Month: September 2006

Historians Step Up

by digby

Dear Robert Iger:

We write as professional historians, who are deeply concerned by the continuing reports about ABC’s scheduled broadcast of “The Path to 9/11.” These reports document that this drama contains numerous flagrant falsehoods about critical events in recent American history. The key participants and eyewitnesses to these events state that the script distorts and even fabricates evidence into order to mislead viewers about the responsibility of numerous American officials for allegedly ignoring the terrorist threat before 2000.

The claim by the show’s producers, broadcaster, and defenders, that these falsehoods are permissible because the show is merely a dramatization, is disingenuous and dangerous given their assertions that the show is also based on authoritative historical evidence. Whatever ABC’s motivations might be, broadcasting these falsehoods, connected to the most traumatic historical event of our times, would be a gross disservice to the public. A responsible broadcast network should have nothing to do with the falsification of history, except to expose it. We strongly urge you to halt the show’s broadcast and prevent misinforming Americans about their history.

Sincerely,
Arthur Schlesinger
Sean Wilentz, Princeton University
Michael Kazin, Georgetown University
Lizbeth Cohen, Harvard University,
Nicholas Salvatore, Cornell University;
Ted Widmer, Washington College;
Rick Perlstein, Independent Scholar;
David Blight, Yale University;
Eric Alterman, City University of New York.

.

“Based On The 9/11 Commission Report”

by digby

“I think they ought to tell the truth, particularly if they are going to claim it is based on the 9/11 Commission report. They shouldn’t have scenes that are directly contradicted by the findings of the 9/11 report.” Bill Clinton

Exactly.

Cyrus Nowrasteh, the avowed rightwing writer responsible for “The Path to 9/11,” appeared on Hugh Hewitt’s show this week and said a lot of interesting things:

HH: Cyrus Nowrasteh, there’s controversy surrounding this film which will be showing in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, as well as the British Broadcast System, and all around the world. The controversy concerns whether or not edits were made. I have a preview copy, as do 900 other people. It’s not like I’m special. Is what I have what others will see on Sunday night?

CN: You know, I’m not sure yet. But as I understand it, there will be some minor changes.

HH: Are those changes of concern to you?

CN: You know, changes are always of concern, but I think I can live with these.

HH: There is a UPI and an AP story today saying that Sandy Berger and Madeleine Albright and others are all upset with this. They’re not singled out for any particular abuse. Condi Rice comes in for some as well. Why the hue and cry?

CN: Boy, that’s a good question. You know, I don’t even know if these people have seen the movie. This all started at the National Press Club screening in Washington, D.C., the evening of August 23rd. There was a Q & A afterwards. Governor Thomas Keane, who was chairman of the 9/11 Commission, and a senior consultant and credited as co-executive producer on the movie, myself and executive producer Mark Platt conducted a Q & A. We only showed night one. You can’t invite people to a 7:30PM screening, and show them a five hour movie. However, in their gift bags, as they left, was a DVD of night 2. In the Q & A, Richard Ben-Veniste, and some of his staffers, felt that the movie misrepresented some of these people. And they questioned well, why didn’t you show this, or why didn’t you show that? And Governor Keane, myself and Mark Platt responded. And what was wonderful, really, was a number of other people in the audience got up and just talked about how powerful they thought the film was, how much they liked it, how impressed they were, and most important to me, Mary Fetchett, the mother of a victim who died in the first plane that went into the towers, got up and thanked us for doing the movie.

That’s very moving, but hardly the point.

This brings up the single most damning aspect of this entire episode: the network’s decision to send out advance screening copies only to conservative outlets, and providing one screening in DC featuring only the Clinton distortions while not providing DVD’s of that portion so that any Democrats in the audience couldn’t pass them around. Slick move.

Hewitt says he’s not special, but clearly he is and there is a reason they did this: someone was very conscious that this was going to get a friendly reception from Republicans and an unfriendly reception from Democrats. The marketing and publicity staff or their suncontractors, at least, knew exactly what they had. And knowing that, while continuing to portray this film as an “important event” based upon the 9/11 Commission Report and with no commercial interruptions is why suspicions are running so high about the filmmaker’s and Disney/ABC’s motivations.

