ABC's Rightwing 9/11 movie is bunk

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 8:08 AM on September 5, 2006.

In today's front page story on ABC's highly fictionalized 9/11 movie Sheldon Rampton uses some old information from ABC's own counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke to refute bogus assertions.

Now, Richard Clarke himself has responded and Judd Legum has the goods.

1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.
2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Ladin camp and did not see UBL.
3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.

The movie attempts to pin 9/11 on Clinton but John Aravosis notes that Republicans blocked Clinton's "desperate" pleas for the power to stop terrorism back in 1996:

So Bill Clinton, rather than just breaking the law as Bush did... decided to go to the Republican congress in 1996 and ask them for increased authority to do more eavesdropping in order to stop the terrorists - stop September 11. Senior Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, one of the GOP's top picks for the Supreme Court and a GOP committee chair, objected.

(ThinkProgress, AmericaBlog)

Evan Derkacz is a New York-based writer and contributor to AlterNet.