N.Y. Times Praises 'Path to 9/11'

Bill Clinton may not be happy about the upcoming ABC miniseries "The Path to 9/11," claiming that it distorts his handling of the terrorist threat, but it won critical support from an unexpected source – the New York Times.

The paper’s TV critic Alessandra Stanley acknowledged that the two-part miniseries is "fictionalized," but she nevertheless found it evenhanded.

"Dramatic license was certainly taken, but blame is spread pretty evenly across the board," Stanley writes in her review.

"It's not the inaccuracies of 'The Path to 9/11' that make ABC's miniseries so upsetting. It's the situation on the ground in Afghanistan now."

Former Clinton aide Dick Morris told NewsMax on Thursday that the attack by Clinton and his allies on the miniseries is "outrageous," insisting that Clinton and his national security adviser, Sandy Berger, "were both responsible for failing to catch or kill Osama bin Laden on several different occasions."

Stanley apparently would agree.

"The first bombing of the World Trade Center happened on Bill Clinton's watch," she writes in her review, portions of which were quoted by Editor & Publisher.

"So did the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen. ...

"There is no dispute that in 2000, the destroyer Cole was attacked, Washington dithered and Mr. bin Laden's men kept burrowing deeper and deeper into their plot to attack America on its own soil."

Not all reviewers gave the September 10-11 miniseries high marks. Chicago Sun-Times critic Doug Elfman called the film "amateurish" and a "bore." New York Post critic John Podhoretz called it "stiff."

But the trade publication Hollywood Reporter praised the miniseries.

In a review carried by Reuters under the headline "Controversial 'Path to 9/11' a riveting thriller," Ray Richmond writes, "That [the miniseries] also happens to be powerfully acted, artfully produced and shot like a truly riveting page-turner is sure to be overshadowed by the controversy it is generating. ...

"ABC's 'Path to 9/11' lays much of the blame at the feet of a priority-challenged President Clinton and CIA director George Tenet for not taking out Osama bin Laden when given the chance. ...

"Politics aside, what 'Path to 9/11' does well is supply a chilling distillation of opportunities lost and warnings ignored. The essence of its dramatic instincts is sound and delivered powerfully, building at its conclusion to a horrific crescendo with footage of the planes slamming into the towers and the subsequent devastating carnage."