By: E&P Staff One of the most blatant factual errors in the ABC miniseries next week on the 9/11 attacks -- at least in a review copy viewed by E&P -- is a claim that The Washington Post ruined a valuable form of surveillance of Osama bin Laden by disclosing that the U.S. was monitoring his cell phone calls.
Indeed, that charge has been made -- but the alleged wrongdoer was a different paper, The Washington Times.
In part II of the docudrama, "The Path to 9/11" -- which has been knocked by liberal bloggers and some Clinton offiicials, and hailed by conservatives -- a CIA analyst shortly before the terrorist attacks on the U.S. complains to a colleague that "ever since the Washington Post disclosed that we intercepted his calls," bin Laden has ended that form of communication and is "using couriers now, like they did a thousand years ago."
It's a good plot device but, for one thing, the paper in question was the conservative Washington Times. That paper's Aug. 21, 1998 edition reported on bin Laden's use of satellite phones and computers.
In addition, many observers strongly doubt that the newspaper blew the surveillance method. Bin Laden's use of a satellite phone, they say, had already been widely reported by August 1998.
On Dec. 22, 2005, Glenn Kessler reported in The Washington Post that "it appears to be an urban myth. The al Qaeda leader's communication to aides via satellite phone had already been reported in 1996 -- and the source of the information was another government, the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan at the time.
"The second time a news organization reported on the satellite phone, the source was bin Laden himself."
It's possible that the inaccuracy will be corrected by the time the film airs on Sunday and Monday.
For a full summary of the movie by E&P, click
here.
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