Despite howls of protest from Democrats, and in particular former Clinton administration officials, ABC went ahead and aired its controversial docudrama The Path to 9/11 this week. The network did cut a few of the most inflammatory moments, but much of the disputed material remained. The final film still left a strong impression—a much stronger impression than The9/11 Commission Report,on which it was allegedly based—that Clinton’s administration bungled the pre-9/11 hunt for Osama Bin Laden.
We at Slate decided the best way to illustrate the kinds of factual distortions in The Path to 9/11 is to play a scene from the movie and annotate it with on-screen captions. Our information comes from The 9/11 Commission Report. The information in the film apparently comes from someone with a broad understanding of the phrase “dramatic license.”
Click on the screen below to play the annotated video.
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