A Failure of Imagination | 5

9/12

Pineapple Street Studios | Amazon Music | Wondery

Society & Culture, Anniversary, 9/12, Amazon Original, World Trade Center, The Daily Show, 9/11 & Humor, Pentagon, Podcast, Amazon Music, Pineapple Street Media, Afghanistan, Pineapple Street, 9/11 Anniversary, Podcasting, Non-fiction, News, New York, 20th Anniversary, History, Wondery, Nyc, Twin Towers, The Onion, Dan Taberski, Al Qaeda, 9/11, Never Forget, Conspiracy Theory, Pineapple Street Studios, 9/11 & Memory

4.1 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2021

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

9/11 & Fear: In their final report, the 9/11 Commission declared that of all the mistakes the U.S. made prior to the terrorist attacks, the greatest was “a failure of imagination.” Which is why -- in a story that has never been told -- the Department of Defense and the CIA established an ongoing relationship with a secret brain trust of Hollywood’s most famous writers and directors to help prevent the next 9/11.

"What a Diff’rence A Day Makes” performed by Dinah Washington, written by Maria Grever & Stanley Adams. Courtesy of Verve Records under license from Universal Music Enterprises.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, prime members. You can listen to 912 Add Free on Amazon Music. Download the app today.
0:07.0	It's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my brand new podcast. It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.
0:14.0	You can expect things like bizarre unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between.
0:21.0	Listen to Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:27.0	Follow 912 on Amazon Music or with Wondery Plus to binge all seven episodes right now.
0:34.0	Episode 5. A Failure of Imagination
0:39.0	The Hollywood trade paper Variety has been around as long as Hollywood itself. Dentists' office have their people magazines, talent agencies have their daily variety.
0:50.0	The fun of daily variety used to be in translating it. Over the years, they had developed their own special language in the headlines.
0:57.0	Directors are called Helmers. Riders are called scribes. If you've been angled, you've either quit or gotten fired, but nobody's quite sure which.
1:06.0	A topper is a studio head. Previews are called sneaks. It all added up to a secret code that gives you headlines like back ankles' prexie post at Pearson.
1:16.0	Lately, they've toned the slang down a notch, but I don't know why. It's kind of fun. It's kind of annoying. It's kind of like Hollywood.
1:23.0	Now, if you picked up variety on October 7th of 2001, barely a month after 911, you would have seen a headline that was perplexing for a different reason.
1:33.0	A headline I very clearly remember reading myself with a, huh. The headline was this.
1:39.0	Feds seek H. Woods' help. Helmers' commascribes probe terrorism at US Army's request.
1:46.0	And here was the lead. In a reversal of roles, government intelligence specialists have been secretly soliciting terrorist scenarios from top Hollywood filmmakers and writers.
2:00.0	Huh. It's not unusual, of course, for policymakers to seek input from the outside. NGOs and think tanks, that's what they do.
2:12.0	Outside experts giving the insider's advice and perspective. But if this variety article was correct, these experts are way outside.
2:21.0	The government was getting advice about terrorism from the scribes of shows like Maghiver, from the writer of Die Hard.
2:28.0	Do you really think you have a chance against us, Mr. Cowboy?
2:31.0	You became Motherfucker.
2:34.0	I mean, aren't you curious? So where were we? But that variety article was just about it.
2:41.0	Somehow in a town where gossip is currency over the past two decades, pretty much zero additional information leaked out.
	...

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