Indeed, the fact that Nowrasteh chose to do exclusive interviews with Hewitt and Horowitz in the midst of all this controversy says everything you need to know about his objectivity. Michael Moore never made any claim to being objective when he made “Fahrenheit 9/11” and he never said he was basing his film on an official bi-partisan investigation. If you bought a ticket to F9/11 you knew exactly where Moore was coming from. Nowrasteh, on the other hand, is trying to have it both ways. He wants the conservative community’s approbation and has cooperated in a marketing plan to appeal to them while at the same time claiming that he has no agenda for a television program that is being presented for free as if it’s a public service.

HH: Can you tell us where the edits have been made? In what scenes?

CN: You know, I haven’t seen the edits, yet. I think there’s been a lot of concentration on this big sequence involving an attempted capture of bin Laden, and there’s just been a lot of discussion about Lewinsky stuff in the movie. I don’t know. You know, I think that the heartbeat of this movie is there. I think people…I just wish they would just relax and watch it.

HH: There is quite a lot of attention to the fact that we did not take serious action against Osama bin Laden throughout the 90’s, nor in the first 8 months of the Bush administration, where they focused on bin Laden. It was clear from the record that that was the case. As to the specific attempt when the composite character, Kirk, is in the field about to snatch bin Laden, does that have history behind it?

CN: Well, I’ll tell you what it is. Yes, it is a…but it is a conflation, it is a fusing together of a number of different attempts. I have heard, and you’ve got to understand, we’re dealing with classified missions here.

HH: Right.

CN: I have heard that there were as many as nine to thirteen capture and or kill attempts on Osama bin Laden in the late 90’s. And rather than show a dozen straight sequences of trying to do the same thing, and each time failing or lacking the will to execute the action, we sort of did a melding together for one major sequence.

I like that “I have heard” business. So much for “based on fact.”

And Hewitt just lets it go at that. The fact that Nowrasteh just made up out of whole cloth a scene that not only shows a specific failure to capture or kill bin Laden but that shows a fictional account of Sandy Berger actually refusing to give the order to kill him is glossed over as if it’s a meaningless “conflation” of events when it is actually character assassination. (Hewitt clearly knows this and knows very well that if the shoe were on the other foot he would be having an aneurysm.)

HH: Okay. And there’s also a sequence in which there is a question about whether or not the cruise missile attempt on Osama bin Laden following the bombing of the embassies had been tipped to Pakistani intelligence. Is that based on any particular series of sources?

CN: It was based on a number of sources, yes.

HH: And so you’re confident that we did give Pakistan advance warning that we would be trying to hit him?

CN: Yes.

HH: And as a result, that might have compromised that mission?

CN: Yes.

Nobody questions that the US gave advance warning to the Pakistanis once the missiles were in the air. It’s that the movie depicts Madeline Albright as giving advance warning when it was actually the Vice Chairman of the Joint chiefs who did it. And from what I read, Albright is portrayed as being a shrewish apologist for “her” action, which also isn’t true. Surely, it is not unreasonable for people to object to this “conflation” and question the motives of those who saw fit to portray the Secretary of State in such a defamatory way when it was completely false.

HH: You see, that’s what people are really upset about. That’s what it comes down to, is that there’s an argument in this film that not only were we not purposeful, but that we were self-defeating. And that’s much worse than being feckless, is to be self-sabotaging. Do you think that’s the source of most of the complaints?

CN: Sure. I mean, these are half measures.

HH: In your opinion, ought Bush to have been acting more vigorously in the first 8 months? Should he have known?

CN: Of course.

HH: I just wanted to put that on the record, because you’re not really a conservative apologist in any way, shape or form. Although if you read the blogs, Cyrus, you’ve been working as an arm of Rove, Inc., for a couple of years now. It seems that…

That’s just nonsense. “Cyrus” is a well-known conservative writer, whom Rush describes as his friend and who is giving interviews only with right wing bloggers and activists. The reason Bush administration figures aren’t complaining is because “PT9/11” didn’t falsify events about them and they have no basis for complaint.

