Bob Kerrey Warns ABC: Be "Respectful" of 9/11
In his first interview on the controversy over ABC's "The Path to 9/11" miniseries, 9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey said that both the Clinton and Bush administrations had committeed misteps, said that a miniseries on 9/11 risked "feeding people's distrust" and called on ABC to "be careful" and "respectful" of what happened leading up to 9/11.
In the interview, which he did by phone this afternoon with Election Central, Kerrey said he wasn't ready to pass judgment on the content of the movie as a whole until he'd seen it, and said that such historical fiction isn't inherently flawed. But he questioned the idea of doing a miniseries on 9/11, faulted the notion that the Clinton administration alone was to blame, and questioned the accuracy of the claim that Clinton's national security team failed to let the CIA kill Osama Bin Laden when agency operatives had him in their sights, as the film's depiction of events apparently has it. "It wasn't just Clinton," Kerrey said. "It was Clinton and Bush. It was leading right up to 9/11."
Asked about the bin Laden episode, Kerrey said: "That's totally factually inaccurate. They didn't have somebody on the ground with bin Laden in their sights."
Asked if he thought it was a good idea to do a fictionalized miniseries on 9/11, Kerrey said he thought it risked feeding public mistrust around the already fiercely contested history of the tragedy.
"I don't think it's a good idea to do a miniseries on 9/11," Kerrey said. "You begin with the presumption of a conspiracy [on the part of the attackers]. Some people present reasonable scenarios for that conspiracy. Some sound off the wall." A miniseries like this one, Kerrey said, could "feed people's distrust on issues of national security."
Kerrey declined to pass judgment on the film as a whole until he'd seen it. "I don't think it's fair," Kerrey said. "It's like reviewing a movie without seeing it."
Asked if 9/11 should be fictionalized in any way, Kerrey said that he didn't necessarily have a problem with the underlying idea of treating the attacks in such a manner. "Historical fiction can be very useful," Kerrey said.
But he said that such a treatment only has merit if the "central pieces of the story are correct." And that's what he'd want to see in ABC's miniseries, Kerry added.
"They have to be very conscious that this is not just another story," Kerrey said of ABC. "This is a story that's of great importance to every single American...Just be careful. Be respectful of it. It's not just another story."
Pussy. I'm sorry, but he is. And not the good kind.
September 7, 2006 6:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Kerrey was not respectful of us. Kerrey, Kean, Hamilton and the rest of them are a disgrace. What they did to us with the 9/11 Commission is unforgivable. Please see my new video I put together on this, has video footage of the 9/11 Commission hearings AND the 9/11 Public discourse project which was a joke. I hope the video is a wake up call: See the new video: What motivated the 9/11 hijackers?
SCANDAL: 9/11 Commissioners Bowed to Pressure to Suppress Main Motive for the 9/11 Attacks.
September 7, 2006 7:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'll always remember Kerrey questioning Rice before the 9/11 Commission.
Rice ate him up and spat him out.
My understanding is that the Commission concluded that Rice more than anyone else was responsible for letting 9/11 happen. But in the interests of bipartisanship, they did not make it explicit. I hope they appreciated it when she was then promoted to Secretary of State.
Why hasn't Kerrey seen the film? Has he asked for a copy? Doesn't he feel any responsibility as a member of the 9/11 Commission (cited by the film makers) to "vet" this film? Or is this some kind of pathetic anti-Clinton passive-aggression on his part?
September 7, 2006 7:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rice has been a far better SoS than national security advisor.
Re: 9/11 and Rice, as much as I don't agree with her, she shouldn't be the scapegoat. Having read the report a few times, it's clear that there were many things that could have been done differently. Institutional barriers existed and still do. There are also many concrete things that could make it harder for another large scale terrorist attack in the mainland--the actual number of terrorist attacks has gone up after all. Unfortunately, the incompetent, do-nothing GOP Congress/Administration have failed to act on these.
Democrats should focus not on what was or wasn't done prior to 9/11, but focus on what hasn't been done since. Is torture the only thing the administration "learned" as they tout their "post-9/11 mindset"? If so, we should be scared.
