Joe Scarborough had a panel on today discussing the ABC 9/11 docudrama with three guests including former Counter Terrorism Offical Roger Cressey who worked under Clinton and Bush and was Richard Clarke's deputy at the time the terrorist strike of 9/11 occured.
Joe Scarborough had a panel on today discussing the ABC 9/11 docudrama with three guests including former Counter Terrorism Offical Roger Cressey who worked under Clinton and Bush and was Richard Clarke's deputy at the time the terrorist strike of 9/11 occured.
Cressey called the docudrama "Sheer Fantasy" and a "travesty" and how he was "amazed at how much it got both the small stuff wrong and the big stuff wrong - a fantasy of how we had a CIA officer and the Northern Alliance leader Massoud looking at Bin Laden and breathlessly calling the Whitehouse to say that we needed to take them out and the Whitehouse said no. It is sheer fantasy."
Cressey went on to say that "...if it wanted to critique the Clinton administration and the Bush administration based on fact, I think that's fine. But what ABC has done here is straight out of Disney and Fantasyland" It is factually wrong and thats shameful".
Scarborough then interjected the view that Clinton had numerous opportunities to take out Bin Laden but did not do so because "he didn't want to offend the Muslim world". Cressley replied, "Actually Joe, that had nothing to do with it and that if you read the 9/11 commission report, you would have found that George Tennet recommended Clinton not to take action because all the reports were single source".
In the interest of "balance", Scarborough had on two other guests, a guy from Newsmax and, Richard Miniter, the author of a book blaming Clinton for allowing 9/11 to happen to provide "the other side" basically meaning the far right anti-Clinton faction. Miniter claimed that Clinton had "13 different shots at Bin Laden" and that Richard Clarke was his source to which Cressely emphatically stated "that is factually wrong" and that he had read Miniter's book and both he and Clarke found it riddled with mistakes and falsehoods and that they had both told Miniter that his book was flat out wrong and that "you are not a credible source here". Miniter defended himself by saying he had e-mails from Clarke "correcting the record" and that "the 9/11 Commission bought 35 copies of his book for research".
More to come...