be
able to watch the miniseries. oIAm against repression,o he says. oThe
movie presents a point of view. ThatAs how it should be seen, with the understanding that there are other interpretations.o

Yet some interpretations are less equal than others, and they get
shoved down the memory holeueven when they describe events that we tell ourselves we must never forget.
--
Democrats and the liberal media hate President Trump more than they
love this country.

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