[Peace-discuss] Secret Right-Wing Filmmakers Behind ABC's 9/11 Deception

[Lisa Chason]

Secret Right-Wing Network Behind ABC's 9/11 Deception


 By Max Blumenthal
 Friday 08 September 2006


    Less than 72 hours before ABC's "The Path to 9/11" is scheduled to air,
the network is suddenly under siege. On Tuesday, ABC was forced to concede
that "The Path to 9/11" is "a dramatization, not a documentary." The film
deceptively invents scenes to depict former President Bill Clinton's
handling of the Al Qaeda threat. 
    Now, ABC claims to be is editing those false sequences to satisfy
critics so the show can go on - even if it still remains a gross distortion
of history. And as it does so, ABC advances the illusion that the deceptive
nature of "The Path to 9/11" is an honest mistake committed by a hardworking
but admittedly fumbling team of well-intentioned Hollywood professionals who
wanted nothing less than to entertain America. But this is another Big Lie. 
    In fact, "The Path to 9/11" is produced and promoted by a well-honed
propaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known right-wingers
working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This
is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far right activist
David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a
right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV
production. On this project, he is working with a secretive evangelical
religious right group founded by The Path to 9/11's director David
Cunningham that proclaims its goal to "transform Hollywood" in line with its
messianic vision. 
    Before The Path to 9/11 entered the production stage, Disney/ABC
contracted 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). The
young Cunningham helped found an auxiliary of his father's group called The
Film Institute (TFI), which, according to its mission statement, is
"dedicated to a Godly transformation and revolution TO and THROUGH the Film
and Televisionindustry." As part of TFI's long-term strategy, Cunningham
helped place interns from Youth With A Mission's "global training network"
in film industry jobs "so that they can begin to impact and transform
Hollywood from the inside out," according to a YWAM report. 
    Last June, Cunningham's TFI announced it was producing its first film,
mysteriously titled "Untitled History Project." "TFI's first project is a
doozy," a newsletter to YWAM members read. "Simply being referred to as: The
Untitled History Project, it is already being called the television event of
the decade and not one second has been put to film yet. Talk about great
expectations!" (A web edition of the newsletter was mysteriously deleted
yesterday but has been cached on Google at the link above). 
    The following month, on July 28, the New York Post reported that ABC was
filming a mini-series "under a shroud of secrecy" about the 9/11 attacks.
"At the moment, ABC officials are calling the miniseries 'Untitled
Commission Report' and producers refer to it as the 'Untitled History
Project,'" the Post noted. 
    Early on, Cunningham had recruited a young Iranian-American screenwriter
named Cyrus Nowrasteh to write the script of his secretive "Untitled" film.
Not only is Nowrasteh an outspoken conservative, he is also a fervent member
of the emerging network of right-wing people burrowing into the film
industry with ulterior sectarian political and religious agendas, like
Cunningham. 
    Nowrasteh's conservatism was on display when he appeared as a featured
speaker at the Liberty Film Festival (LFF), an annual event founded in 2004
to premier and promote conservative-themed films supposedly too "politically
incorrect" to gain acceptance at mainstream film festivals. This June, while
The Path to 9/11 was being filmed, LFF founders Govindini Murty and Jason
Apuzzo - both friends of Nowrasteh - announced they were "partnering" with
right-wing activist David Horowitz. Indeed, the 2006 LFF is listed as "A
Program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center." 
    Since the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1992, Horowitz has labored to
create a network of politically active conservatives in Hollywood. His
Hollywood nest centers around his Wednesday Morning Club, a weekly
meet-and-greet session for Left Coast conservatives that has been graced
with speeches by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Victor Davis Hanson and
Christopher Hitchens. The group's headquarters are at the offices of
Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a "think tank"
bankrolled for years with millions by right-wing sugardaddies like eccentric
far right billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. (Scaife financed the Arkansas
Project, a $2.3 million dirty tricks operation that included paying sources
for negative stories about Bill Clinton that turned out to be false.) 
    With the LFF now under Horowitz's control, his political machine began
drumming up support for Cunningham and Nowrasteh's "Untitled" project, which
finally was revealed in late summer as "The Path to 9/11." Horowitz's PR
blitz began with an August 16 interview with Nowrasteh on his FrontPageMag
webzine. In the interview, Nowrasteh foreshadowed the film's assault on
Clinton's record on fighting terror. "The 9/11 report details the Clinton's
administration's response - or lack of response - to Al Qaeda and how this
emboldened Bin Laden to keep attacking American interests," Nowrasteh told
FrontPageMag's Jamie Glazov. "There simply was no response. Nothing." 
    A week later, ABC hosted LFF co-founder Murty and several other
conservative operatives at an advance screening of The Path to 9/11. (While
ABC provided 900 DVDs of the film to conservatives, Clinton administration
officials and objective reviewers from mainstream outlets were denied them.)
Murty returned with a glowing review for FrontPageMag that emphasized the
film's partisan nature. "'The Path to 9/11' is one of the best, most
intelligent, most pro-American miniseries I've ever seen on TV, and
conservatives should support it and promote it as vigorously as possible,"
Murty wrote. As a result of the special access granted by ABC, Murty's
article was the first published review of The Path to 9/11, preceding those
by the New York Times and LA Times by more than a week. 
    Murty followed her review with a blast email to conservative websites
such as Liberty Post and Free Republic on September 1 urging their readers
to throw their weight behind ABC's mini-series. "Please do everything you
can to spread the word about this excellent miniseries," Murty wrote, "so
that 'The Path to 9/11' gets the highest ratings possible when it airs on
September 10 & 11! If this show gets huge ratings, then ABC will be more
likely to produce pro-American movies and TV shows in the future!" 
    Murty's efforts were supported by Appuzo, who handles LFF's
heavily-trafficked blog, Libertas. Appuzo was instrumental in marketing The
Path to 9/11 to conservatives, writing in a blog post on September 2, "Make
no mistake about what this film does, among other things: it places the
question of the Clinton Administration's culpability for the 9/11 attacks
front and center ... Bravo to Cyrus Nowrasteh and David Cunningham for
creating this gritty, stylish and gripping piece of entertainment." 
    When a group of leading Senate Democrats sent a letter to ABC CEO Robert
Iger urging him to cancel The Path to 9/11 because of its glaring factual
errors and distortions, Apuzzo launched a retaliatory campaign to paint the
Democrats as foes of free speech. "Here at LIBERTAS we urge the public to
make noise over this, and to demand that Democrats back down," he wrote on
September 7th. "What is at stake is nothing short of the 1st Amendment." 
    At FrontPageMag, Horowitz singled out Nowrasteh as the victim. "The
attacks by former president Bill Clinton, former Clinton Administration
officials and Democratic US senators on Cyrus Nowrasteh's ABC mini-series
"The Path to 9/11" are easily the gravest and most brazen and damaging
governmental attacks on the civil liberties of ordinary Americans since
9/11," Horowitz declared. 
    Now, as discussion grows over the false character of The Path to 9/11,
the right-wing network that brought it to fruition is ratcheting up its PR
efforts. Murty will appear tonight on CNN's Glenn Beck show and The
Situation Room, according to Libertas in order to respond to "the major
disinformation campaign now being run by Democrats to block the truth about
what actually happened during the Clinton years." 
    While this network claims its success and postures as the true victims,
the ABC network suffers a PR catastrophe. It's almost as though it was
complacent about an attack on its reputation by a band of political
terrorists. 

 






-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/private/peace-discuss/attachments/20060911/8589bad5/attachment.html