{"id":1926,"date":"2010-03-05T13:13:50","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T20:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/?p=1926"},"modified":"2023-04-24T09:25:29","modified_gmt":"2023-04-24T16:25:29","slug":"abcs-twisted-path-to-911","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=1926","title":{"rendered":"ABC&#8217;s Twisted Path to 9\/11"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"ABC%27s%20Twisted%20Path%20to%209%2F11\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Screen-Shot-2023-04-24-at-9.22.06-AM.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-16763\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Screen-Shot-2023-04-24-at-9.22.06-AM.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"495\" height=\"454\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Screen-Shot-2023-04-24-at-9.22.06-AM.jpg 1384w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Screen-Shot-2023-04-24-at-9.22.06-AM-300x275.jpg 300w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Screen-Shot-2023-04-24-at-9.22.06-AM-1024x938.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Screen-Shot-2023-04-24-at-9.22.06-AM-768x704.jpg 768w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Screen-Shot-2023-04-24-at-9.22.06-AM-800x733.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 495px) 100vw, 495px\" \/><\/a>By Peter Lance. September 11th, 2015.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On September 5th, 2007, in a front page <em>L.A. Times<\/em> Calendar piece <a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/LAT_9.5.07_PathTo911.pdf\">\u201cClinton and the missing DVD,\u201d <\/a>reporter Martin Miller gave voice to the latest series of charges from the mini-series\u2019 neo-con writer\/producer <strong>Cyrus Nowrasteh<\/strong> who now claims that out of deference to Hillary Clinton, the Alphabet network is shelving the five hour mini-series which was hyper-critical of her husband\u2019s counter-terrorism record.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sourcewatch.org\/index.php?title=Cyrus_Nowrasteh\">Nowrasteh,<\/a> an Iranian-American who wrote the much criticized Showtime docudrama <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opinionjournal.com\/taste\/?id=95001594\">The Day Reagan Was Shot <\/a>has enjoyed a second career over the last year, working the right-wing lecture circuit and giving interviews to conservative webmags like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/Articles\/Read.aspx?GUID=548C019C-3F1A-41DB-ACBB-D8B2F7FBFC71\">FrontPageMag.com<\/a> charging that ABC had watered down his original vision of the series starring Harvey Keitel \u00a0and that he\u2019s received \u201cdeath threats\u201d for speaking out.<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Screen-shot-2013-03-05-at-12.08.07-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-1927\" title=\"Screen shot 2013-03-05 at 12.08.07 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Screen-shot-2013-03-05-at-12.08.07-PM-300x166.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"166\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Screen-shot-2013-03-05-at-12.08.07-PM-300x166.png 300w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Screen-shot-2013-03-05-at-12.08.07-PM.png 417w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Seemingly without challenge, the <em>L.A. Times\u2019<\/em> Miller reported that \u201cThe $40 million\u2026 ABC miniseries, which received seven Emmy nominations\u2026\u201d is listed as <strong>\u201ccurrently unavailable\u201d on Amazon.com.<\/strong> \u201cWith no date for the release,\u201d wrote Miller, \u201cquestions are being raised about whether political pressure is behind its current status as a stalled or discarded DVD project.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Miller seemed so taken with Nowrasteh that he elevated him to the status of First Amendment gladiator: \u201cWhatever anybody may think about me or this movie,\u201d he quotes Cyrus, \u201cThis is a dangerous precedent, to allow a movie to be buried\u2026 I think the town needs to stand up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>The other side of <em>The Path to 9\/11<\/em> story<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As the author of one of the three books on which <em>The Path<\/em> was based, I\u2019m now weighing in, to suggest that ABC may have <em>other<\/em> reasons for shelving Nowrasteh\u2019s Clinton bash; a mini-series that virtually blames 9\/11 on the ex-President\u2019s failures to get bin Laden, yet gives a pass to <strong>Bush 41<\/strong> for failing to stop the first World Trade Center bombing and <strong>Bush 43<\/strong> for \u201cThe Day Of;\u201d arguably the greatest defense failure in U.S. history.<\/p>\n<p>How do I know this? First because ABC used my book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0060597259\/qid=1092955497\/sr=12-1\/002-9043938-1813621?v=glance&amp;s=books\">1000 YEARS FOR REVENGE<\/a>, as the principal basis for the first two hours. They acquired it for a substantial six-figure sum in 2005 under threat of litigation, after they\u2019d lost the book in a bidding war with NBC.