Democrats are upset that Disney/ABC is presenting a calumnous, partisan work of fiction as being based upon the official 9/11 Commission Report — and even further that they planned to teach this biased work of fiction to schoolchildren as a “history” of the events leading to 9/11! The facts are what they are and nobody ever disputed that the Clinton administration failed to stop al Qaeda and that in hindsight there are many things that could have been done differently. If this film had not been so obviously biased I doubt that anyone would have made a stink; after all we were all aware of what was in the 9/11 Commission Report and understood that nobody came away unscathed. But making up facts about the Clinton administration’s actions makes the agenda of this film clear for anyone to see. When a film has that kind of overt agenda, you can be sure that the sub-text going all the way through reflects that agenda, as well. The early euphoric reviews by wingnuts certainly suggest that’s so — or as Hewitt’s Hollywood mole put it:

…the blame on the Clinton team is in the DNA of the project and could not be eradicated without pulling the entire show.

I would just remind everyone of something that I think says something important about the 9/11 Commission Report and why it’s so galling that this work of propaganda is being sold as based on it:

JIM LEHRER: Congressman Hamilton, I’ve just been told that you all talked this afternoon with former President Clinton. Is that true?

LEE H. HAMILTON: Yes, it is. We ran, literally ran, to the next meeting. We concluded the hearing with Dr. Rice. We had to go to the location, which I think I probably should not disclose to meet with President Clinton. We met with him from about 1:15 or 1:20 until 5:15 or 5:20. We had about four hours with him.

JIM LEHRER: How did it go?

LEE H. HAMILTON: Well, it was fascinating, absolutely fascinating. And I think every commissioner would agree with that. He was exceedingly generous with his time, very candid in his discussions of even the most delicate kinds of relationships, for example, the relationship with several foreign countries and specifically several foreign leaders.

He had a lot of very constructive suggestions to us as to how to put the report together and what kinds of recommendations to make. So I think the commissioners were all favorably impressed, both Republican and Democrat, and very appreciative of the amount of time that he gave to us.

JIM LEHRER: Governor, did President Clinton express any regrets about actions he did or did not take in the area of al-Qaida and terrorism while he was president?

THOMAS H. KEAN: Well, he said he’s going back in his mind over and over again about whether there’s anything else he could have done and how he might have done it. But a lot of what we talked to him about was actually the inner workings of the presidency as well as many of the classified briefings we’ve been able to read. We asked him some pretty detailed questions on those. And he was just totally frank — totally frank, totally honest, and forthcoming. And I don’t think there was a question the commissioner had that he was not willing to answer, and he said, “I’ll stay just as long as you all want me to.”

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with Congressman Hamilton that there was a bipartisan good feeling about what he had said and done?

THOMAS H. KEAN: I don’t think there’s any question that there was a good feeling in the room about the kind of time he gave us, his honesty and forthrightness, and the fact that he really… we really did have a glimpse inside his presidency in a very frank and honest way which is going to be very helpful in the shaping of this report.

The white house, you’ll recall, after stalling for months, finally agreed to let the president speak with the commission, but, bizarrely, only if he appeared jointly with Dick Cheney. They had no choice but to agree:

President George W. Bush says he and Vice President Dick Cheney answered every question from the panel investigating the September 11 attacks and denied the joint appearance was aimed at keeping their story straight.

In comments afterward in the White House Rose Garden, Bush declared the extraordinary, more than three-hour session a success that he hoped would lead to recommendations about how to guard against future attacks, which he left open as a possibility.

He dismissed criticism from Democrats that he wanted to appear together with Cheney so they would not contradict each other and did not mention he had only met with the commission under pressure from victims’ families.

“Look, if we had something to hide we wouldn’t have met with them in the first place. We answered all their questions. As I say, I came away feeling good about the session because I wanted them to know how I set strategy, how we run the White House, how we deal with threats,” Bush said.

[…]

The meeting, with potential election-year ramifications, took place in the very heart of presidential power, the Oval Office, rather than in a room that would have provided a traditional table-and-chair setting.

Bush and Cheney took up opposite seats in front of the fireplace, and commission members were clustered in the room on couches and chairs.

Bush was joined by White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales and two other, unidentified White House lawyers who were there to take notes. The commission was allowed to bring one staffer for note-taking

And that was after the Bush administration did everything possible to prevent a 9/11 Commission from being formed in the first place — and then spent months stonewalling and and denying the commission access to vital documents.

Today, Daily Variety reported that there are rumblings that ABC might pull the series. They had better be giving it very serious thought. Disney ABC and their advertisers are going to feel the repurcussions of this thing for some time if they don’t. The days when Democrats and liberals would roll over as the right created lizard brain myths of cowardly leftists being unwilling to defend the country while the rightwing warriors lead the charge are OVER.

