ABC's "Path to 9/11" Treads on Clintonites' Feelings

Safe to say that Bill Clinton won't be TiVo'ing ABC's The Path to 9/11 this weekend.

Several of Clinton's minions, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and the former President's personal attorney and Clinton Foundation head Bruce Lindsey have put pen to paper this week asking Disney CEO Robert Iger to yank the ballyhooed miniseries.

According to press and marketing materials, the two-part docudrama, airing commerical-free Sunday and Monday, is based on the 9/11 Commission's sweeping review of what led to that national tragedy five years ago. But according to the Clinton crew, the miniseries plays fast and loose with history to wrongly cast blame of the terror attacks on Clinton officials.

"The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has a duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely," wrote Lindsey. "It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known."

As the pressure mounted Thursday, with additional attacks from left-leaning sites like Media Matters and ThinkProgress.org and liberal bloggers, ABC said it would not pull the $40 million miniseries starring Harvey Keitel and Patricia Heaton and Donnie Wahlberg, releasing a written statement asking viewers to take a wait and see approach.

"The Path to 9/11 is not a documentary of the events leading to 9/11. It is a dramatization, drawn from a variety of sources including the 9/11 Commission Report, other published materials, and personal interviews," the network said.

"No one has seen the final version of the film, because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticisms of film specifics are premature and irresponsible...We hope viewers will watch the entire broadcast of the finished film before forming an opinion about it.

But that's not stopping the Clintonites and their compadres. They say scenes were fabricated, including one in which Berger balks on ordering a CIA operative to take out Osama bin Laden in 1998 and another purportedly showing Albright refusing to sanction a missile strike against the al-Qaeda leader. Both stories were debunked by the 9/11 Commission Report. ABC has reportedly decided to cut the Berger/bin Laden scene and is reviewing the Albright segment for possible tweaks in the wake of the outcry.

The movie also supposedly shows footage of the former President to suggest he was more preoccupied with Monica Lewinksy than fighting terrorism.

The Clinton officials also say that ABC repeatedly refused to send them advance copies of The Path to 9/11, but did send screeners to right-wing bloggers.

"Both Clinton and Bush officials come under fire, and if it seems more anti-Clinton, that's only because they were in office a lot longer than Team Bush before 9/11," said L. Brent Bozell, president of the conservative Media Research Center, who saw a preview of the miniseries. "The film doesn't play favorites and the Bush administration takes its lumps as well."

The film's writer-producer, Cyrus Nowrasteh, whose credits include the 2001 docudrama The Day Reagan Was Shot, dismissed such assertions. In an interview Wednesday with Los Angeles radio station KRLA-AM, the filmmaker explained away the contradictions with the 9/11 Commission by insisting Path was based on two other books, The Cell by former ABC journalist John Miller and Michael Stone, and The Relentless Pursuit by Samuel Katz.

He also said that he took dramatic license with certain events. "You know' when you're making a movie, a lot of things happen on set that are unscripted. Accidents occur, spontaneous reactions of actors performing a role take place. ItÂ?s the job of the filmmaker to say, 'You know, maybe we can use that.' "

But left-wing bloggers point out that Nowrateh has described himself as a conservative and that Disney has a history of trying not to offend the Bush administration, notably by barring its Miramax division from releasing Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

"The attacks of 9/11 were a pivotal moment in our history, and it is fitting that the debate about the events related to the attacks continue," ABC added in its statement. A spokesman also said that the network hadn't received any feedback indicating its affiliates were jittery about airing the miniseries.

Some experts, however, doubted that ABC's statement would be enough to stem the flood of criticism.

"I suppose we can't make a judgment until we have seen it," Robert Thompson, director for the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, told E! Online. "Disclaimers are not enough to satisfy people who can demonstrate that incorrect information is being given out. They're going to make a lot of noise about it and it's going to be in the public conservation for a long time."

Thompson also took issue with the way ABC planned to present The Path to 9/11.

"What I find especially interesting is ABC playing this without commercials presumably as a public service. Now that's kind of odd," he said. "The idea is that your going to show something in terms of public interest without commercials, then it attaches the ownership of the content to the network itself."

While ABC is sticking by the TV movie, one of its key partners isn't. Spooked by the firestorm the film has provoked, Scholastic Inc. announced Thursday that it was scrapping a Path to 9/11-branded "field guide" intended to allow high schoolers to use the movie as an educational tool. Instead, the publisher will distribute discussion materials focusing on "critical thinking and media literacy skills."

"After a thorough review of the original guide that we offered online to about 25,000 high school teachers, we determined that the materials did not meet our high standards for dealing with controversial issues," said Dick Robinson, Scholastic's chairman, president and CEO.

Among the topics Scholastic says its new "media literacy" kit will tackle: "What is a docudrama; how does it differ from a documentary; what are the differences between factual reporting and a dramatization?"