<\/p>\n<p>Nowrasteh then proceeded to launder most of my critical findings on negligence by the FBI and the two Bush administrations and give <em>Path<\/em> a twisted pro Bureau slant through the eyes of ex-ABC News correspondent John Miller, who now works as chief flack for the FBI. Like Miller I was a former correspondent for <a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/name\/nm0004145\/\">ABC News<\/a>. In the mid 1980\u2019s I won two Emmys for my investigative reporting on 20\/20, and multiple awards for reporting on <em>Nightline<\/em> and <em>World News Tonight. <\/em>After working for almost a decade as a screenwriter, I returned to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/stores\/Peter-Lance\/author\/B001HD1116?ref=ap_rdr&amp;store_ref=ap_rdr&amp;isDramIntegrated=true&amp;shoppingPortalEnabled=true\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">investigative reporting<\/a>\u00a0full time after Sept. 11th.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve published three investigative books for HarperCollins on the failures of the FBI and Justice Department on the \u201cpath\u201d to 9\/11 including <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0060597259\/qid=1092955497\/sr=12-1\/002-9043938-1813621?v=glance&amp;s=books\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">1000 Years (2002)<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0060795115\/ref=ed_oe_p\/102-2053641-9124919?%5Fencoding=UTF8\">Cover Up: What The Government is Still Hiding about the War on Terror (2004)<\/a> <\/em>and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0060886889\/sr=8-1\/qid=1156224481\/ref=pd_bbs_1\/104-7122873-9039940?ie=UTF8\"><em>Triple Cross: How bin Laden\u2019s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the FBI and the Green Berets (<\/em>2006).<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>1000 Years,<\/em> which ABC bought, was read by 9\/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean, who arranged for me to testify before The Commission on March 15th, 2004. Kean became an advisor to ABC <em>for The Path<\/em> and in early 2005 ABC\u2019s Touchstone Television division entered into a competition with NBC to acquire the book.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/path-to-911.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1928\" title=\"path-to-911\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/path-to-911-300x99.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"99\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/path-to-911-300x99.jpg 300w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/path-to-911.jpg 415w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Bidding War<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nowrasteh begged me to let him \u201cconvince\u201d me that he would be the best interpreter of my work, which was hyper critical of the FBI\u2019s New York Office (NYO) and the Office of The U.S. Attorney for The Southern District of New York (SDNY): the two bin Laden \u201coffices of origin.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At the end of January, 2005 he met me and proffered a copy of <em>1000 Years (the book) <\/em>which he had dog-eared and underlined throughout. He said that he was interested in telling all three of the untold intersecting stories from the book:<\/p>\n<p>-The saga of how Ramzi Yousef, the original WTC bomber, had set the 9\/11 plot in motion in Manila in 1994, concocting the \u201cplanes as missile\u201d scenario later executed by his uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM);<\/p>\n<p>-The story of FBI special agent Nancy Floyd who\u2019d almost stopped Yousef as he built the first WTC bomb in 1992 only to have her career tanked by superiors in the NYO; and<\/p>\n<p>-The Ronnie Bucca tragedy. An ex-Green Beret and firefighter with the FDNY\u2019s elite Rescue One, Bucca later became a fire marshal and had top secret security clearance via an Army Reserve M.P. unit where he was posted at The Defense Intelligence Analysis Center at Bolling AFB in D.C. There,\u00a0 he saw the raw intelligence on how the FBI had burned Floyd and blown multiple opportunities to stop bin Laden\u2019s juggernaut on Bush 41\u2019s watch. More important, he uncovered probative evidence of an al Qaeda \u201cmole\u201d in the FDNY in 1999 only to have the intel rejected by Det. Lou Napoli, an NYPD cop assigned to the NYO\u2019s Joint Terrorist Task Force.<\/p>\n<p>It was Napoli and his hapless partner FBI Special Agent John Anticev, whom, I reported, had failed to track members of Yousef\u2019s bombing cell in the fall of 1992 after Floyd got a tip from undercover asset <a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/Peter_Lance_Spy_PLAYBOY.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Emad Salem<\/a>. It was a lead, that could have led straight to Yousef\u2019s Jersey City bomb factory and interdicted the plot which killed six and injured 1000 a month into Clinton\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n<p>Napoli and Anticev were Salem\u2019s &#8220;control&#8221; agents, but they were rarely available to debrief him, so Floyd (working Russian counter-intelligence) had to do all the heavy lifting.