Go to Open Letter To ABC to get all the action items and instructions for the day. There are petitions to be signed, calls to be made, emails to be sent and money to be spent (or not spent.) Do what you can. This film distorts events in such a way that it will lead many in the public to believe that Democrats caused 9/11 and it just isn’t true. If we let them get away with it we’ll be fighting this back for generations. Draw the line now.

.

Balancing Present Lies With A Future Truth

by tristero

One more point about the disgraceful review of Disney’s rightwing propaganda efforts in the NY Times. After inflicting on hapless readers – who have yet to imbibe a full cup of morning java – the Worst Analogy Ever ™, in which she more than implies that Clinton deserves more blame than Bush for not doing enough to prevent 9/11, Alessandra Stanley types:

(It’s safe to assume that any future mini-series about American foreign policy will not delve flatteringly into Mr. Bush’s march to war in Iraq.)

Can you believe it?

She’s saying don’t worry, be happy, every little thing will balance out in the end, that if the 9/11 series is harsh and unfair towards Clinton, Bush will get his just as harshly and unfairly. That’s because the Disney propaganda will be counterbalanced by a future, hypothetical mini-series on the Bush administration’s marketing of the New Product in 2002 – the Iraq war – which will be equally inaccurate.

Once again, my mind boggles. It’s a simple fact: The Disney propaganda series is laced with lies, bald-faced lies about the actions of the Clinton administration. That in no way is “balanced” by telling the harsh, despicable, and miserable truth about the Bush administration’s wholesale effort to mislead the public into a pointless and ghastly war in Iraq. Real balance requires telling the truth both about what happened before 9/11* AND about the American public’s bamboozlement regarding Iraq. Real balance leads to the inescapable, if frightening, conclusion that the Bush administration is incompetent, deceptive, violently delusional, and corrupt at a level that greatly exceeds any presidential administration within memory, including Nixon. (If not ever.) Real balance requires that story to be told as it is.

Let’s get this straight. I have no doubt that every official dealing with al Qaeda in the Clinton administration wishes they had done at least some, if not many, things very differently. I’m sure each official has his or her personal and profound life-long regrets over their mistakes, “What if I had just done X instead?” In fact, Richard Clarke, to his credit, said as much in his eloquent public apology to the families of the 9/11 victims. It’s not partisanship to recognize that the Clinton administration was far from perfect in its hunt for bin Laden. ** That’s simple fact that no one disputes.

But those mistakes, as awful and as dangerous as they turned out to be are in no way is comparable to the willful denial of reality, the inexcusable refusal to listen to warnings, the insane obsession with non-existent threats that characterized the Bush administration in the first nine months of his presidency. Whatever the Clinton era mistakes were, these were not among them and they were (and are) far worse. That, too, is not partisanship. That’s simple fact.

I truly am sorry that the man who is currently occupying the White House, arguably the most powerful person in the history of the world, is an incompetent, delusional liar, and that his administration has set new lows for corruption and criminal behavior.*** But that’s the way it is. “Balance” isn’t achieved by lying about Clinton in a vain attempt to make his administration appear as dreadful as Bush’s. It wasn’t. Not even close. Yes, Clinton was far from perfect, sometimes he made terrible choices. But 9/11, Iraq, Katrina, the deficit, the wholesale destruction of science and health standards, the high oil prices, the war profiteering, the debacle in Afghanistan, the shredding of the Bill of Rights and so on, so on, so on – those are Bush’s full responsibility. He created many of them out of empty air. They are his fault.

And that is unfortunate. Very unfortunate. Because Bush has no idea what he is doing and he still has two more years plus to wreak even more damage, even if, mirabile dictu, Republicans lose either or both of their legislative majorities.

* Which happened, let’s not forget, well over 200 days into the Bush presidency. Not to mention the months of transition prior to 2001 when the Bush candidacy and government-in-waiting were surely also warned repeatedly in no uncertain terms about bin Laden if, in no other way, than by simply reading the newspaper.

** And let’s not forget that bin Laden predates Clinton. His grandiose delusions were directly stoked by the failure of Bush I”s Defense Secretary to honor his word to Saudi Arabia – the SecDef was a man named Dick Cheney by the way – and withdraw American troops immediately after Gulf War I ).

