MWIntelligence6302

MEDIA WATCH MINI-REVIEW: A & E's

"IR: INTELLIGENCE FAILURES " (6/3/02)

Posted June 4, 2002

You know, I work from my gut a lot, zeroing in on what I sense is the undercurrent of how a story is presented...My reaction: I HATED this show....no wonder FOX promoted it!!

What got me started on the slant early on was the New York Times's Judith Miller going out of her way to comment on how Clinton never went to the '93 bomb site even though he was such a "people person" but there was then no mention of how Ari had to backtrack on what Bush was doing and how Bill beat him to the WTC... That early comment left a bad taste in my mouth because of the implication that "Gee, maybe Clinton wasn't REALLY a 'people person' after all."

Then the first 15 minutes had a lot of James Woolsey(ex-CIA head and FOX favorite) which added to the feeling that there was going to be a slant to this, especially when the newspaper headline about his resignation in "frustration" was highlighted. Woolsey mentioned that he talked to Clinton a couple of times, implying that there was little interest, but the facts are that there were regular terrorism reviews at some point, which the Bush Administration apparently did not have.

It wasn't until Sandy Berger was on that you got any context about the political atmosphere which wouldn't accept any big operation. But even after Berger set this up, the program's first half hour was on the Clinton years, with the very clear repetition of how they DID NOTHING and the "no one wanted to know" slant. The report seemed to emphasize that the Pentagon wanted lotsof troops while Clinton wanted small commando raids and the implication was that this was not as brilliant as the Bush bombing in Afghanistan would be. Frankly, the commando raids seem to be what we wound up with anyway, along with the "dust-pounding" which has had questionable results and has killed a lot of civilians. Several times the report said we had vanquished the

Taliban, which seems to be totally wrong, considering the regrouping going on and the continued action!! Then there was the omission of the GOP rejecting requests for more funding for terrorism, just a vague reference to "Congress." And when the Gore Commission was mentioned, the program made it sound as if both Congress AND Gore’s own Adminstration ignored the report’s warning about airline security.

And then there was the implication that the focus of the Administration was taken up by Lewinsky. Miller did say that everyone, including the press was doing the Lewinsky bit, but by then the slanted setup had been completed and a comment like that without more supporting info about what Congress was voting down and a nice big fat quote from Lott was just meaningless.

The second half made the excuse that the Bushies were in "disarray" (Miller again) because of the election--even though Bush was putting people in place before the final SC decision!!! They engineered the entire coup, so "disarray" is a total whitewash!

The report mentioned that the Clinton people did warn the Bush people of the the importance of the terrorism threat, but that it was ignored. The Clinton people at least seemed to have evolved to the stance that it was the most important issue to deal with, so that by the time they left, it was their top priority. The report seemed to pass over the implications of how the Bush Administration dropped the ball, which, one could argue, is even MORE egregious since the information had been developed for them...They didn't start from scratch like the Clinton people had to do. And where was the mention of what had been going on during the Bush I and Reagan years??? Apparently nothing and this was completely ignored.

The mention of the August 6 warning about hijackings while Bush was at the ranch was glossed over by "pretty" visuals of Bush in his cowboy hat and no comment about how no warning to the public or the airlines was made--finally, the whole Bush segment was quickly wrapped up and followed by last 10 minutes of WTC pictures.

The John O'Neill part of the story focused on his frustration and his being blocked by higher ups, but no mention was made that Clinton did know about O'Neill's info on the USS Cole bombing and as a result sent a letter to the head of Yemen (the message was ignored). No mention was made of how Clinton was accused of "wagging the dog" when he sent the missiles after Bin Laden and nothing on Trent Lott's comments.

In short, there's no doubt in my mind that the subtle message this show was supposed to leave was that it was "CLINTONS FAULT". The questions about the Bush actions were few and "detail" was left to the buildup of the first half hour on the Clinton years, while the last 10-15 minuteswas the "horror" of 911. That leaves about 15 minutes with commercial time, to talk about "disarray" because of the election and to working in some comments about how the Taliban was scattered, without time for any "details" of what had been going on with the Taliban in the 9 months of the Bush Adminstration preceding 911.

Grade: Hard to swallow this one

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