<\/p>\n<p>This is <a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/1000-YEARS-TIMELINE.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>A GRAPHIC TIMELINE<\/strong><\/a> of my findings in 1000 YEARS FOR REVENGE<\/p>\n<p>During Cyrus\u2019s pitch to me, he brought up John Miller\u2019s Hyperion\/Disney book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Cell-Story-Terrorists-Next-Door\/dp\/0743526929\/ref=sr_1_3\/102-8700463-9541701?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1189371264&amp;sr=1-3\">The Cell <\/a>which covered much of the same ground<em>.<\/em>\u00a0 \u201cThis guy didn\u2019t even <em>mention<\/em> Nancy Floyd,\u201d Nowrasteh snapped, disparaging Miller. It was a glaring sin of omission. Like telling the story of John Dillinger\u2019s takedown without mentioning FBI agent Melvin Purvis.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The \u201conly book\u201d ABC wants<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Later, when NBC upped the ante in the bidding war, Cyrus sent me this e-mail bad mouthing the competition:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;NBC is out &#8216;mopping up&#8217; every book they can get their hands on\u2026 acquiring nearly a dozen properties. The impression I get Peter, is that your book is pretty low on the totem-pole of NBC priorities.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;ABC asked last week if there are any books I&#8217;m interested in and I told them one: &#8216;<em>1000 Years For Revenge&#8217; <\/em>by Peter Lance! That&#8217;s it. That&#8217;s all. The only book I&#8217;ve asked them to go after. You&#8217;re it. On our project you&#8217;ll be working directly with me. Period. On their project you&#8217;ll just be another participant in the gang-bang.\u00a0 &#8211; Cyrus.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, I decided to sell the book to Kevin Reilly, then President of NBC, who had acquired it earlier when he was at FX. The deal was for a $50,000 up front option against another $200,00.00 when the mini-series aired.<\/p>\n<p>For the next three months I worked as a consultant to NBC\u2019s exec producer Graham Yost (\u201c<em>Band of Brothers\u201d; \u201cSpeed\u201d<\/em>). NBC paid me $65,000 of the anticipated $250K, but in June of 2005, due to a ratings slump, the project was shelved.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rewriting \u201cHistory\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Then, in July of 2005, as the cameras began rolling on what ABC first called \u201cthe History Project,\u201d something told me that I should get a look at Cyrus\u2019s script. When I turned to the first page of \u201cNight One,\u201d I saw that Nowrasteh had lifted much of my book, scene by scene, dialogue for dialogue. He\u2019d even titled the first two hours,<strong> \u201cThe Mozart of Terror,\u201d<\/strong> the name I\u2019d coined for Yousef.<\/p>\n<p>But beyond the hijacking of <em>1000 Years,<\/em> more galling was how Cyrus, hungry for a book on which to hang his revised story, had embraced <em>The Cell,<\/em> the very book he\u2019d bad-mouthed to me. In this new take on the truth, he actually elevated John Miller, who was about to take a job as chief FBI spokesman, to a lead character.<\/p>\n<p>Worse, he\u2019d taken the hapless Det. Lou Napoli \u2013 who had ignored Ronnie Bucca\u2019s warnings and failed to follow the WTC bombers and turned him into <strong>a lead member of the FBI posse out to stop bin Laden<\/strong> \u2013 a bullpen of real and fictional characters led at that point by John O\u2019Neill.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Unable to legally acquire my book, Nowrasteh had simply appropriated it, <\/strong>used what he wanted from it and then set up <em>The Cell<\/em> with its pro FBI slant as the \u201cbased on\u201d underlying work for his re-telling of \u201cHistory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was such a wholesale lift that I contacted one of L.A.\u2019s top entertainment litigators who agreed to represent me against my former network. In October, 2005 he wrote this letter to ABC:<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cIt is particularly insidious that in much of his script Mr. Nowrasteh mirrors Mr. Lance\u2019s accurate portrayal of FBI failures \u2013 then, by utilizing the character of Mr. Miller as a narrative device, he ends up turning FBI failures into successes.\u00a0 One of the most glaring examples is a long sequence at the end of the two-hour script (encompassing 45 of 238 scenes and 22 of 96 script pages) in which Mr. Nowrasteh \u2013 per John Miller\u2019s point of view \u2013 recounts the capture of Ramzi Yousef, the original World Trade Center bomber and architect of the 9\/11 attacks on whom Mr. Lance reported uniquely in his Book.