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Clinton plots comeback

Joanna Walters

The row over the docu-drama The Path to 9/11, has revealed Bill Clinton as a man in the middle of trying to pull off a dramatic comeback.

IT WAS the week he came out fighting. Bill Clinton's extraordinary assault on the makers of a dramatised 9/11 documentary which portrayed his administration as failing to prevent the terror attacks, was the most public example of a three-pronged effort — to protect his own presidential legacy, to relaunch himself as a world statesman, and to make himself a viable First Gentleman should his wife Hillary achieve her White House ambitions.

The publicity onslaught was launched by Mr. Clinton following the screening of the drama-documentary The Path to 9/11, which suggested that he failed to prevent the September 11 terrorist attacks because he was distracted by the Monica Lewinsky affair.

The programme's timing could not have been worse for Mr. Clinton — he is trying to rebuild his reputation as a world statesman, while his wife is trying to gather support as the next Democratic presidential candidate.

The programme included fictional scenes depicting his senior team dithering over whether to kill Osama bin Laden in the late 1990s and implied that their failure to do so left him free to plot the events of 9/11. Mr. Clinton, his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, his security chief Sandy Berger and American Airlines are angry at the "complete fabrications" in the programme — Mr. Berger and AA are considering lawsuits — which implied that they let the terrorists slip through their fingers.

The row over the political slant of The Path to 9/11 intensified when it emerged that some of the key programme-makers are active in America's conservative and right-wing evangelical movements.

The row has revealed the former President as a man in the middle of trying to pull off a dramatic political comeback. Mr. Clinton's team insists he is angry about The Path to 9/11 chiefly because of its timing to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary and because it gives viewers a sense that it replicates true events. "But the big picture is that Clinton is reshaping his legacy and he cannot allow a smear like this to go without fierce rebuttal," one source close to Ms. Hillary Clinton's campaign team said.As soon as he gets the ABC controversy stamped on, Mr. Clinton will be straight back on the comeback trail to power, his supporters insist. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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