So far so good.
There will always be detractors for such events. Though their stated reasons vary, their underlying motivations are usually political.
I applaud your efforts to present, in an uninterrupted format, a view of what we and the rest of the non Islamic world are up against.
Clearly, it is a bid for World domination by the Islamic extremists. It is also evident that the Muslim world is "ripe" for this type of rhetoric. Just as Austria and Germany were ready for Hitler to tell them they were "chosen people" in 1933, and lead them willingly down the path of Naziism and their quest for world power.
The American people need to understand this is a fight to the death. They must be informed as to what happened and why. So they can begin to finally understand the nature and true intent of the enemy.
Part 2 should prove interesting.

If ABC was aware that George Tenet was responsible for stopping the efforts to grab Osama bin Laden why do they present a movie that falsely portrays Sandy Burger and
Bill Clinton as being afraid to authorize the operation?
Isn't that blantantly rewriting history?
It seems to me that it would have been more cinematic to protray the truth by showing Bill Clinton ordering submarines to be on stand-by to fire cruise missiles at bin Laden which he actually did and which obviously proves he was not treating terrorism like a "law enforcement problem' but like a real war.
The failure to go ahead with these attacks was always do to military or CIA indecisiveness not to Clinton, and in one case, comveniently excluded from the Path to 9/11 movie, to Bush's pal Pakistan President Pervez Musharraff who called of a Pakistani Commando operation Clinton
wanted in 1999.
The movie Path to 9/11 contradicts ABC news' own reporters.
ABC news is pathetic for letting this
misleading material be presented
and them tacking on a 15 minute "Nightline" show to correct the gross inaccuracy they have just allowed to go out to 50 million viewers for five hours. I would have expected more integrity from Brian Ross and company.
Doesn't credibility and accuracy have meaning in journalism any more?

Thanks rex, I agree, ABC has always been one of my first choices for the news because I could always trust people like Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel and Charles Gibson, Diane Sawyer, etc. but for them to blatenly allow this "drama" to be aired with so many lies has caused me to loose a great deal of the trust and confidence in the ABC network all together. ABC has enjoyed being the top of the heap this past year with so many great shows and intertaning family programming and for them to completely disreguard their own standards in journalism and air a movie that has already been noted with countless lies and spins on the actual facts is astonishing to me. I understand that ABE has even sent out packets to every High School in the country urging them to screen the movie for all Senior Classrooms. Why would they want to cloud the minds of these young people 2 months before many of them will be voting for the very first time if not to sway their vote and gear them into thinking, as Donald Rumsfeld says, that they are "fasiest, communists" if they vote liberal in the November elections.
I agree, ABC is pathetic for letting this misleading material be presented.

The movie showed the Clinton Administration as inept at making a decision to stop and/or kill Bin Laden. If it is true we warned the Pakistan government about the overflight of cruise missles knowing that they were in cahoots with Al Queada then I believe the Secretary of State should have had her head examined.

I just finished watching the informational made for tv movie on ABC "The Path to 9/11". I have so many things to say it will be hard to catch them all, but here goes.
This is not the first "documentary" type movie I have viewed. My first question is why are the press able to get all of this information that is/was supposedly inside information, enough to prove we have reason to be afraid & reason to be at war (at least in my eyes and I am sure more eyes in the public), yet the government (who supposedly has more information on all of these things than what the press dug up-quite well I must say-) still said before 9/11 & they continue to say about current events that they do not have enough information to act & protect their people & their land? WHY is it so difficult for our leaders to understand that America is not indestructible, is not untouchable, is not the world powerhouse, is not the world cop? We CAN be touched & we CAN be invaded & we CAN be hurt. This was proved to us time & time again. With the WTC bombing in '93, with the USS Coal bombing, and again with the WTC attack in '01. WHY must we wait until something happens & thousands of innocent people die before we forget about political correctness in our foreign acts on counter-terrorism? WHY if we are presented pounds of evidence beforehand must we wait & wait & wait & wait for something bad to happen & be so "shocked" when it does? We had enough information to go after Bin Laden & Al Qaeda before 9/11 and we did almost nothing. WE STALLED for fear of political correctness. I'm not exactly all about big government ruling every move we make as Americans but when it comes to protecting our people, why do we pussy-foot around? People died in vain in 9/11 along with heroism. Why does no government official see this? I still don't agree with what we are doing overseas still. I understand that Iraq was a terrorist threat too and that their people were being persecuted but why not start off with going after our attackers from 9/11 (the AFGHANISTAN based taliban & prime Al Qaeda training camps throughout YEMEN & Afghanistan & then Iraq) instead of other terrorist networks who hadn't posed a threat to us yet. I understand these people believed in the attacks against us too, but make an example of our actual attackers first & foremost and THEN go after their allies. If President Bush & his staff could explain this to me, maybe I would be more understanding & more supportive of his efforts. However, I am not. I believe we have just cause overseas & I believe that we must fight terrorism for our people, but I want it to be against the correct culprits, not just anyone with a big mouth & money. Why is it that only radicals like Michael Moore can point this out? Do we really need it shoved in our face that many times before our government listens to information & our complaints before they (the government) act? Come on, now. We are supposed to have a voice as American citizens but what good is it when no one whom we elect listens to us?
I only wish more people in this country would use the rights that we fought for as citizens & make our voices heard to our leaders. Please follow all information presented to you, not just what appeals to your views, to make the right decisions when it comes time to have our voices heard when elections come.