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cThe incident, Mr. Lance accurately reported, was directed <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">entirely<\/span> by agents of the State Department\u2019s Diplomatic Security Services (\u201cDSS\u201d) and agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (\u201cDEA\u201d) with minimal FBI involvement.\u00a0 Yet Mr. Nowrasteh, per Mr. Miller, has John O\u2019Neill, the FBI official elevated to the role of central hero in the mini-series, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">directing<\/span> the Yousef takedown operation \u2013 when, in fact, as Mr. Lance reported, the FBI had <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">no<\/span> up-front involvement in the apprehension of Yousef.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cThe distorted pro-FBI slant in the script is particularly troubling in light of the fact that <em>Mr. Miller recently took a job as chief spokesman for the FBI in Washington, D.C.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It would have been bad enough if ABC had emphasized the \u201cdrama\u201d and minimized the \u201cdocumentary\u201d aspects of the mini, but the network brass claimed that it was strictly fact based, with <em>The 9\/11 Commission Report<\/em> as it primary source.<\/p>\n<p>In a July 2005<em> Variety<\/em> piece announcing that Gov. Kean had been signed on as an advisor, ABC Entertainment President Steve McPherson\u201d compared <em>Path<\/em> to its \u201cseminal ABC pic\u201d <em>The Day After.<\/em> <em>Variety<\/em> quoted <em>Path <\/em>exec producer Marc Platt as promising that \u201chis miniseries will not be a Hollywood-style over dramatization of the events leading to 9\/11.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you read the (Commission) report, sadly, it reads like fiction,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s riveting and compelling just based on the facts. One need not bring anything more to it. The events speak for themselves.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Settlement<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Finally, after months of negotiating with ABC, my attorney called me in December of 2005 to say that my former network had agreed to pay a settlement of $150,000.00 <strong>to acquire the limited rights<\/strong> to <em>1000 Years For Revenge <\/em>on a one-time basis specific to their mini-series<\/p>\n<p>Though <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0473404\/fullcredits#writers%20\">imdb.com<\/a> properly credits my book as one of the three source works for the mini-series, <a href=\"http:\/\/abc.go.com\/specials\/pathto911.html\">ABC\u2019s website<\/a> mentions only <em>The Cell<\/em> and Sam Katz\u2019s book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Relentless-Pursuit-Manhunt-Al-Qaeda-Terrorists\/dp\/0765309106\/ref=sr_1_7\/102-8700463-9541701?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1189372230&amp;sr=8-7\">Relentless Pursuit<\/a> which ABC was forced to buy after I informed Katz that Cyrus had lifted <em>\u201cRelentless\u201d<\/em> for his coverage of the Yousef arrest. Until now. I\u2019ve been silent about all of this, but given Nowrasteh\u2019s latest allegations, it\u2019s time that the full truth came out.<\/p>\n<p><strong>For me the conflict with ABC was never <em>solely<\/em> about the theft of a book. It was a matter of principal. It represented the utter distortion of an investigative reporter\u2019s work by a network\u2019s entertainment division.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In <em>1000 Years,<\/em> I was equally critical of the FBI\u2019s failures across <em>three<\/em> administrations, yet Nowrasteh chose to put virtually all of the blood on Bill Clinton\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n<p>In his fifth script draft, just days before production began, Cyrus utilized every possible opportunity to slam Clinton, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and Secretary of State Madeline Albright, but in the last two hours, on the day of 9\/11, he left George W. Bush, whose administration, my research proved, had been<em> negligent<\/em> in the months leading up to the attacks, virtually unscathed.<\/p>\n<p>The script never even included the \u201cdeer in the headlights\u201d performance by Dubya, the Commander in Chief who stayed in a Florida schoolroom for almost 10 minutes after he\u2019d been told by his Chief of Staff that \u201cAmerica is under attack.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>The missing war games and the F-16\u2019s<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Cyrus dramatized multiple scenes with Lt. Col Dawn Deskins, the mission crew chief at NEADS &#8212; The Northeast Air Defense Sector of NORAD &#8212; who was monitoring the hijackings of AA and UA flights that fateful morning. But he never mentioned the fact that<strong> at least three war games were in progress and that Deskins became confused.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Though he referenced \u201cF-15 Eagles\u201d which \u201cstreak across the sky\u201d to establish a \u201ccombat air patrol of Manhattan,\u201d Cyrus failed to underscore the significance of <strong>the two fighters being scrambled out of Otis Air National Guard (ANG) base on Cape Cod, 188 miles from Ground Zero; arriving too late to interdict UA #175 which had hit the South Tower.