Air (Lie)den. Part 2 in a series.
Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 has been analyzed by many sources and several criticisms have been leveled at the film maker for his apparent lack of accuracy when presenting the issues in this film. Recently, Moore issued a comparison of his film’s statements to the facts released in the 9-11 Commission’s report as a means of validating his analysis.
In this and futre posts, I will be examining each specifc point from Moore’s War room and addressing them seperately.
Moore crafted several segments in the film to show the close relationship between President Bush and the Saudi Royal family and by default, the Bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia . He paints a picture of a relationship so strong, that Bush would act recklessly to protect his Saudi friends at the expense of the safety of the country he is sworn to protect. One of these segments deals with the infamous “Air Laden” incident (as it is known in blogdom).
Since the release of the 9-11 Commission’s report, his charge has fallen under even more intense scrutiny, as the facts in the report do not corroborate Moore’s depiction of the flights.
I decided to enlist the help of Moorewatch Forum Administrator Zzip to help me with some further debunking of this depiction. Thanks to Zzip for providing me with links, analysis, and very good insight into this topic.
We will address the segment as Moore has presented it in his War Room rebuttal:
The Timing of the Saudi Flights
The war room rebuttal quotes the movie:
“At least six private jets and nearly two dozen commercial planes carried the Saudis and the bin Ladens out of the U.S. after September 13th. In all, 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country.”
Moore’s corroborating statement from the 9-11 Commission Report:
Commission Report, p. 556, n. 25: “[A]fter the airspace reopened, nine chartered flights with 160 people, mostly Saudi nationals, departed from the United States between September 14 and 24.”
...........And that’s where he leaves it. He feels totally vindicated by that.
Now, this might sound strange, but it would seem that Moore has gotten so used to editing people’s comments to change the story, I think he actually used the same technique on himself.
In the movie, Moore actually said;
“It turns out that the White House approved planes to pick up the Bin Ladens and numerous other Saudis. At least six private jets and nearly two dozen commercial plans carried the Saudis and the bin Ladens out of the U.S. after September 13th. In all, 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country.”
I wonder why he left out that sentence out? No doubt because the 9-11 commission’s investigation clearly negates the validity of the claim that the White House, ie: President Bush, friend of the Saudis, personally approved the flights. But let’s break down Moore’s statement , line by line, so we can fully understand just how misleading it really is.
Quote:
“It turns out that the White House approved planes to pick up the Bin Ladens and numerous other Saudis.
Now, this is in direct conflict with what the official investigation by the 9-11 Commission reported.
From the 9-11 report:
“Second, we found no evidence of political intervention. We found no evidence that anyone at the White House above the level of Richard Clarke participated in a decision on the departure of Saudi nationals. The issue came up in one of the many video teleconferences of the interagency group Clarke chaired, and Clarke said he approved of how the FBI was dealing with the matter when it came up for interagency discussion at his level. Clarke told us, I asked the FBI, Dale Watson ... to handle that, to check to see if that was all right with them ,to see if they wanted access to any of these people, and to get back to me. And if they had no objections, it would be fine with me. Clarke added, I have no recollection of clearing it with anybody at the White House.”
In fact, Richard Clarke also later corroborated this finding in his interview with The Hill on May 26th , 2004 with the following statement.:
Link to the Hill article“I take responsibility for it( the approval of the flights) . I don’t think it was a mistake, and I’d do it again.”
“It didn’t get any higher than me,” he said. “On 9-11, 9-12 and 9-13, many things didn’t get any higher than me. I decided it in consultation with the FBI.”
This explains why Moore left this part of his movie’s statement undefended on the “War Room”page of his website. What it doesn’t explain is Moore’s insistence that everything in his movie falls under two categories, Hard Cold Facts, and Personal Opinions. In this statement, he gives us a clue as to which category these statements fall under by the absence of key words like “perhaps” or “I think “ or even “maybe” He’s not stating his opinion, he’s not guessing or pondering, he’s portraying it as a “fact”. Thing is, it wasn’t factual at all. I would categorize this as a mistake at best, a lie at worst.
