Under growing pressure from Democrats and aides to former President Bill Clinton, ABC is re-evaluating and in some cases re-editing crucial scenes in its new mini-series “The Path to 9/11” to soften its portrait of the Clinton administration’s pursuit of Osama bin Laden, according to people involved in the project.
Among the changes, ABC is altering one scene in which an actor playing Samuel R. Berger, the former national security adviser, abruptly hangs up on a C.I.A. officer during a critical moment in a military operation, according to Thomas H. Kean, a consultant on the ABC project and co-chairman of the federal Sept. 11 commission.
Mr. Berger has said that the scene is a fiction, and Mr. Kean, in an interview, said that he believed Mr. Berger was correct and that ABC was making appropriate changes.
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Democrats and allies of Mr. Clinton unleashed full-throated appeals to ABC yesterday to cancel the broadcast, which is scheduled for Sunday and Monday nights. The Senate Democratic leadership sent a letter to Robert A. Iger, the chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, ABC’s parent, saying that broadcasting the film “would be a gross miscarriage of your corporate and civic responsibility.”
I'm a little concerned that we have people trying to airbrush Clinton's legacy. Much of the outrage has come from the Clinton camp, while others on the left have jumped on board to defend the last Democratic president. Obviously they're sensative to someone questioning their actions, but it must be too much to question the motives of the Clintons and their aides. As Glenn Reynolds noted: "Call me crazy, but I don't regard Sandy Berger as trustworthy on the historical record here, as given his document-removal activity I think he had something to hide."
Be sure to read the post over at Spinning Clio entitled "Debate Over 'Path to 9/11' is a Path We've Been Down Before." Unfortunately some historians have already jumped to conclusions, who should've reserved judgment and avoided the partisan debate. Also see Ed Morrissey's reaction to the Democrat's issuing a threat to ABC: "Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory."
UPDATE: The Beltway Blogroll has a short roundup of blog reactions to the film.
UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has more roundups and observations that are worth checking out.
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