Moore Light, Moore heat

The Progress Report. Posted June 28, 2004.

Even before Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 opened in theaters last Friday, the White House and its right-wing allies sought to smear both the film and Moore personally. Last month, White House communications director Dan Bartlett said the movie "was so outrageously false it's not even worth comment," even though he had not yet seen the film. Meanwhile, the Hollywood Reporter discovered that "big-time conservative donors" are funding a slew of anti-Moore activities. Following the White House's tactic of attacking critics' patriotism, the right-wing is also apparently bankrolling a movie called "Michael Moore Hates America." But despite conservatives' best efforts to discredit the film, the NY Times notes, "central assertions of fact in 'Fahrenheit 9/11' are supported by the public record." When the movie was aired at the Cannes Film Festival, it won top prize from a panel made up of mostly American and British judges.

Accurate: New report says saudi flights occurred on 9/13.

Critics have accused Moore of wrongly claiming a group of Saudis were allowed to fly out of the United States on September 13, when much of American airspace was still closed. In fact, the movie accurately reports that 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave after September 13 - a fact well documented by the 9/11 Commission. Additionally, new reports prove that Saudi flights did occur on 9/13, despite three years of Bush administration denials. As the St. Petersburg Times reports, on September 13,"with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men and left" for Lexington, KY. The Saudis "then took another flight out of the country." Because the information is so new, it was not in the 9/11 Commission's preliminary report. Subsequently, however, the commission has asked the Tampa airport "for any information about 'a chartered flight with six people, including a Saudi prince, that flew from Tampa, Florida on or about Sept. 13, 2001.'"

Accurate: Bush was not focused on terrorism.

In the movie, Moore charges that President Bush did not pay enough attention to pre-9/11 warnings that al Qaeda was about to attack. Instead of focusing on terrorism, charges the movie, the president spent 42 percent of his first eight months in office on vacation. That figure "came not from a conspiracy-hungry Web site but from a calculation by The Washington Post." Read American Progress's report "Truth & Consequences: The Bush Administration and 9/11" for a comprehensive history of how the White House underfunded counter-terrorism and downgraded terrorism as a priority before 9/11. See American Progress's new "Complete Saudi Primer" - a guide to everything you always wanted to know about the Bush-Saudi connection but were afraid to ask.

This story is authored by David J. Sirota, Christy Harvey, Judd Legum and Jonathan Baskin.