There seems to be three complaints by former Clinton Administration members concerning ABC’s “Path to 9/11" docudrama. First, Madeline Albright insist that the show’s portrayal of her as the person who tipped off the Pakastani Intelligence Service (ISI), that the United States was about to tomahawk Zawhar, a Bin Laden terrorist camp, in an attempt to kill him, is incorrect. Her gripe is that it was a senior military official (General Joseph Ralston, vice chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff)not her who tipped off the Pakastanis.
Albright is absolutely correct. If she was not the person tasked with doing this job then the movie should portray the person who did it. The only question I have is whether or not Albright was the one who ordered or requested that General Ralston inform General Karamat of the air strike. If so, then this may be close enough for Hollywood. If not fix it, make it accurate and the point of the scene, that Pakistan and thus Bin Laden were tipped off, stays the same. However, to remove the scene altogether is to make the film more inaccurate and to revise history even more than if the scene was left intact.
Second, is the alleged portrayal of Sandy Berger as being solely responsible for calling off an attempt to shoot Bin Laden. It is undisputed that the CIA had formed a hit squad, with the help of the Northern Alliance and Massoud, with the somewhat unclear task assigned to it to capture/kill Bin Laden. There were several opportunities to do this, Tarnuk Farms, Derunta Camp, Uruzgan Camp, Helmand River Camp, Kabul and another at a Bedouin Hunting Camp. The Clinton White House, for various political reasons, clearly dropped the ball on all of these opportunities and Sandy Berger was intricately involved in these decisions.
Did a specific event occur in which Sandy Berger told a sniper not to shoot? Probably not. But this is television, its supposed to be art, it is the general picture that is being portrayed, the general sense of things - you know - a “you get the picture” type deal. While the exact scene may not have happened the general sense created by the scene did happen. The Clinton White House had ample opportunity to kill Bin Laden, for various reasons they did not take advantage of the opportunity. The reasons are certainly more complex then not issuing an order over a satellite phone connection, but the failures in moxy and determination to kill Bin Laden are the same. Its Hollywood, its close enough, its artistic license.
Third, is the argument by Clinton that he was not distracted by the Monica Lewinsky affair. Such a portrayal in the movie is absolutely correct and is not so much an artistic license as it may be a difference of interpretation of the facts depending on one's point of view (i.e. Are you Bill Clinton or every other oxygen breathing human being on the face of the earth). In particularly, the issue regarding the strike on Bin Laden at the Bedouin Hunting camp occurred as Clinton prepared for his Impeachment Trial. As Steve Coll writes in Ghost Wars, “All this was discussed at the White House as President Clinton prepared for his impeachment trial that winter in the Senate .. This hardly seemed an ideal time for an all-or-nothing attack against a terrorist who made few Americans feel directly menaced.” Anyway, when did Clinton become concerned with the accuracy of a story. You know, it all depends on what is, is.
If the Path to 9/11 is portraying itself as being a historically accurate account of what occurred, then some of the inaccuracies should be corrected. If the show is trying to give the American public a dumbed down and entertaining version of a very complicated historical event, then it sounds like they have hit the bullseye. After all making a movie in Hollywood is like playing with horseshoes or hand grenades - it does not have to be right on, it's just got to be close enough.
Comments