View From The Choir

Originally published in the PE Week Wire newsletter on 29 June 2004, by Daniel Primack.


"Fahrenheit 911" came to the Boston suburbs this past weekend, approximately two years after I first heard that Michael Moore was shooting a film that would involve The Carlyle Group. For those who don't know, Moore's original focus was the Bush family's close relationship with the Saudi royal family and, ipso facto, to terrorist attacks that ultimately emanated from Saudi Arabia. Such supposition still dominates the first half of "Fahrenheit 911", but is nowhere near as intellectually honest, emotionally wrenching nor politically damning as is the film's second half, which focuses almost exclusively on the Iraq War (which was launched after Moore began shooting).



Spoiler Alert: The film begins with a black screen and harrowing audio footage of Sept. 11 (far more effective than replaying the planes flying into buildings), moves over to President Bush's reaction (concerned but immobile) and then launches into a laundry list of ties between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family. It is in discussing these linkages that Moore invokes The Carlyle Group, a massive private equity firm with an affinity for defense industry investments. Carlyle also holds a soft spot for onetime politicos like former President George H.W. Bush (who resigned from his senior advisor post last year), former Bush Secretary of State James Baker (current senior counselor), former Bush budget director Richard Darman (current senior advisor and managing director, not mentioned in the film) and former Clinton Chief of Staff Mack McLarty (current senior advisor, not mentioned in the film).



Moore doesn't shed any new light on the Bush-Carlyle-Saudi connection (at least for those who have read The Iron Triangle by Dan Brody). Instead, he rehashes old chestnuts about how H.W. and members of the Bin Laden clan both served as limited partners in Carlyle funds, thus sharing a common financial interest. There also is a claim that both H.W. and some Bin Ladens were at Carlyle's annual investor meeting on Sept. 11, although a Carlyle spokesman says that H.W. was not in attendance (the same spokesman adds that the film does not contain any other overt inaccuracies in regards to Carlyle).



And that's really it for The Carlyle Group's role in "Fahrenheit 911." My guess is that the Iraq War may have pushed some other Carlyle footage to the cutting room floor, but what viewers ended up seeing was, in the words of my wife, no big deal. Two rich families invested in a private equity fund that made them even richer. No big deal. Perhaps you could argue that other Saudi links to the Bushes - such as Saudi backing for W's failed oil ventures - could have caused the Administration to look the other way on Saudi-born terror, but it just doesn't apply to the Carlyle connection. After all, both CalPERS and the Michigan State Treasury also serve as limited partners in Carlyle funds. Are they both somehow complicit in terrorism? Are the Democratic Party bastions of California and Michigan somehow complicit in electing George W. Bush?



In fact, Moore is guilty here of just what the Bush Administration is guilty of when it comes to juxtaposition. (Note: the following argument was made Sunday morning by Gwenn Ifill on NBC) Bush, Cheney and company have repeatedly used the words Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11 in the same sentence, hoping that Americans will connect the two, even though there is no credible evidence of a collaborative relationship between Hussein and Al Qaeda. Ditto for Moore, who shows the Bushes and Bin Ladens together just enough so that viewers may believe that there is some collaborative relationship between the two families and, in turn, the Bin Laden family's most notorious member. Bad governance, bad documentary-making.



Random "Fahrenheit 911" notes: (1) There was a uniformed cop at the door, in case "the crowd gets rowdy." I've only been at one film that got rowdy (opening night of "New Jack City"), and even that didn't have cops until the very end. Glad to see my town is paying for useful police details. (2) While I disliked the first half, the second half more than made up for it. Expertly done, and worth seeing for people on both sides of the war aisle. (3) FYI 1: "Roger & Me" is one of my all-time favorite films, but I disliked "Bowling for Columbine." (4) FYI 2: I was interviewed in 2000 by Michael Moore in a "man on the street" bit for his TV show. I was unable to really answer his questions - thanks to a combination of ignorance and alcohol. No idea if it ever aired...