ABC TO AIR 'DOCU-DRAMA' USING FABRICATIONS AS EVIDENCE
'PATH TO 9/11' CONTRADICTS EVIDENCE AS LAID OUT BY 9/11-COMMISSION REPORT, THOUGH IT CLAIMS REPORT AS SUPPORTING EVIDENCE
8 September 2006

ABC plans to air a "docu-drama" entitled Path to 9/11, a 6-hour TV movie detailing in fictional re-enactment events its writers allege occurred in the US counterterrorism community in the years before the attacks of 11 September 2001. It clearly assigns blame to members of the Clinton administration for thwarting efforts to kill Bin Laden, and many now say the film directly misrepresents the truth, fabricating scenes, words and events either for dramatic or for political effect.

The film's creator, Cyrus Nowrasteh, a self-proclaimed conservative, whom radical radio personality, Rush Limbaugh claims as a personal friend, has reportedly written his own perspective into the script, and flagrantly ignored key evidence presented by the official 9/11 Commission report. What's more, the film claims the report as a factual basis for its plot-line, despite contradicting it on key issues.

One of the main scenes in controversy feature Madeleine Albright, then Secretary of State, berrating CIA director George Tenet for not understanding why she had to alert the government of Pakistan about a covert operation to kill Osama Bin Laden, possibly thwarting the chances of success, due to alleged links between the ISI —Pakistan's intelligence service— and the Taliban, then hosting Bin Laden in neighboring Afghanistan.

Albright says she never had such a conversation and never used diplomatic reasons for passing covert information to the ISI. The 9/11 Commission report specifically found that she did not do so and that in fact a top military official did warn the Musharraf government that ballistic missiles overflying Pakistan's airspace were not from nuclear power and constant rival India. This of course is a far more serious matter, and it was absolutely necessary for that information to be passed to Pakistan, to avoid a covert operation to kill one individual in Afghanistan provoking a nuclear war between Pakistan and India, home collectively to over 1.3 billion people, and in a wider region where roughly half the world's population lives.

Another controversial scene shows Samuel Berger refusing CIA field operatives permission to launch an attack, when they ask if they have "clearance to load the package", with Berger responding "I don't have that authority". Berger says that neither he nor Pres. Clinton ever refused such an operation, and the 9/11 Commission report found, as stated byt he Washington Post: "no CIA operatives were poised to attack; that Afghanistan's rebel Northern Alliance was not involved, as the film says; and that then-CIA Director George J. Tenet decided the plan would not work".

Advance copies were reportedly sent to a number of conservative pundits and personalities, but not to liberal or progressive analysts. This suggests there is a clear aim to formulate a public relations campaign to paint the 9/11 attacks as a result of Clinton administration reticence and not deal with the Bush administration's now infamous lack of interest in gathering evidence of an imminent attack during 2001.

The head of the William J. Clinton Foundation, former White House aide, Bruce Lindsey has said "It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known." A movement has now arisen among Democratic supporters and political action groups, spurred by the Center for American Progress, and tens of thousands of letters of protest have been sent to ABC and the Disney Corp.

This is not the first time ABC has aired questionable evidence about a national tragedy. In 2003, for the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Pres. John F. Kennedy, the news division ran a documentary report presenting unproven "scientific" analysis as comprehensive proof of the "magic bullet theory", while ignoring far more substantive evidence and official reports, including the publicly stated position of the United States Congress, after an official inquiry in the late 1970s.

The report went as far as to ask one theorist to present his own evidence, and then accepted his word as proof his evidence was incontrovertible. The report also claimed to comprehensively debunk the idea that there was a conspiracy, though it gave no direct evidence as to how to disprove the possibility that the assassin had connections to other plotters. And this as the History Channel ran a documentary alleging a wide range of evidence not only of a conspiracy but of who precisely may have been involved. [s]

• Washington Post: "Clinton Administration Officials Assail ABC's 'The Path to 9/11'"

CBS NEWS REPORT DISTORTS POLL RESULTS, SAYS BUSH "LIKELY NOT" OBLIGED TO FOLLOW LAW
29 January 2006

In a report from the White House regarding the president's response to criticism from the public, from Congress and from legal and national security experts that his warrantless wiretaps are illegal, CBS White House correspondent John Roberts falsely cites a recent poll to claim Bush has broad support from the public for warrantless wiretaps. [Full Story]

GOOGLE TO COLLABORATE IN CENSORING INFORMATION DELIVERED TO CHINESE USERS
27 January 2006

The premier internet search engine Google has launched a new Chinese service, under the domain Google.cn, which it will voluntarily censor in keeping with the mandates of Chinese authorities. The announcement came earlier this week, as the Davos trade talks opened and on the same day as China's government announced it was ordering the closing of a weekly newspaper known for publishing articles on topics the Chinese Communist party's propaganda office had banned or which included criticism of government policy. [Full Story]

CHINA PLANS "SMOKELESS WAR" AGAINST PRESS, DISSIDENTS
26 September 2005

In a high-level Communist party meeting, China's president Hu Jintao has reportedly called for an intensive crackdown on media liberties. While China's government has sought to project an image of a more market-oriented, open system, it continues to forbid basic press freedoms and still persecutes journalists at an alarming rate. [Full Story]

A MILITARY COUP AS GOOD CITIZENSHIP
A LOOK BACK AT REPORTING OF THE APRIL 2002 COUP IN VENEZUELA
23 November 2003

When President Hugo Chavez was forced from power and sequestered by a faction of the Venezuelan military, The New York Times reported the matter as a decision by the President to resign. The "resignation" was welcomed as a sign that democracy was moving forward in Venezuela, and that its economy would no longer be threatened by a crouching dictator-in-wait. The fact that an elected official who had reportedly voluntarily turned over power was in the armed custody of coup leaders went unreported. In an editorial, they lauded the immediate military appointment of an oil chief, a political arch-rival, to replace Chavez, saying the president had "handed power to a respected business leader." [Full Story]