Upon watching the ABC 9/11 special, I am infuriated at the inability our democratic ran government showed to protect us. Clinton worries that this interpretation of events tarnishes his credibility? What credibility? He destroyed that in lying to the nation about his indiscretions with Monica. Obviously, he was more concerned about his political self than protecting America. For someone who spent so much time screwing around, you'd think he had guts. That's probably his biggest embarrassment, it showed how he doesn't have any. What a disgraceful wimp. And, former Sect of State Madeline Albright, what a disgrace to America.

I am very disappointed in ABC. This network has made great strides in the past several years to get the news correct. Unfortunately, "The Path to 911" is striking recognition that ABC has lost its focus and is willing to bow to propoganda favorable to the current administration. I am not a republican or a democrat. I am an independent thinker who seeks and demands the truth in history. As such, I expect a major network to get it right.

It's Ok Clarke, you can admit that you would have done things differently. No one is going to string you up for it. Everyone knows you were obsessed with OBL. But alas you again play the blame game. For once admit that you should have taken the risks.

What this article illustrates, is how each missed opportunity - whether through incompetance, laziness, cowardice or other motivation - strengthens and motivates the people who wish to attack us. From Carter refusing to act against the Iranians in 1979, to the present day squishiness that prevents our troops from completing their jobs - it is all corrosive.

The idea of having lawyers attached to shooting forces is insane. I think Patton would have personally shot the first lawyer who suggested he could not kill Germans or German allies. But then, men like that actually served this country in prosecuting a successful war, defeating our enemies - not posturing to ensure a future appointment....

Then, cold steel and hot lead won wars. Now, they attempt to win with logic, persuasive discussions and billion dollar toys, while our people are being killed with anachronistic weapons and pure determination. But stone age weapons and determination don't ensure cushy consultation jobs and seats on defence department contractors" BODs. So these greedy, selfish parasites rule and the war goes on.

Then, unlike now, American lives were more important than our enemies. Prisoners were either left dead on the battlefield or were treated like prisoners - not some sort of endangered species whose well being and delicate sensibilities mandate better living conditions then American troops serving abroad.

We will never win this struggle until our "leaders" value Americans more than those who attack us.

No matter who is in the White House.

Jackie is right on. Its all about political correctness, but it has to be "Washington Style". Washington works for itself, without regard to what is happening in the field. Recall from the docudrama, the agent who worked with the former Afghani leader, Massoud. DC would send him out, get the intel, put him in harms way to do it, and errode his credibility by dismissing the importance of what he brought in. Why do they send agents out, if they plan to ignore what they learn? Management in the fed govt is layer upon layer, so many that the tie to whats really happening in the field is so distant and diminished. Elected and appointed leaders rely on their own devices to get what they need. Maybe ABC should do a documentary on the quiet, and private "war" between the politico's and the bureacrats-there they may find the cause of failure.

I disagree with Jackie... only in so far as I do not think it was "political correctness" which stalled the hands of leaders in the past.
The greatest sin by those of us who are here now is to apply 20/20 hindsight to what went before.
The fact of the matter was/is back then no one really thought the issue with islamic extremists was going to get as bad as it has done. Yes, a few specialists did think so- but they are like those who today say that Corperations will destroy the nation state, China is heading towards a huge civil war, and genetic modification will accidentally lead to the creation of a flu virus that kills everyone who catches it. People who have a theory and if they are proven right later get to wear their 'I told you so T-Shirt' and look all smug.
The truth is it took us all by surprise.

We must make a differance between the intelligence about Bin Laden before 9/11 (which never suggested he was going attack America in such a blatant way) and that about Hussein before the Coalition invasion (which said he had no WMD's, had no links to bin Laden and was NOT in a position to attack anyone- all he could do was gloat when the US suffered setbacks).

When suddenly intelligence suggested Iraq possessed WMD's, forging links with bin laden and sponsoring terrorism, someone should have seen alarm bells ringing.