September 7, 2006 7:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dear RP,
I watched your video; well done.
My question though is this: Suppose US support for Israel was the prime motivation behind the 9/11 attacks. I'm not saying it was (as you appear to be doing). But suppose it was.
Does that mean that US support for Israel is wrong?
Hamilton put it well in your video: Policies do have consequences. But that doesn't mean those policies are wrong or shouldn't be taken. Yet that would appear to be your conclusion.
Pinpointing their motivation doesn't mean we should bow down to their motivation.
September 7, 2006 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
A real fighter.
September 7, 2006 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rice lost me when she went on National Television and insisted that:
My jaw dropped to the floor, unfortunately--or fortunately--I had been up most of the night paging this report, (THE SOCIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF TERRORISM: WHO BECOMES A TERRORIST AND WHY?A Report Prepared under an Interagency Agreement by the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress September 1999) for the Lyons press. It stated:
After I finished picking my jaw up off the floor, I realized, fully, that she was either a liar at best, or completely incompetent at worst.
The jury is still out, but I'm leaning towards incompetence. I will agree she's a much better SoS, but really, that's not saying too much.
CSPAN junkies visit http://spannerbackup.ipbhost.com
September 7, 2006 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's Allesandra Stanley (from the NYT) with a review of the show:
Sorry, but it seems to me the Bush Administration's "missteps" are actually much worse -- they ignored the adults who told them the boy was poisoning small animals because they thought they knew better.
Dissent Protects Democracy.
September 7, 2006 10:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cafe Now
After the summer of threat, after the "system blinking red", bush was told the attack was coming. Bin Laden determined to strike in the US, his people are here, hijacking may be on the menu. No, let's ingore thie prevue of 9-11.
Let's not pay attention to the warning bush got, nor how he ignored it.
September 8, 2006 12:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bob Kerrey called Bush out for his failure to act in response to the Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001 on a program on NPR entitled "Urban Conversations: Cities at Risk", drawing the link between that failure and Bush's failure to respond to the Katrina disaster.
September 8, 2006 12:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Arguing facts may be futile. 30% of the public thinks Sadam had WMD and or was connected to 9/11. A recent poll found that 36% of the polled sample believed the government sat on its hands or played a role in 9/11. A combination of personal failure to actively obtain information from a variety of sources and an incompetent MSM news reporting system are to blame.
Yesterday on Tucker Carlson, David Brock of MediaMaters pointed out that there were factual errors in the ABC mockumentary. that did not stop Mr Carlson from saying that the film should be shown in its original form and the "educational" materials provided with the film being used so that people can make up their own minds based on the "facts" in the film. Given the news show host vs guest format, there was no true ability for a person coming into the situation cold to know who was making the most fact-based argument. The host will almost always come out ahead since he has the credibility of his name in the title of the show.
In today's WSJ, media reporter Dorothy Rabinowitz comments on the controversy surrounding the ABC 9/11 film. She implies that concern exists on the part of Clinton supporters that the weak-kneed response by his administration that allowed Osama to get away will be exposed. She cites the scene in which Sandy Berger hangs up on a CIA operative who had Osama in his eyesight as support for her distain for Clinton's handling of intelligence matters. Every person who frequents TPMCafe knows that this episode never happened. The refutation of the Berger is not from crazy liberals, even Thomas Kean the 9/11 commission's Republican co-chair agrees that it didn't happen. The CIA head, George Tenet, actually called off one possible strike at Osama because it could not be verified that he was actually at a suggested position.
If the populace is not willing to ask question and independently verify facts they will be overwhelmed by MSM inaccuracies.
We are in a culture war and the folks not willing to get the facts or those who obscure the facts are winning. The ABC mockumentary is just a symptom of the culture war.
September 8, 2006 8:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
After I finished picking my jaw up off the floor, I realized, fully, that she was either a liar at best, or completely incompetent at worst.
Why can she not be both incompetent and a liar?
September 8, 2006 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink