By Joe Amarante, Register TV & Radio Editor
jamarante@ctcentral.com

It’s more than just Labor Day weekend, when we celebrate the cherished idea of working for a living and when so many folks raise money in the MDA Telethon hosted by that 20th-century film funny man. It’s also the start of 9/11 week, when we recall the horror of the attacks on New York and our nation’s capital.

Past specials have been provocative and arresting; 9/11 is easily the most documented news event in human history. It is so well covered with live footage, in fact, that the various specials play out like a big-budget Hollywood movie. So much video exists, cut together by expert editors and producers, that it has led to the preposterous idea in certain dark places that some sort of federal or Zionist plot was at work in the day’s events. (We’ll get to more Arab world paranoia in a moment.)



We’ve previewed four new specials, and they all bring strong emotions to the surface.

Three of them — “Giuliani’s 9.11,” “Witness: DC 9.11” and “9/11 State of Emergency” — return to the scenes of the crime to tell a story of unthinkable terror. The fourth, an HBO documentary called “My Trip to Al-Qaeda,” presents a stunning and textured look into the creation and proliferation of Islamic terror in the modern world.

- Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is the focus, of course, in the National Geographic Channel special “Giuliani’s 9.11,” airing at 9 p.m. on Labor Day.

We’ve seen the images of Giuliani walking uptown immediately after the towers fell, trying to gain a handle on the situation and establish a base of operations, as cell phones went out and the populace reeled.

We see the mayor begin to get information, get to the scene to view it, get stuck in a locked-down building nearby as the towers fell, find a base of operations with land lines and make tactical decisions to protect citizens and begin rescue operations. It was particularly hard for Giuliani to address a press conference with fresh information about friends and associates who had perished in the attack. At one point, he is shown stepping back from a microphone, trying not to lose it.

“I didn’t want people to see me cry,” he says.

- NGC’s 10 p.m. documentary, “Witness: DC 9.11” fills in a lot of material from the Pentagon bombing that has been overshadowed by the New York story in the past nine years. Continued...

• 1
• 2
• 3
• See Full Story

With no actual footage of the hijacked plane hitting the Pentagon, conspiracy loons were free to allege on the Internet that there was some kind of military bomb, for example. But here we see not only the panic in the streets and at the Capitol and White House after the Pentagon crash, but also eyewitnesses who saw the jet flown directly into the exterior wall of the massive building.

- The History channel special “9/11 State of Emergency” (airing at 9 p.m. Thursday) presents insight into the decisions and reactions of top political leaders as well as folks on the ground near the attacks.

We follow the moments when President George W. Bush had the entire nation’s attention and respect during a national emergency, through interviews with the likes of Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and top aide Andrew Card.

Intercut with memories of New York firefighters and witnesses to the largest terrorist attack in American history is footage of the government response, starting with the now-famous video of Bush receiving the information at a grade-school classroom in Florida.

Card whispers into the president’s ear, “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.”

Bush has been criticized for waiting several minutes before leaving the classroom and dealing with the situation. But Card says he was glad the president didn’t bolt from the room or introduce fear to the children in the room or the media (with our enemies potentially watching).

The immediate wake of the terror wave would be some of Bush’s finest moments, arguably spoiled by the fateful decision to invade Iraq many months later and other tactical errors.

- Which brings us to the amazing 90 minutes of “My Trip to Al-Qaeda.” Try to follow this one: It’s a TV special directed by an Oscar winner that incorporates a stage play with video about research over a book by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Yeah, but it works.

Alex Gibney is the director, and Lawrence Wright is the central focus here, a mild-mannered investigative superman who wrote the 2006 book “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.” His guided tour of his research presents outstanding context about Islamic radicalism, anti-Americanism and how Osama Bin Laden and his scruffy minions operate. A few stops along the way:

- Egypt has a central place in modern terror, as does Saudi Arabia. “To understand Egyptian prisons is to understand the roots of Islamic terror,” says one man who knows them well. Egyptians rounded up political threats and tortured many. Al-Qaeda’s “thirst for blood” was born in Egyptian prisons, it says here, with impressive evidence. Continued...

• 1
• 2
• 3
• See Full Story

- The Arab world is so messed up by history, ancient “tradition” and religious extremism that, “Change does not equal progress in the Middle East,” according to Wright. So people fear not only the brutal Egyptian regimes but also the rigid, anti-feminist Saudi monarchy and the Iranian theocracy, not to mention the ethnic and religious warfare in Iraq or Afghanistan. Historic fear of humiliation is exploited by terrorists as grounds for glorifying death in martyrdom.

“Hatred is delicious,” Wright points out in dry and chilling fashion, “the most narcotic emotion. (And) humiliation sells.”

- Wright’s impressive documentary only really veers into American political territory at the end, when it seems to indict the Bush-Cheney administration for playing right into the terrorists’ hands via the Iraq invasion and Cheney’s un-American defense of “enhanced interrogation” (i.e., torture). The evidence here instead suggests that conventional questioning of these fanatics was more effective than the “24” variety.

Maybe we let Bin Laden lure us into an expensive geopolitical trap (after his similar success with the Soviet Union). But this program clearly demonstrates that Al-Qaeda offers nothing but death and oppression to the world. Keeping the peace and liberty will be our ultimate revenge.

Joe Amarante is the Register TV and radio editor. Follow him on Twitter @joeammo. Read his blog, Javajoesjournaljive. Send e-mail to jamarante@ctcentral.com.

• 1
• 2
• 3
• See Full Story

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• See Full Story

• Return to Paging Mode