And indeed, we know alarm bells were ringing all over the intelligence community. The complete failure of the invasion was predicted in cold terms by experts on Iraq on both sides of the Atlantic.

The failure to capture bin laden before 9/11 and the failure to understand how bad invading Iraq was are two differant things. One was about a careful tactical game of intelligence, diplomacy, and covert warfare played out in an atmosphere were steps are being made towards Middle Easten peace... and the other was blundering move made by a middle management failure who allowed himself be influenced by 'Yes Men' and armchair generals who refused to listen to the clear consequences of their actions.

Or put more simply-
Would Nixon have invaded Afghanistan with less troops than there are cops in NYC?

Would Truman have decided to invade Iraq without securing Afghanistan or capturing Osama first?

After 9/11 America needed leadership.

What it got was a small man in a ill fitting suit.

What it got was rethoric.

It will take many years to undo the damage this medicority of a president has caused.

Ok. First of course I also do not understand why the movie displayed so much erroneous material. It seems to me that whoever edited/wrote the screenplay decided that since so many Americans like to play the blame game it would be better for us to blame an ex-President for "backing out of combat" than to blame the CIA, or of course the Military. Because America knows we cannot afford to blame the Military for anything right now seeing how as they need us so much. ABC may not have had a choice in allowing the "edited version" of Path to 9/11 to be viewed on their network. Seeing how respectable their name (ABC) is I can see how they could've been bamboozled into allowing this "edited version" to come to play. I can see why George Tenet could hold his men back for fear of casualties but, DAMN George, what did you expect? This is Osama bin Laden, not some random dude from AMW or what have you. He's always going to have his followers, guards etc with him with much ammunition, and a will to die. It's called preparing. An eight man platoon just isn’t going to get it. Not when we’re dealing with Osama bin Laden. Based on the obvious I feel this is something that deserved a strategy down to the depth of the situation. Unfortunately when we get ready to take this man out our people have to have a will to die. It sounds sad but true. We will loose a lot of people trying to get to this man.
Also with that being said, this is my message to Jeff (above me) maybe you already know this however, it was very necessary for us to go after the allies at the same time that we search for Osama bin Laden, because as normal the allies were funding these terrorist. And right now they have money for all that they need to presume their terrorist activities, but the fact is Sad am Hussein has been captured and can no longer fund the terrorist. So when the money from the fund runs out (who know when that will be) then the war on terrorism ends. The terrorist targeted us because we invaded their country, (Before 9/11) and they very much so want to be an American Influence free country. We cannot let that happen. Where one single country has independence, there lies strength. And right now and forever we have to make sure we are the ones on top. We were weakened which was, and is the main goal of the terrorist. But we still remain on top. But for how long?

Brian and his staff generally do a good job - but again, this report is lacking. We know that the moment President Bush took office, there was no substantial effort to track down Bin Laden. Why not?
And don't forget Tora Bora. That's where CIA was warm on Bin Laden's tracks and asked for ground forces help from current Pentagon officials. Pentagon leaders never ordered that help to Tora Bora.

OBL was allowed to continue his planning for Mass Destruction on Clinton's watch.

He was irresponsible. He was Commander-in-Chief. He didn't do his job.

Sandy Berger went in, stole evidence and destroyed it. Why?

Because they were all (Clinton, Berger, All-not-so-bright, everyone in that administration) GUILTY.

From every angle, the same points are being made. And therein lies a part of the problem. Both the Clinton and Bush Administrations have squandered opportunities that would've STARTED us down the road to success. ABC was irresponsible in allowing the non-savvy public to decipher on their own, fact from fiction.

Everyone agrees on the end results so far, but what have we learned? Anything besides frustrating revelations? Anything besides who's to blame? Or, have we taken the time to gain insight on turning the tables on our failures?

I am a registered Independent, and I believe that it is my responsibility to seek out candidates from any party that focuses on the principles and values of our great nation, and will not subject themselves to paralysis of analysis.

Our great nation is going thru growing pains, experiences faced by other powerful nations in the past, yet we have a distinct advantage should we choose to use it. A Govenment for, by, and of the people. Human nature, not denegration, is the first step in finding success. And we are the most diverse, broad-minded, compassionate country in the world. The terrorists cannot out-do our determination, but they seem to have more clarity, and one-mindedness about their goals and missions. Their PR campaigns are more forceful, yet if we look at Indonesia, reputed to be the largest muslim country in the world, a humanitarian gesture raised our favorable rating from 25% to 60% amongst the population. A similar political gesture within our government would surely galvanize our country and move us beyond where any country has been before.

Then, and only then, will we surely win the war on terrorism.

That's what happens when the director of the CIA is worried more about his political career than terrorism.