***It’s sheer hell explaining Bush to my 10 year old. much harder than it is explaining Lewinsky, for example.

[Updates to original post: The footnote about Cheney during Bush I was added. The header of the post was slightly changed.]

I Usually Don’t Pray …
(… but I’ll make an exception in this case.)

by poputonian

Men Offer Twist To Simpson Case
Pair’s legal maneuver could force ex-football star to pay for slayings

On Tuesday, attorney Jonathan Polak filed a petition in California Superior Court in an attempt to make Simpson cough up $33.5 million for the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.
…
So how are Polak and colleague Karl Manders going to collect?

They want Simpson to sign over his “right of publicity” to Fred Goldman.

The petition, believed to be the first of its kind, would place Goldman in charge of any attempts to make money off of Simpson’s name, image, voice or likeness. For example, any profit Simpson made from signing autographs would go to Goldman.
…
Sound crazy?
…
“You could do it,” agreed Alan Ross, an intellectual property attorney at Bricker & Eckler LLP cq in Cleveland. “It’s a little scary to think about doing it. It’s a different kind of concept.”

By law, a person’s right of publicity is considered an intangible property. That’s opposed to a tangible property, such as a car or a house.

Under California law, intangible property and tangible property are one in the same.

Oh please, Dear God, please let Fred Goldman’s attorneys prevail in this case.

Dear New York Times

by tristero

Dear New York Times,

It’s quite true, as Think Progress says, that in your review you have repeated a lie about the 9/11 commission report perpetrated in Disney’s $30,000,000 plus exercise in rightwing propoaganda. But what the hell is this supposed to mean?

In 2001 President Bush and his newly appointed aides had ample warning, including a briefing paper titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” and they failed to take it seriously enough, but their missteps are not equal [to the Clinton administration’s]. It’s like focusing blame for a school shooting at the beginning of the school year on the student’s new home room teacher; the adults who watched the boy torment classmates and poison small animals knew better.

This is about the worst analogy I’ve read outside of a Thomas Friedman column. Suffice it to say that while those fighting bin Laden in the Clinton administration most certainly were knowledgeable adults, any homeroom teacher so utterly incompetent as George W. Bush wouldn’t last two days.

Please correct your mistake and please permit your reviewer the opportunity to explore a new career path.

Love,

Tristero

(ht: Atrios for the Think Progress link.)

You Want A Piece ‘O Us?

by digby

The senate Democratic leadership has released a scathing letter to Robert Iger, president of ABC. Americablog has the whole thing posted, but this passage is just amazing:

Disney and ABC claim this program to be based on the 9/11 Commission Report and are using that assertion as part of the promotional campaign for it. The 9/11 Commission is the most respected American authority on the 9/11 attacks, and association with it carries a special responsibility. Indeed, the very events themselves on 9/11, so tragic as they were, demand extreme care by any who attempt to use those events as part of an entertainment or educational program. To quote Steve McPhereson, president of ABC Entertainment, “When you take on the responsibility of telling the story behind such an important event, it is absolutely critical that you get it right.”

Unfortunately, it appears Disney and ABC got it totally wrong.

[…]

That Disney would seek to broadcast an admittedly and proven false recounting of the events of 9/11 raises serious questions about the motivations of its creators and those who approved the deeply flawed program. Finally, that Disney plans to air commercial-free a program that reportedly cost it $40 million to produce serves to add fuel to these concerns.

These concerns are made all the more pressing by the political leaning of and the public statements made by the writer/producer of this miniseries, Mr. Cyrus Nowrasteh, in promoting this miniseries across conservative blogs and talk shows.

Frankly, that ABC and Disney would consider airing a program that could be construed as right-wing political propaganda on such a grave and important event involving the security of our nation is a discredit both to the Disney brand and to the legacy of honesty built at ABC by honorable individuals from David Brinkley to Peter Jennings. Furthermore, that Disney would seek to use Scholastic to promote this misguided programming to American children as a substitute for factual information is a disgrace.

I wondered yesterday if there wasn’t some campaign finance issues involved in distributing a six hour blatantly partisan mini-series in prime time just weeks before an election. I looks like I’m tnot the only one thinking along those lines. (The FCC might just have a few concerns as well.)

