Clinton team calls ABC’s 9/11 feature ‘fabrication’
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post
WASHINGTON – Top officials of the Clinton administration have launched a pre-emptive strike against an ABC-TV “docudrama,” slated to air Sunday and Monday, that they say includes made-up scenes depicting them as undermining attempts to kill Osama bin Laden.
Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright called one scene involving her “false and defamatory.” Former national security adviser Sandy Berger said the film “flagrantly misrepresents my personal actions.” And former White House aide Bruce Lindsey, who now heads the William J. Clinton Foundation, said, “It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known.” ABC’s entertainment division said the six-hour movie, “The Path to 9/11,” will say in a disclaimer that it is a “dramatization ... not a documentary” and contains “fictionalized scenes.” But the disclaimer also says the movie is based on the Sept. 11 commission’s report, although that report contradicts several key scenes.
Berger said in an interview that ABC is “certainly trying to create the impression that this is realistic, but it’s a fabrication.” Marc Platt, the film’s executive producer, said that although it “does contain composite and conflated scenes and representative characters and dialogue, we’ve worked very hard to be fair. If individuals feel they’re wrongly portrayed, that’s obviously of concern. We’ve portrayed the essence of the truth of these events. Our intention was not in any way to be political or present a point of view.”
The former Clinton aides voiced their objections in letters to Robert Iger, chief executive of ABC’s corporate parent, Walt Disney Co., but the network refused to make changes or to give them advance copies of the movie. They were not interviewed by ABC; it hired as a co-executive producer Thomas Kean, the Republican who chaired the Sept. 11 commission, but no Democratic members of the panel.
“In an undertaking this gargantuan,” Platt said, “it’s impossible to interview every single person available, and we didn’t believe we needed to.” He said that “maybe I’m naive” in thinking that hiring only Kean would not prompt criticism of a political slant.
The fierceness of the debate reflects a recognition that a $40 million miniseries – whose cast includes Harvey Keitel, Patricia Heaton and Penny Johnson Jerald – can damage Clinton’s legacy in the anti-terrorism fight on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The assault on “The Path to 9/11” assumed the trappings of a campaign Wednesday. Four senior House Democrats – John Conyers Jr., Jane Harman, John Dingell and Louise Slaughter – have written Iger to demand that the inaccuracies be corrected. Spurred by the Center for American Progress, which is headed by Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, 25,000 people have sent letters of protest to ABC.
(More Proof of the Vast Left Wing control of the Media)School bus driver charged with drunken driving
Associated Press
NEW ALBANY – School district officials suspended a bus driver after her weekend arrest on a charge of being drunk while transporting 13 cheerleaders and their coach.
The cheerleading team from New Albany High School was on a bus returning Friday night from a football game against Jennings County in North Vernon when the team’s coach became concerned because the driver seemed confused and was driving erratically, said Tony Bennett, assistant to the superintendent for operations for the New Albany-Floyd County schools.
The coach persuaded the driver, Sylvia Cooke, to exit from Interstate 65 and stop at a gas station near Uniontown, where state police were called, he said. Cooke, 60, was arrested on a drunken driving charge after a test found she had a blood-alcohol level of 0.19 percent, more than twice the state’s legal limit to drive of 0.08 percent, according to state police.
She was released Saturday from the Jackson County Jail on $700 bond. Cooke could not be located for comment because no home telephone number is listed in her name. Bennett said that Cooke, who had driven a daily bus route for New Albany High School for the past 18 months, has been suspended while the school district investigates her arrest.
(Being a Church Bus Driver, I understand.)
Teen slain in Kokomo attempted robbery
Associated Press
KOKOMO – A man who took a gun when he answered a knock on his door shot two would-be teenage robbers early Tuesday, killing one and wounding another, according to police. Howard County sheriff’s deputies responding to a report of shots fired about 12:30 a.m. found a 16-year-old boy lying near the street in a pool of blood.
The teenager, identified as Nathan Marcus Paul Smith of Kokomo, died at the scene.
Lt. Greg Hargrove said Smith had suffered a gunshot wound to the chest. Justin Smith, 17, of Peru, was treated for a gunshot wound to the knee a short time later at a local hospital, where he acknowledged to investigators his role in the robbery attempt, police said.
He was not immediately charged and was scheduled to undergo surgery Wednesday at an Indianapolis hospital. The home’s resident, Michael A. Slonaker, 61, told investigators he heard someone knocking on his front door and that he armed himself with a handgun before answering.
He told police that when he opened the door, two males – one with a shotgun and one with a baseball bat – were standing on the porch. Detectives later found a shotgun and a baseball bat on the ground near his front porch. Slonaker fired two shots at the teens, who police said are apparently not related.
“Slonaker is licensed to carry a firearm,” Sheriff Marty Talbert said.
“However, a permit is not required to possess a handgun in your own home, or on your own property.”
(Guess Kokomo is not the place you want to rob old men.)
