ABCs lies

Okay, so last night I actually watched some of this crap. And I have to say, it was a little more than offensive. The last scenes last night involved some random CIA operative(with an obvious fake name) broken in tears before Sandy Berger and the rest claiming that they had him. That before the embassy bombings in Africa that we could've arrested Bin Laden. It was so over dramatic and fake I wanted to puke. Now, thanks to the Post I'm able to appreciate that at least some of the cast was trying to correct the historical inaccuracies. Harvey Keitel being the most promenant in this regard actually had his own research team on this.

"Virtually from Day 1 of shooting, "Keitel put his own researcher on the case," looking to correct historical, character and other inaccuracies he found in the script, said John Dondertman, a production designer on the film.

That led to Keitel rewriting most of his own lines - which in turn meant almost daily revisions for cast members who had scenes with him.

A particular point of contention was a scene in which O'Neill, observing reams of Arabic documents, asks his assistant, "Do we have Arab translators?" only to be told, "I don't know of any. I'll call around."

"Keitel couldn't understand why the FBI didn't have Arabic translators, so the dialogue was changed on the spot," said a script supervisor.

On one occasion, Keitel holed up in his hotel for an entire day with director David Cunningham revising the script.

Other times, Cunningham would "fumble through the 9/11 Commission book trying to figure out how to correct details Keitel called into question," said the script supervisor."

UPDATE: This Blumenthal article is pretty good, from the Nation.