ABC had better hope their plan to keep the GOP in power works because they appear to have started a serious fight with what might very well be the majority party come November.

.

Mocumentary

by digby

For those of us who haven’t been given the opportunity to see the “Path to 9/11,” Al Franken at Air America has and he will be running extended excerpts on tomorrow’s show.

He said they would be paying particular attention to the scene where Bill Clinton and Osama bin laden do lines of coke on Madeline Albright’s chest.

.

Mickey’s CYA

by digby

So Disney/ABC is whining that it’s unfair to criticize the movie when nobody’s seen the final version. Yet they sent out hundreds of DVD’s to Republicans all over the country to review — and pointedly didn’t send any to Democtrats, even the former president and secretary of State whose reputations were being assassinated in the film.

There’s a reason for that. I will simply refer you to what our friend Hugh Hewitt wrote last week-end:

I, and I am sure many others, have been sent the entire six hour program to preview and review, which I will be doing over the weekend. Edits post-distribution of the review DVDs would invite scrutiny of the very portions sent down the black hole, underscoring the episodes the censors hoped to hide.

Disney/ABC got the propaganda into the hands of the people who needed it — the right wing. No matter what happens now, their job is done.

Update: Hewitt makes it more explicit today:

“The Path to 9/11” is a faithful and compelling recreation within the limits of the craft of the fatal nonchalance of the ’90s, combined with a salute to the hard-working men and women who struggled against the bureaucratic insanities of that era, represented chiefly in the person of FBI Agent John O’Neill, played by Harvey Keitel, and a supporting cast of brave and never-discouraged lower level Bureau and CIA operatives who understood the risks. In trying to deep-six the series, the Clinton forces are trying to silence their story.

The Clinton operatives are also bringing a useful attention to the program and especially any last minute edits ABC might make. The network risks outrage from center and right if it airbrushes the narrative, and even from those in Hollywood who stand by the idea that a good faith piece of work should be unmolested by the PC police.

You can bet that ABC is hearing from their side too. I can hear the snarling and growling all the way to Santa Monica.

.

The following is a guest post by Correntewire’s the farmer.

Disney-ABC – Its Not About The “Overarching Moments”

It’s about a “charismatic Afghan leader” and the favor of Little Mermaids.

The actor playing Ahmed Shah Massoud (the heroic leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, and one of America’s strongest allies in that area) is also an inspired piece of casting. Actor Mido Hamada looks remarkably like Massoud, and is highly effective at playing the noble and charismatic leader. The producers
informed me that Hamada, who is quite handsome, has been the particular favorite of ladies at the advance screenings. ~ Govindini Murty, Human Events, August 22, 2006.

I’ll bet he is. And maybe he’ll marry The Little Mermaid at the end of the story too. I hope so because the Little Mermaid is pretty and because I like pretty happy endings as much as the next history action movie fan. After the docu-thriller-movie-mini-series-event is over – whenever that is – me and Michael Ledeen and David Horowitz and Peggy Noonan are gonna hop in Peg’s Nassau County Seclusion-3D Urban Camo-Pattern Hummer with UTV Floor Mount Kalashnikov Assault Weapon Rack and heated Sheepskin Rumble Seat and thunder on down the parkway to the local All-American drive through fast food slop-shoot for some Happy History Meals and our free ABC-Disney United Front Supreme Council for the Defense of the Motherland moveable mujahidin freedom fighter action hero figure sets which come free with each patriotic ABC/Disney Happy History Meal purchase.

You can bet your liberal ass on it.

And since this all happens in the composite historical past characterized as the past-future I will recount for you now what happened next/then:

First: Me and my friends went to the fast food window where our friend Republican 9/11 commission chairman Tom Kean works like a regular guy at night when he isn’t pumping gas at the Hess station with his buddy Khalid bin Mahfouz who is – supposedly – “married to one of Osama bin Laden’s sisters”. Or at least thats what some guy from Fortune Magazine told me:

Five Degrees Of Osama
By Nicholas Stein
February 3, 2003
(FORTUNE Magazine) – In December, President Bush named Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, chairman of an independent commission examining the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But FORTUNE has learned that Kean appears to have a bizarre link to the very terror network he’s investigating–al Qaeda.