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>By the time he\u2019d written the script, Nowrasteh had read my second 9\/11 book<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Cover-Up-Government-Hiding-Terror\/dp\/0060795115\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> COVER UP<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>and he knew \u2013 per a December 5th, 2003 Bergen Record story quoting his advisor Gov. Tom Kean &#8211; that <strong>there were two F-16\u2019s from an identical ANG base in Atlantic City that could have reached Manhattan in under <a href=\"http:\/\/cooperativeresearch.org\/searchResults.jsp?searchtext=%22Pine+Barrens%22&amp;events=on&amp;entities=on&amp;articles=on&amp;topics=on&amp;timelines=on&amp;projects=on&amp;titles=on&amp;descriptions=on&amp;dosearch=on&amp;search=Go\">eight minutes that day<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>But they were never scrambled by NEADS or NORAD; a glaring omission left out of Kean\u2019s <em>9\/11 Commission Report<\/em> that any desk assistant for ABC News could have uncovered with a simple search on Google.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Predictably, the script ended with actual video of Bush addressing a joint session of Congress of Sept. 20th 2001: \u201cI will not forget this wound to our country and those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Per Cyrus\u2019s stage direction: \u201cAs CONGRESS stands; applauds\u2026\u201d he FADES TO BLACK.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Asking ABC to Set The Record Straight<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Five years after the greatest mass murder in U.S. history, the network that I served proudly as a correspondent, used my investigative work to whitewash the true story and spun it in a way that favored the then current Bush 43 administration.<\/p>\n<p>As part of my settlement, I demanded a meeting with ABC\u2019s mini-series vice president Quinn Taylor. He agreed to see me in his office in Burbank on the Disney lot in late February of 2006, six months before \u201cThe Path\u201d aired.<\/p>\n<p>I warned him that &#8220;The Alphabet Network&#8221; might look foolish using <em>1000 Years<\/em>, a book by a former ABC News correspondent, which was highly critical of the Bureau, and then fronting the docu-drama with John Miller the FBI\u2019s current chief P.R. man.<\/p>\n<p>I urged Taylor to fix the wholesale distortions in Nowrasteh\u2019s script and warned that history would judge the network harshly \u2013 given its celebrated news division &#8212; if it put out what amounted to a valentine to the very Bureau that blew multiple chances to prevent the attacks.<\/p>\n<p>Taylor smiled and assured me that \u201cwe had lawyers in my office each night before we shot to insure that this script was factually bulletproof. I\u2019ve been over every line of dialogue and stage direction with a fine tooth comb.\u201d But, query: if ABC&#8217;s lawyers had done their due diligence, how did they leave out my reporting in <em>1000 YEARS FOR REVENGE,<\/em> which Nowrasteh had so brazenly mined for other parts of the story?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why Are They Sitting On The DVD?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I suspect now &#8212; in the cold light of day \u2013 that ABC has come to it senses. Surely someone in the news division, which boasts savvy correspondents like Brian Ross, has filtered word of the script\u2019s factual holes up to the Disney executive suite.<\/p>\n<p>If the <em>Path to 9\/11 <\/em>was released on DVD in the form that it was telecast, the Clinton\u2019s wouldn\u2019t be the only losers. ABC\u2019s well earned reputation for news excellence could be irreparably harmed as well. After all, the average viewer doesn\u2019t easily separate fact from fiction when the ABC logo appears on the lower third of the screen.<\/p>\n<p>On the 14th anniversary of 9\/11, it\u2019s time for ABC to own up to the great disservice it did to this country in rewriting \u201chistory\u201d for its &#8220;History Project,&#8221; and Cyrus Nowrasteh, ought to come clean about how he turned ABC\u2019s most important mini-series since <em>The Day After,<\/em> into a work of propaganda worthy of Leni Riefenstahl.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"ABC%27s%20Twisted%20Path%20to%209%2F11\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>By Peter Lance. September 11th, 2015. On September 5th, 2007, in a front page L.A. Times Calendar piece \u201cClinton and the missing DVD,\u201d reporter Martin Miller gave voice to the latest series of charges from the mini-series\u2019 neo-con writer\/producer Cyrus Nowrasteh who now claims that out of deference to Hillary Clinton, the Alphabet network is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1926"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16764,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions\/16764"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}