Cant Keep Quiet!

You could chose to watch ABC's The Path to 9/11, but I would recommend something more realistic.

Everyone has heard about the uproar over ABC's The Path to 9/11. Those on the right who say it is simply a matter of free speech and should be aired are forgetting their own histrionics over the CBS movie The Reagans and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. They are also overlooking ABC's claim that The Path to 9/11 is a dramatization of historically accurate events. Those who have seen it and even people involved in making the movie say that it fabricates some events in ways that could be considered defamatory to the people being portrayed.

Harvey Keitel, who plays World Trade Center security chief John O'Neill in the movie, has public ally stated that there are distortions in the film that should be fixed before it is aired.

ABC would have you believe that they are airing the mini-series without commercials because of their own altruism. What they don't say is that the decision to air this mini-series came after they had tried to find sponsors and failed.

Members of the Clinton administration have protested ABC's plan to air the mini-series with scenes that at best are historically inaccurate, at worst defamatory. Members of the 9/11 Commission on both sides of the aisle have also protested the scenes that are historically inaccurate. Historians and even Chris Wallace of Fox News have come out against ABC's The Path to 9/11.

Wallace isn't the only conservative to take ABC to task for this show. John Podhoretz, James Taranto, Dean Barnett, and Bill Bennett have all stated that to falsify events and claim they are historically accurate is wrong.

Dean Barnett wrote

One can (if one so chooses) give the filmmakers artistic license to [fabricate a scene]. But if that is what they have done, conservative analysts who back this movie as a historical document will mortgage their credibility doing so.

Instead of watching The Path to 9/11 tonight, I recommend that you watch the Discovery Channel's airing of The Price of Security.

The Price of Security is Ted Koppel's first special with the Discovery Channel after retiring from ABC. The first 90 minutes is a documentary and the last 90 minutes is a live town meeting. During the documentary portion, Koppel travels from Guantanamo Bay to Vegas to probe the security issue. For the live town hall meeting Koppel has invited Tom Ridge, former secretary of homeland security; former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, chair of the 9-11 commission; and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, the commission's vice chair.

According to Koppel

Both sides have reasonable arguments to make. I don't believe we've had that debate in the Congress.

…The tension of the broadcast is between those who believe we must come down on the side of maintaining security and those on the other side, who believe that's important, but if you forfeit some of the basic tenets of American law, then what you're saving won't be worth having.

…If you want absolute freedom and privacy, that means no one can keep records on us. We don't expect to live in complete privacy. But how far between North Korea and absolute privacy would the pendulum swing? That's what this program is about.

Even if there were no controversy surrounding ABC's The Path to 9/11 I wouldn't be watching it tonight. I have yet to see a "dramatization of historical events" that didn't make me want to turn away from the screen. It is always apparent that the writer and or director has "tweaked" things to suit their fancy, not to be historically accurate.

Instead I plan to watch Koppel's The Price of Security on the Discovery Channel. I'm more interested in a hard look at where we stand today than a fictionalized account of what lead up to 9/11.

Cross posted on Bring It On!