Defamation lawyers start your engines

ABC may wish to get the legal team on high alert; it seems that the backlash to a show that may, or may not air tonight is going to be rather ugly.

From sloppy fact checking about airlines and locations, to suggestions that a President and his administration were more obsessed with scandal than safety, the release of Path to 9/11 if broadcast in its original form should do wonders for hourly billing.

The controversial two night extravaganza reportedly points the finger of blame for one of the most infamous dates in American history, squarely on the shoulders of Bill Clinton and his administration. It’s a suggestion that has Democrats circling the wagons and demanding that the program not be broadcast as it apparently was delivered.

As it is, the folks at ABC are apparently still involved in an editing process and say that all the hand wringing is unwarranted. But there should be some nervous necks in New York, for the amount of negative buzz on the project is mounting by the hour. It's a buzz that should only get worse as the Sunday network political shows get underway.




ABC is billing the two night docu-drama as the “official true story”, and as can be seen in the trailer above, the suggestion is that it was administration bungling that brought terror to the United States.

And while ABC prepares to release the show Sunday night, it seems that the problems with the project have been known for a while. The website Crooks and Liars has identified some of the suspected shortcomings things like wrong airlines identified as carrying key terrorists, leaving from the wrong airports. They provide a number of interviews that make the case that this project was sloppy all the way through from creation to delivery.

Salon has done a piece on the show "the September 11 that never was", with Joe Conason exploring the various layers of the show, one which is described as “a false version of history. It popularizes right-wing myths by exaggerating Clinton's failures and Bush's successes, depicting events that never happened."

How’s that for a slug line in Variety!

In the view of Conason, the program took a number of right wing myths and tried to legitimize them in a two night, six hour prime time television show. Key among those myths is the suggestion that the United States had Osama Bin Laden in the crosshairs, but had the mission called off at the last moment by Sandy Berger, the then National Security Advisor. The only problem with that great missed opportunity in American history is that the suggested moment, is said to have never happened.

Another incident that Salon recounts from its advance screening is of Secretary of State Madeline Albright apparently phoning Pakistani officials to have them warn Bin Laden of yet another attack. It apparently is yet another spot where the producers got their story wrong.

That it seems would make for a hard case in describing your program as the “Official story”.

More like the “Official Story: with parts that we made up”

Things aren’t helped along when your own main star, Harvey Keitel appears on numerous television shows to say “that not all the facts were correct” and that changes should have been made to the program. Oh, Oh, that can’t be good.

Topping that is the fact that Scholastic a huge American educational service has dropped the ABC study companion kit for their subscriber schools, concerned about some of the inaccuracies being brought to the public’s attention this week. As Scolastic chairman Dick Robinson put it, "we determined that the materials did not meet our high standards for dealing with controversial issues", in other words, distance, we want distance!

The reports out of ABC have it that they continue to burn the midnight oil making minor alterations to correct some of the more the glaring errors. That’s something that even the most neophyte of television directors might have taken care of well before the countdown to air time.

Path to 9/11 no doubt will get a huge audience should they hit the play button at 9 PM tonight, what remains to be seen is what the reaction will be when the final credits roll on Monday night before the 11 pm news.

If the sampling thus far is any indication, they had best lay on extra phone receptionists and legal secretaries for Tuesday morning.

The sanitation crews have been called in to clean up some of the troublesome spots of the production, but one wonders if they’ll be able to do enough to salvage not only a television mini-series but a network reputation.