My inner lawyer exults over the fact that Disney/ABC is simply upping their damages, and the BBC's damages, by constantly reiterating that the falsified and defamatory scenes in the tv show were "accurate.' But that's what Disney/ABC's guy is claiming today in - where else - the Wall Street Journal. (The Wall Street Journal, the Republican Pravda - are you people really that stupid as to wrap yourself EVEN FURTHER in Republicans?)
Editor & Publisher has the story. But suffice it to say that Disney/ABC ought to have a lawyer chat with the guy who wrote their screenplay, and who doesn't seem to be able to shut up.
The more this guy runs around claiming the movie was accurate and that the criticisms were simply wrong, the more people will believe that American Airlines let Mohammad Atta on the plane negligently even though a big fat warning popped up on their screens when checking him in (not true, though the show claimed this twice), the more people will believe that Sandy Berger is a "coward" who refused to let the CIA kill bin Laden when they had him in their sites (never happened), and the more people will believe that Madeleine Albright personally botched the 1998 cruise missile strike against bin Laden (was a guy in the Pentagon, not Albright).
That's defamation, and Disney/ABC's insistence on repeating the lies and defending the lies after the harm is done is willfully and maliciously piling on the damage.
Someone needs to really get Disney/ABC's lawyers in a room and beat them silly. They're not doing their jobs.
And note to BBC: Don't order any new stationary. You're about to become the Bought by Berger and Clinton (BBC) broadcasting company.
And a quick note to any lawyers looking to sue Disney/ABC and the BBC - here are the best quotes from the WSJ piece today:
- My sin was to write a screenplay accurately depicting Bill Clinton's record on terrorism.
- I felt duty-bound from the outset to focus on a single goal--to represent our recent pre-9/11 history as the evidence revealed it to be.
- Fact-checkers and lawyers scrutinized every detail, every line, every scene. There were hundreds of pages of annotations. We were informed by multiple advisers and interviews with people involved in the events--and books, including in a most important way the 9/11 Commission Report.
And by the way, how was it that with all those fact-checkers you forgot to include My Pet Goat (i.e., Bush being told about the attacks and just sitting on his ass doing nothing in response)? How was it that you forget to show Bush traveling around the country missing in action on 9/11 while Peter Jennings, on the air, begged someone at the White House to come forward and let us know if Bush is even alive? How was it that you failed to show Bush being briefed on the PDB (while at the same time you, oddly, included a made-up scene of Condi Rice reading the PDB at her desk, all very interested in it, of course)? And how was it that you managed to include a scene where Condi Rice on September 4 tells Tenet and Clarke that Bush is very upset by the PDB and about swatting flies at bin Laden and that as a result of his great concern about the PDB he wants a REAL plan of attack against bin laden WHEN THAT DISCUSSION NEVER HAPPENED?
And finally, how was it that seemingly all your mistakes hurt Clinton and helped Bush?
It's a defamatory world after all.
