Inside the Pentagon’s Secret Post-September 11 Summit with Hollywood’s A-Listers (Exclusive)
Oliver Stone, David Fincher and John Singleton were among the industry figures recruited to imagine new disaster scenarios just weeks after the terrorist attacks
The building on Fuji Way in Marina del Rey, Calif., Is as indescribable as they come – just another glass-and-concrete office tower like so many other crouching in Los Angeles business parks. But 20 years ago, just weeks after the 9/11 tragedy, a group of elite Hollywood figures and a handful of senior US military personnel gathered for a clandestine summit straight out of a novel. by Michael Crichton.
Much of what happened that night is still top secret, but we know it: One evening in October 2001, just weeks after al-Qaeda terrorists destroyed Manhattan’s Twin Towers and mutilated the Pentagon, a group of about 30 Hollywood’s best creators, such as Oliver Stone, “Law & Order” producer Dick Wolf, “Seven” director David Fincher, “NYPD Blue’s” David Milch and the late John Singleton, to name a few, have been quietly invited to mingle with members of the US military.
The group was officially, though secretly, named the Entertainment Industry Task Force and its mission, which everyone enthusiastically accepted, was to help America prevent another 9/11 by thinking about terrorist scenarios so crazy that they could only happen in the movies. Unless al Qaeda thought of it first. After all, until 2001, no one had ever imagined – or prepared for the idea – that hijacked planes could be used as deadly missiles against iconic buildings like the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
As the 9/11 attacks had just happened, A. Michael Andrews II, the now retired Major General who had the idea for the reunion, told The Wrap in an exclusive interview offering details about the group and its members that have not been disclosed before. The Pentagon was on and rolling. We had a Defense Science Board and an Army Science Board looking at all standard actors. But no one knew what to expect. So I thought it would be interesting to get out of our usual way of thinking about terrorism. I asked if we could get some volunteers from the entertainment industry together and see if they could come up with any intrigues that might reveal a weakness in our actual counterterrorism network capabilities. It was an opportunity for us to learn and for Hollywood to help.
To some extent, Hollywood had already helped. The Institute for Creative Technology, launched in 1999 by the Army Research Lab in association with USC, has for several years relied on Hollywood talents as a training center in war modeling and virtual reality of very high technology. Screenwriter John Milius, most famous for writing “Apocalypse Now” and the “Dirty Harry” films, was said to have been one of the early consultants.
So, after 9/11, when the military decided to assemble a group of movie and TV executives for a bulls session on terrorism, it was only natural that they would hold the confab at the Marina Command Center in ICT, which turned out to be much cooler. inside than its drab exterior suggests. There was this door that seemed to come out of SPECTER headquarters, James Korris, a former Universal TV producer who served as creative director of ICT in the early 2000s, told The Wrap, referring to the nemesis of James Bond. It opened electrically and we even added a sound effect, so it looked like the doors of the Enterprise.
The first meeting of the Entertainment Industry Task Force, the acronym EITK, sort of never started around 7 p.m. and only ended shortly before midnight. The participants had so many horribly destructive and evil ideas that they decided to meet again a few weeks later for a second session. All of them signed nondisclosure agreements swearing to secrecy and while there were rumors in Hollywood newsrooms about some sort of secret summit, no one said a word. In fact, to this day, those who attended have kept their lips sealed; not all of the working group creatives contacted by The Wrap were available to share their memories of the event. A participant confirmed those who attended, but declined to speak further.
But for the first time, Korris shared with TheWrap the full list of participants. Some choices made sense, the directors and producers behind crime dramas like “Hill Street Blues” and war epics like “Platoon”. Others seemed almost random, like Randal Kleiser, the director of…. “Grease” and “The Blue Lagoon”. Here is the full list, with notable credits from before 2001:
David Ayer, screenwriter (“Training day”)
Danny Bilson, screenwriter (“Viper”, “The Sentinel”)
Martha Coolidge, Director
Christopher Crowe, screenwriter (“The Last of the Mohicans”)
David Milch, executive producer (“Hill Street Blues”)
Jonathan Sanger, producer (“Elephant Man”)
Robert Shaye, executive, producer, director (New Line Cinema)
John SIngleton, director (“Boyz N the Hood”)
Oliver Stone, Writer-Director (“Platoon”, “JFK”)
Robert Ward, writer (“Hill Street Blues”)
Dick Wolf, producer (“Law and Order”)
Joseph Zito, director (“Friday the 13th”)
According to Korris, who attended both sessions, much of the first meeting was spent dissecting and analyzing the mindset of a terrorist. They spent a lot of time trying to figure out what Osama bin Laden was, he said. What his personality looked like, what motivated him. Back then, Bin Laden was a blank slate that we were trying to fill. So, it was basically character development. But the group has also done a lot of work on the story arcs, showcasing various potential terrorist plots. I’ve got a whole book of it but I don’t want to go into too much detail, Korris said. I don’t want to give any ideas to anyone. But some of them were common sense and others were a little more obscure. It was a bit like being in a writers room. They just had ideas and I wrote them down, then I reported.
This report, which to this day is still not publicly available, was ultimately handed over to the highest levels of George W. Bush’s administration, with Korris and Andrews traveling to Washington, DC for a briefing with Wayne Downing. , then deputy national security adviser in charge. counterterrorism (who reported directly to then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, then to Presidential Homeland Security Assistant Tom Ridge). Downing was obviously someone who didn’t readily endure fools, but he was very gracious and very polite, ”Korris said. “I gave him the report but I have no idea what he ended up doing with it.
Andrews has a similar recollection of the meeting. I don’t think Downing asked a single question, he said.
Of course, it’s possible the report saved lives. Who knows what vile plots he might have predicted and helped foil? Thanks to Oliver Stone and Dick Wolf and the others who dedicated brain cells to the counterterrorism cause, America may be a little safer today than when they gathered in the Marina. The ICT, which still exists, although no longer has its headquarters in Fuji Way, is certainly in better shape; its budget, financed mainly by the US Army Research Lab, has grown from an initial amount of $ 45 million in 1999 to nearly $ 300 million today, according to a person with knowledge of the operation.
And for Hollywood, there was an added bonus: some of the ideas developed by the Entertainment Industry Task Force came in handy once attendees returned to their studios. Oh, I think a lot of them ended up in movies, Korris says. It wouldn’t shock me if some of the people at the meeting thought, Hey, it’s a good idea.
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