Moving on, the next sentence employs a common Moore tactic, the omission. This is where he makes a statement that is factually true, but by only telling some of the facts, he changes the understanding of the truth of the situation:
Quote:
At least six private jets and nearly two dozen commercial plans carried the Saudis and the bin Ladens out of the U.S. after September 13th.
Now Moore apparently feels like this is solid enough to put on his website’s War Room, since he found a passage in the Commission’s report that corroborates his specific language. Where he goes astray from the truth is that he omits the other part of the report that states this;
Quote, the commission report:
First, we found no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals, domestic or international, took place before the reopening of national airspace on the morning of September 13,2001. To the contrary, every flight we have identified occurred after national airspace reopened.
He doesn’t tell the viewer the ban was lifted the morning of the 13th for domestic travel, he just throws out as close a date as he can to Sept. 11th as to give a sense of transgression. Moore supporters sometime defend this by saying that the ban lift was only partial. Indeed it was, the ban was not lifted in Washington , D.C.
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against four U.S. commercial aircraft resulting in the tragic loss of human life at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in southwest Pennsylvania, the FAA immediately prohibited all aircraft operations within the territorial airspace of the United States, with the exception of certain military, law enforcement, and emergency related aircraft operations. This general prohibition was lifted in part on September 13, 2001. In the Washington, DC Metropolitan area, however, aircraft operations remained prohibited at all civil airports within a 25- nautical mile radius of the Washington (DCA) VOR/DME.
Moore hasn’t limited talking about this issue to a few scenes in Fahrenheit 9-11. He wrote about it in his book, Dude, Where’s My Country?
Quote:
“ Private jets, under the supervision of the Saudi government - and with your(President Bush’s) approval - were allowed to fly around the skies of America, when traveling by air was forbidden, and pick up 24 members of the Bin Laden family and take them first to a “secret assembly point in Texas”. They then flew to Washington DC, and then on to Boston. Finally, on September 18, they were all flown to Paris, out of the reach of any US officials. They never went through any serious interrogation. This is mind-boggling. Might it have been possible that at least one of the 24 Bin Ladens would have possibly known something?
While thousands were stranded and could not fly, if you could prove you were a close relative of the biggest mass murderer in US history, you got a free trip to gay Paree! “
And In a January 2002 interview with Al D’Amato and Alan Colmes of the FOX Network, Michael Moore said:
“Why did this country allow the bin Laden family, two days after ? two days after September 11 ? to fly around America and pick up all the bin Laden relatives, about 24 of them, and take them to Europe? Not a single one of them was interrogated by the FBI.”
Moore has repeated this “while airspace was closed” and “it was approved by Bush” story so often that he paints himself into a corner with falsehoods. The 9-11 commission report confirms that on this subject Moore got it completely wrong. There is no way out, except to omit the fact that he said it in the first place.
Moore bases most of his accusations on the analysis of Craig Ungers’s book, House of Bush, House of Saud. In the book Unger makes the case that while the US airspace was reopened at 10: 57 the morning of the 13th , private aviation was still banned at the time. On that morning, according to the book a 10 passenger Lear jet took off from Tampa Florida for Lexington Kentucky that day. This is worded to imply that the flight was a “private flight” , however, in reality, it was a commercial flight , subject to the same rules as other commercial aviation. True, crop dusters couldn’t fly. Airplane afficionados couldn’t take their Cessna 171’s out for a spin, but planes for hire were indeed permitted. That’s what commercial passenger aviation is.The commission report specifically refer to these flights as “chartered flights”. Unger makes the case that if this was just another normal flight, then why did they need to go to the White House for special permission to fly. His source for this juicy information is none other than................Richard Clarke.
So now we know the rest of the story. Moore has based his movie on superfluous information from Unger, who based his book on superfluous information from Clarke. When put under oath, Clarke set the record straight. Unless Unger can make the case that Richard Clarke was somehow tied to the Saudis, I’d say we now have enough information to say that Moore did not accurately portray the issue of the timing of the Saudi flights after 9-11 in his movie.
There is a second part to this issue, concerning the charge that “Not a single one of them was interrogated by the FBI.” Zzip and I will explore that in part three of this series. Zzip has discovered some very interesting articles about this issue. Stay tuned.
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