It was the week he came out fighting. Bill Clinton’s extraordinary assault on the makers of a dramatised 9/11 documentary which portrayed his administration as failing to prevent the terror attacks, was the most public example of a three-pronged effort — to protect his own presidential legacy, to relaunch himself as a world statesman and to make himself a viable First Gentleman should his wife Hillary achieve her own ambitions on the White House.
The publicity onslaught was launched by Clinton following the screening of the drama-documentary The Path to 9/11, which suggested that he failed to prevent the 11 September terrorist attacks because he was distracted by the Monica Lewinsky affair. The programme’s timing could not have been worse for Clinton, coming just as he is trying to rebuild his reputation as a world statesman and while his wife is trying to gather support as the next Democratic presidential candidate .
As well as smearing Clinton the programme, which was shown in the United States and Britain to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the attacks, included fictional scenes depicting his senior team dithering over whether to kill the cornered al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the late 1990’s and implied that their failure to do so left him free to plot the events of 9/11. Clinton, his secretary of state Madeleine Albright, his security chief Sandy Berger and American Airlines have furiously protested at the ”complete fabrications” in the programme — Berger and AA are considering lawsuits — which implied that they let the terrorists slip through their fingers.
The row over the political slant of The Path to 9/11 intensified when it emerged that some of the key programme-makers are politically active in America’s conservative and right-wing evangelical movements. The BBC, which screened the programme in the UK, has said it was unaware of this, while the ABC network, which showed it in the United States, has yet to reveal if it vetted the political credentials of the programme-makers.
”For Clinton to be smeared in this way is a travesty of history and the reason the programme has been aired is not just the anniversary of 9/11 but as a major part of the Republican autumn election campaign — and attacking Clinton and his record is part of it,” said Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior aide to Clinton.
The row has revealed the former president as a man in the middle of trying to pull off a dramatic political comeback. This week Clinton will lead a diverse line-up in New York including Laura Bush, Gordon Brown, Kofi Annan, Richard Branson, Rupert Murdoch, Hugh Grant and Pakistan’s President Musharraf as part of his high-profile Global Initiative conference on poverty, HIV/Aids and global warming. He is then scheduled to be the star turn at this autumn’s Labour Party Conference.
Clinton’s team insist that he is angry about The Path to 9/11 chiefly because of its timing to coincide with the anniversary and because it gives viewers a sense that it replicates true events. ”But the big picture is that Clinton is reshaping his legacy and he cannot allow a smear like this to go without fierce rebuttal,” one source close to Hillary Clinton’s campaign team told The Observer.
After failing to persuade ABC not to air the programme, Clinton’s office wrote to ABC’s parent Walt Disney Corporation, accusing the company of misleading the public. Disney insists that the programme was clearly a dramatisation, not a documentary. American Airlines is considering suing for libel in the United Kingdom, where the programme also aired, because of a scene showing staff not bothering to screen one of the hijackers before he boarded the plane.
And Clinton’s former national security adviser Sandy Berger is also ”examining his options” to sue, also in the UK, after the programme showed him passing the buck when US forces had an opportunity to bomb bin Laden. ”It just did not happen that way,” said a source close to Berger. ”This programme was all about showing how the Democratic administration was wimpy on terror and the Republicans reacting strongly to the horrible set-up we left them with — which is totally untrue.”
Bob Muholland, a Democrat party activist and an old friend of Clinton’s, agreed: ”It needed to be rebutted. You have to, otherwise people might start believing that rubbish. Bill Clinton has to speak out every day on this issue. For average people it is obvious that Bush is responsible for the failures leading up to 9/11.”
As soon as he gets the ABC controversy stamped on, Clinton will be straight back on the comeback trail to power, his supporters insist. ”Clinton does not need a Karl Rove. He is the best political analyst in the country.” said Mulholland. And those supporters are as eager as Clinton to reshape his legacy. ”Most Americans and most Brits would agree that looking at the world situation right now, they would prefer to have Bill Clinton as president again — or Bill Clinton running the United Nations,” he added.
In the Frame
Bill Clinton may have been under fire on the screen but it is nothing compared to what President Bush is facing in a barrage of anti-government movies.
Death of a President
This British-made film digitally imposes the head of Bush onto an actor to create an image of him being murdered by a sniper, in a fake documentary whose debut at the Toronto Film Festival caused uproar in the US. Its British creators, Gabriel Range and Simon Finch, have received death threats from Bush supporters.
Shut up and sing
Pop group the Dixie Chicks received right-wing death threats after their tirade at a gig in London in 2003 that they were ”ashamed” of fellow Texan George Bush. Bloodied after radio stations pulled their records, but not bowed, the Chicks are back with a ”what happened next?” documentary update about their careers since that outburst.
The US vs John Lennon
Audiences in New York applauded during the opening night of another left-leaning documentary in cinemas this weekend. It traces how the former Beatle’s activism led to him being spied on by the FBI. In the film, the writer Gore Vidal comments: ”[Lennon] represented life, and that is admirable. Mr Nixon and Mr Bush represent death.” – Guardian Unlimited Â