Election History - Sept. 2006 - Path To 9/11 - Disney (ABC) Docudrama Blames Clinton For 9/11

In today's episode of Election History, we recall ABC's presentation of Path to 9/11 in Septermbet 2006, which placed the blame of the 9/11 terrorist attack on Bill Clinton. Path to 9/11 illustrates the expense and depths to which the right wing and corporate media will go to try to influence elections in favor of the GOP. Indeed, if there are no facts, then Big Media and the GOP will simply create their own facts in a docudrama with a very small disclaimer that the events depicted therein are largely fictional. Can you imagine a docudrama depicting McCain as a traitor and Viet Cong collaborator? Can you imagine if this propaganda was then shown on a major network in the month before the election?

Well, there is no need to imagine, because this is what has happened with respect to the Clintons (Path to 9/11) and John Kerry (Stolen Honor).

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060925/path_to_911

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On Friday, September 8, just forty-eight hours before ABC planned to air its so-called "docudrama," The Path to 9/11, Robert Iger, CEO of ABC's corporate parent, the Walt Disney Company, was presented with incontrovertible evidence outlining the involvement of that film's screenwriter and director in a concerted right-wing effort to blame former President Bill Clinton for allowing the 9/11 attacks to take place. Iger told a source close to ABC that he was "deeply troubled" by the information and claimed he had no previous knowledge of the institutional right-wing ties of The Path to 9/11's creators. He reportedly said that he has commenced an internal investigation to verify the role of the film's creators in deliberately advancing disinformation through ABC.

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On this project, a secretive evangelical religious right group long associated with Horowitz, founded by The Path to 9/11's director, David Cunningham, that aims to "transform Hollywood" in line with its messianic vision, has taken the lead.

Before The Path to 9/11 entered the production stage, Disney/ABC signed David Cunningham as the film's director. Cunningham is no ordinary Hollywood journeyman. He is in fact the son of Loren Cunningham, founder of the right-wing evangelical group Youth With A Mission (YWAM). According to Sara Diamond's book Spiritual Warfare, during the 1980's YWAM "sought to gain influence within the Republican party" while assisting authoritarian governments in South Africa and Central America. Cunningham, Diamond noted, was a follower of Christian Reconstructionism, an extreme current of evangelical theology that advocates using stealth political methods to put the United States under the control of Biblical law and jettison the Constitution. Cunningham instilled his radical ideology in young missionaries by sending them to "Discipleship Training School." A former student of Cunningham's school claimed "similarities between cult mind controlling techniques and the program instituted by YWAM
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In the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks, Horowitz led the right's campaign to pin the blame for attacks on Clinton. On February 19, 2002, Horowitz's organization mailed 1,500 lengthy pamphlets to major media outlets which claimed to expose how "the left" in general and Clinton in particular had "undermined America's security," thus causing 9/11. Two years later, Horowitz penned a lengthy manifesto for his FrontPageMag blaming Clinton once again for having "accepted defeat" in the fight against Al Qaeda. Horowitz singled out Clinton's National Security Council Director, Samuel "Sandy" Berger, as especially culpable for allowing the terror threat to fester, casting him as "a veteran of the Sixties 'anti-war' movement" who "abetted the Communist victories in Vietnam and Cambodia."

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Other stories discussing the controversy surrounding Path to 9/11 can be found here:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/09/08/abc.movie/index.html

http://mediamatters.org/items/200609160002

Apparently, there is a new documentary about Path to 9/11 brought to you by the folks who came out with the Anti-Obama documentary and had a separate anti-Hillary documentary on tap, which did not go anywhere because Obama is the nominee.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-path15-2008aug15,0,4263402.story

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Hollywood docudramas, when the phrase "miscarriage of justice" is employed, it usually applies to the film's subject, not its creators.

But a new documentary called "Blocking the Path to 9/11," to be given a screening tonight, makes the case that former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton have pressured television and studio executives into quashing the DVD release of ABC's 2006 miniseries “The Path to 9/11." The privately financed documentary argues that the Clintons, who decried the original miniseries as a right-wing hatchet job, are out to salvage their political influence and legacy at the expense of free expression.

The documentary, which will be shown to a sold-out audience at the Skirball Center, was produced by former KFI-AM talk show host John Ziegler and Citizens United, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative political group that emphasizes the importance of strong families, limited government and free enterprise.

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