TUESDAY'S LETTERS: Bronstein and BALCO, Nowrasteh's Op-Ed

By: E&P Staff In today's letters, readers take issue with Cyrus Nowrasteh's defense of "The Path to 9/11" in a newspaper opinion piece, and a reader wonders (facetiously) where Phil Bronstein stands on the publication of national security information.

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'Path to 9/11 Paved With Lies?

Great piece on Nowrasteh. An agenda-driven, brazen, baldfaced liar if there ever was one.

"In his column, Nowrasteh claims that the 'only intention' of the film was to show how early warnings of terror attacks might be ignored. He likened the movie's purprose to his watchdog hero in the script, John O'Neill of the FBI." -- E&P

Yes, swallow that and I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. What a great country this is to permit liars like this guy to have a newspaper column. We love E&P.

J. Barry



Among the statements-that-will-not-stand by Cyrus Nowrasteh, as cited from his WSJ Online defense of "The Path to 9/11' ABC movie, there is this one:

"'The Path to 9/11' was set in the time before the event, and in a world in which no party had the political will to act. The principals did not know then what we know now. It is also indisputable that Bill Clinton entered office a month before the first attack on the World Trade Center. Eight years then went by, replete with terrorist assaults on Americans and American interests overseas. George W. Bush was in office eight months before 9/11. Those who actually watched the entire miniseries know that he was given no special treatment."

Leaving aside the fact that there was a clearly discernible if somewhat subliminal political agenda threaded throughout the movie, the claim that "no special treatment" was given President Bush and aides is demonstrably false.

To draw one obvious contrast, the September 10 portion managed to splice in shots of President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky while peddling the line that officials at the highest level were distracted in the summer of 1998 and/or reluctant to take timely and effective military action against al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

Was it beyond the imagination of the screenwriters when focusing on August 2001 -- and the August 6 PDB (president's daily brief from the CIA) that included a section entitled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S." -- to do more than show NSC adviser Condi Rice perusing the text? How was the viewer audience expected to make a connection between the primary "consumer" of the briefing, say, and the fact that he was in Crawford, Texas in August?

What about a background shot of President Bush clearing brush on his ranch; or an enlarged real-time newspaper headline that flagged his emerging habit of spending an abnormally high number of vacation days away from the White House down in Texas? This could have suggested that the Bush White House might not have been functioning on all cylinders in the month of August 2001. ...

William E. Jackson, Jr.
Davidson, N.C.



Regarding: "'The writer was a conservative hatchetman,' Nowrasteh writes." That's not entirely correct. In the interest of full disclosure, it was more like, "the writer was a purely partisan conservative hatchetman with insufficient interest in accuracy or honesty, who intended to mislead and deceive the American people just prior to congressional mid-term elections because Republican candidates are polling so poorly." Yeah, that's more like it.

Philip Witak
San Diego, Calif.


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Bronstein and BALCO

[San Francisco Chronicle editor Phil] Bronstein is concerned about reporters possibly doing jail time for writing about the BALCO case. I wonder what he has to say about reporters, editors, and publishers who [publish leaked] information detrimental to the nation's security and defense measures. No, I take that back; I don't wonder. I know.

Duane Lamers
Troy, Mich.