Able Danger - The Movie

Paul Krik- Writer, Director, Producer, Editor of Able Danger

Review by Carol Brouillet April 8, 2008

I just finished watching it, but part of me wants to go back and see it again. The movie was so fast and rich that I feel like I missed something important and want to return to the beginning and look more closely at all the details, the pieces, to more fully understand what it was all about.

Ironically, I had a hard time watching it because I “knew” the main character. I recognized him as a friend of mine. I even wrote a blurb praising his book “The Big Wedding: 9/11, the Whistle-Blowers and the Cover-Up,” which is shown in the film--although his name is Thomas in the film, instead of Sander. I have never been to his coffee shop, Vox Pop, but I have heard of it (and there are links to it on my website). In the film he is not married to a talented, famous, beautiful woman named Holly Near, nor does he have a two-year-old to father. So I know Sander, and yet I do not know him intimately, and I could not tell where fact became fiction--what is Sander and what is Thomas--where reality became surreal.

[The drama of real life intruded as well--phone calls, the workers who ripped out walls in my house and are now mending the floors and painting--when I just wanted to have peace and quiet so I could give the film the attention it deserved.]

The last time I was with Sander was at a friend’s house, and we huddled together, invoking the spirits of those who died to get out the truth, murdered by the State. I’m also in the process of reading a book about the development of cancer-causing viruses (11 days after being told that my pancreas is full of tumors). Conspiracies are real, death is a reality; so is murder, torture, the psychological warfare that occurs on a daily basis.

So, the film was riveting, beautifully filmed, scary, and too close to home. There were so many obvious lies, white lies, black lies, innocent lies, and deliberate lies lacing the dialogue, obscuring the truth, blurring the truth, protecting people, endangering people, and tricking people--a labyrinth of manipulation, as if each person were a pawn in a great game, not knowing who is calling the moves or how many players are
competing.

Throw in the sex, seduction, and passions to confuse and complicate an already bizarre plot, and murder the “would be heroes” to amplify the most terrifying message: we can kill anyone, anywhere, and there will be no accountability--we can kill the truth.

Yesterday I listened to a recording of William Pepper’s closing remarks to a jury in Memphis that found the government, the police, the FBI, and the CIA guilty of being involved in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the subsequent cover-up. This trial in 1999 was one of the most significant trials of the 20th century, and the verdict is still relatively unknown. Pepper predicted the media’s silence on the matter, but the truth is now on the record, documented, although history has yet to be rewritten.

The movie Able Danger is a riveting wake-up call to anyone who fell for the official 9/11 story. I don’t think the filmmaker intended it as a warning to those of us who have stuck our necks out on this issue. People died on 9/11 because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. People died in World War II because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. People are dying every day in Iraq because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. “National Security events” have serious consequences for direct witnesses or people who very publicly investigate and report on them. But the film suggests a darker vision: Throw in sex and jealousies to muddy the waters, and the motives for murder can be obscured and used for other purposes. The film includes intelligence operatives, cops, investigators, and victims--all mixed up with bribery, money, and sex. The plot moves so fast that the main character must be confused by the competing feelings of fear, grief, terror, pain, pleasure, relief, and uncertainty as he moves through an ever-changing landscape of challenges.

Why would anyone be targeted to be neutralized for their political activities in the US? Here's a clue in an excerpt from the FBI file of political prisoner Larry Pinkney:

"Pinkney is potentially dangerous due to his demonstrated ability to unify black and white. His associates are Negro, White, and Chinese.
Special attention is being given to neutralizing him. The areas of sex and drugs appear to be the most effective ones to utilize. His habits
in these areas are unknown, but are being monitored with this objective. The FBI is working in conjunction with [blacked out, but a
covering note to the U.S. Secret Service, San Francisco, accompanies this].”

Pinkney later called me and said that the above quote was extremely revealing about the lengths to which the government will go to
discredit anyone they consider a threat.

In Able Danger we see Thomas again and again having to face friend, as well as foe, as he confronts his own hopes, fears, desires, lies,
weaknesses--and his Christian belief system. He has to make choices, take risks, trust his judgments, and face the consequences of his faulty judgment and misplaced trust.

Sander and I swap stuff. I hawk his book “The Big Wedding,” tabling in California, and he hawks my DVD “Behind Every Terrorist There is a Bush” in his coffee shop Vox Pop in New York. We are both media activists, but Sander is also an investigative journalist and far better than I at penetrating the media. “Behind Every Terrorist There is a Bush” was my attempt at overcoming the psychological barriers to the basic facts about 9/11 using humor, art, music and comedy. Actually, I was more successful in getting information about the truth of 9/11 into the Arts section of local papers than I ever was in getting it into the “news” section. Sander included some great facts and information about 9/11 in “The Big Wedding.” He hoped that because he avoided the damning charge that “9/11 was an inside job” and stuck to the more easily provable “they knew it was going to happen and let it happen on purpose” that his book would help raise the important questions about 9/11 that the Commission completely failed to address. In order to break through the formidable media barrier (In 2004 & 2005- it was even worse than it is today on 9/11.), we both compromised ourselves to express a piece of the truth, a mere candle in the darkness, in an effort to penetrate the fog of lies and propaganda. [I interviewed him on January 14th on my radio show before his February West Coast Tour and he took a stronger public position on 9/11; he also was somewhat tired on the show, he had flown that day and was on the edge of complete exhaustion.]

I see the movie Able Danger as a brilliant piece of art that penetrates where books and documentaries rarely go, presenting painful chunks of truth wrapped in eye candy that just might have the power to make people think twice and begin to figure things out for themselves. I hope so. People are complex and it’s hard to know how general audiences will react to this film. Because my life was changed by the film, JFK, and by my subsequent research into the CIA, I know that a film can have a profound effect on a person’s life.

I can only hope that this film will be a similar catalyst to transform the lives of others, that people will gain courage from this film. That’s what the real Sander is about. He is courageous. He is a Christian. He is a father. He is a believer in the power of love and truth, as exemplified by martyrs such as Gandhi, King, Webb, and Dr. Graham… the list continues to grow. However dark and all-powerful the media, the CIA, the FBI and the growing police forces seem to be, there are those who will continue to speak truth and challenge the lies, wars, and injustices that seek to control humanity through fear and terror. This film is very brave, very watchable, and fascinating. I give it 5 stars. (Although I wouldn't give it a G rating. R for sex and violence...)

View the trailer at- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAeuxllznUM
Official Website is www.abledangerthemovie.com

Paul Krik will be on Carol Brouillet's weekly radio show-Questioning
War- Organizing Resistance on We The People Radio Network April 14, 2008, 11pm - 12 midnight CST