Here’s how the dots connect: Kean is a director of petroleum giant Amerada Hess, which in 1998 formed a joint venture–known as Delta Hess–with Delta Oil, a Saudi Arabian company, to develop oil fields in Azerbaijan. One of Delta’s backers is Khalid bin Mahfouz, a shadowy Saudi patriarch married to one of Osama bin Laden’s sisters. Mahfouz, who is suspected of funding charities linked to al Qaeda, is even named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by families of Sept. 11 victims. True, Hess is hardly the only company to cross paths with Mahfouz: He has shown up in dealings with, among others, ultra-secretive investment firm Carlyle Group and BCCI, the lender toppled by fraud in 1992. Kean, who was unavailable for comment, may not have been aware of the Mahfouz connection.

But Hess spokesman Carl Tursi did reveal another interesting coincidence: Three weeks before Kean’s appointment, Hess severed its ties with Delta.

Whatever. I don’t know any of the bin Laden sisters and I mind my own business. And I didn’t drive all the way to Massapequa for a freakin’ seminar on character assasination and conspiracy theory from those socialist appeasers at Fortune Magazine. No, by God and creeping baby Jeziss I wanted my action heroes and my Freedom Fries and my All American Cheeseburger and my Corn Syrup Cola and I wanted it all in a nice neat cleanly folded bag with proper condiments and corporate endorsements packed approprietly therein with respect. All ready to go. And thanks to ABC-Disney and my regular buddy Tom working the drive through window at All american that is exactly what I got. Tom makes the fry machine run on time. That’s what I like about Tom.

So, as I was saying: we got our ABC-Disney Historical Happy Meal and Northern Alliance moveable action hero figures from Tom just like we wanted them. And Tom did us right.

Horowitz got the Junbish-i Milli-yi Islami-yi Afghanistan (National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan) former communist leader Abdul Rashid Dostum action hero figure with Uzbek militiaman bodyguard and a redeemable coupon for full control of the city of Mazar-i Sharif. Cool, comrade.

Michael Ledeen got his hands on the Shia Party Hizb-i Wahdat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan (Islamic Unity Party of Afghanistan) commander Muhammad Muhaqqiq action hero figure with Hazara ethnic trader routes and considerable military and financial backing from Iran (which I think is what Ledeen was really looking for in the
first place.)

I got the Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi Afghanistan (Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan) Abdul Rasul Sayyaf Muslim Brotherhood Arab foreign freedom fighter action figure with wealthy Saudi investor assistance set. Also comes with a Masters degree from Al-Azhar University and two suspicious looking, supposedly
Moroccan, assassins.

As you might expect, Peggy would get the handsome Jamiat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan (Islamic Party of Afghanistan) Sunni Moslem Ahmad Shah Massoud “Lion of Panjshir” action hero figure. Comes with a gilded handmade Ronald Reagan Legacy Project Islamic prayer mat signed by Oliver North and a valuable mail-order Stinger missile recovery options package. And some assorted guns and money and tanks from Iran and Russia too. And a signed 8×10 glossy of Charlie Wilson’s girlfriend Snowflake relaxing in a fishnet hammock.

I figured Peggy would score the Lion of Panjshir action hero figure set. Afterall, she already has the Little Mermaid figure – she keeps it in an aquarium at home with her talking dolphin – so i guess that will work out pretty good in the end for all parties concerned.

Anyway, if you want to get the whole Northern Alliance (United Front) moveable mujahidin action hero set you can just visit your local participating fast food All-american franchise each night following the ABC TV mini-series and get more action figures and then just keep coming back until you have all the action figures you want for your very own. Collect them all! The complete set!

Ledeen even went back and bought a second happy meal for his Airedale after the first night just so he could keep the Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan (Islamic Movement of Afghanistan) Ayatollah Muhammad Asif Muhsini Shia party action hero clerical figure with the General Anwari commander and Jamiat allies accessories. Comes with redeemable coupons for future Iranian weapons caches too. Excellent!

I think Ledeen just went back for seconds so he could have two action hero jihadi figures with additional backing from Iran so that when he went over to play at Bill Kristols house he’d have more Iranian backed guys in the bag than Kristol. He’s pretty obsessed with that Iran stuff ya know. I don’t even think he really even cares if the Lion of Panjshir gets to marry the Little Mermaid in the end.

One time he even told me in confidence that he thought that there should be a ABC history mimi-series and Disney moveable action figure set of himself. I believed him too. His dad even invented the air conditioner for Walt Disney!

Bet you didn’t know that did you? Small world ain’t it?

He called his own action figure the “Benito 12 Avenger Freedom on the March Commando Unit” set. Complete with appropriatly fabricated perception managed intelligence reports, CIA burn orders, a stylish Italian secret decoder spy ring, and a Manucher Ghorbanifar Iranian arms dealer back-channel TOW missle slush fund which any entrepereuer can use to purchase a bed & breakfast in Costa Rica. Plus you get a free six month subscription to the National Review poitical science fiction magazine (for a limited time only).

At least that’s what I think he told me. Probably not exactly like that but genuinly something of like that. Afterall, this report is sort of a drama-docu historical timeline of actual docu-dramatic events that I myself have dramatically reported because I wrote them down so they must have happened in some real or theoretical or important context or another.

I think I’ll give away my supposedly Moroccan assassins that I got with my Rasul Sayyaf Muslim Brotherhood Arab foreign freedom fighter action figure set to Kristol so he can make them fight his Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad moveable action villian anti-hero figure that he won at the AIPAC Gefilte Fish Passover Brunch – whenever that was – and keeps to this very day in a cage on his desk at work as a constant reminder of things to do.

That should make Ledeen jealous too since he doesn’t have any supposedly Moroccan assassins as yet. As far as I know.

I don’t like Horowitz too much. He’s kind of a weird whiny little nerd who hangs around the college campus trying to screw anything that moves. And that ain’t right. So I usually don’t talk to him much and he used to be a communist Leninist race baiter too. As I recall he was the lead guitarist for Andy Warhol’s Underground Weather Factory for may critical years in the 60’s.

So you understand.

I like Peggy though. Sometimes Peg comes over to my house and we play kickass all-American suburban garage band biker band records and play with my Southern Baptist Convention blow-mold Jesus action hero figure and Nativity scene which I leave laying around until about the middle of March becuae I just can’t let go sometimes of that Christmas warrior spirit. And then sometimes she roots through the bottom of my closet for my chocolate brown Nubucks which she likes to cuddle and fall asleep with on my Kevlar upholstered anti-terror sofa.

I’m not really sure what’s up with the shoe thing but I find charming in a kind of manly heterosexual heaving chest of conquest manner and – let me tell you my friend – if you haven’t been strirred by the sight of lovely Peggy N. curled up on a sofa in a short little tartan skirt clutching a pair of brown Nubuck shoes to her pearly bossom while some garage band roars like a wild suburban beast from the rafters well then you ain’t really lived in America as a real vital American.

Would I just make something like that up? I don’t think so.

So where was I. Oh yeah, the ABC-Disney heroic action thriller docudrama mini-series event and the glowing review in Human Events magazine by Govindini Murty. And by the way, what the hell kind of name is Govindini Murty anyway? I don’t like the sounds of that to tell you the truth.

But that doesn’t matter because Human Events magazine is a non-partisan publication and I respect their right to publish the opinions of people with suspicious sounding names.

As I said earlier: my historical pre-emptive recollections of the people and events and “overarching moments” I describe above, which follow the ABC-Disney documentary “the Path to 911,” are completely true and accurate as I see them in a composite pre-emptive retrospective documatary dramatic info-tainment context. Obviously I can’t tell you that everything I have recounted above will occur because it hasn’t been completely vetted yet.

But when and if it is vetted, well, then, I feel that I will be completely vetted and vindicated despite what our countries enemies would like to have people believe.

—- the farmer

UPDATE: Some are requesting that I or someone else re-cut and edit this post. My previous premptive recollection involving Peggy Noonan’s visits to my home may be slightly exaggerated (they are not slander) and/or intentionally mischaracterized as it comes to my intentional attention at this pivitol moment. To clarify: I have never actually left my Nativity scene standing as late as of March of any given year and I am very sorry for any confusion or misconceptions or religious sensitivities that I may have offended with respect to this journalistic oversight. It was a joke and a poor one at that.

I don’t really know a lot about what is being said at this time by critics and partisans. I just know that what I have said is what I have said and if partisans are saying something different that doesn’t dissuade me from telling the truth because I am non-partisan.

What more can be said?

—– tf

For Those Who Have Been Wondering

by digby

Text of the letter Clinton’s lawyer sent to Bob Iger of ABC