"By helping us understand how fear is being actively cultivated and manipulated by the current administration, Hijacking Catastrophe stands to become an explosive and empowering information weapon in this decisive year in U.S. history."
Naomi Klein | Author, No Logo

"The Media Education Foundation has been carrying out vitally important work on major issues of the day, in a highly meritorious effort to raise public awareness and understanding, work that is particularly crucial in advance of the coming election, which may well cast a long shadow over the country's future."
Noam Chomsky | Professor of Linguistics, MIT

"The next Presidential election will be a watershed mark in our history and the urgency of producing and distributing materials that show exactly what is at stake has never been higher. Hijacking Catastrophe will be a vital tool in the campaign to rescue American democracy from its internal enemies. It will enrage and empower as it enlightens and explains."
Robert McChesney | Author, Rich Media, Poor Democracy

?What it really comes down to is this: Are the American voters going to sit still for this? Are we going to treat our democracy like some sort of spectator sport, like watching the Super Bowl, or are we going to ask a little more of ourselves this time? Are we going to explore the Bush Administration?s claims? Are we going to look at the details of what this administration has actually done??
William Hartung | Senior Fellow, World Policy Institute

The 9/11 terror attacks continue to send shock waves through the American political system. Continuing fears about American vulnerability alternate with images of American military prowess and patriotic bravado in a transformed media landscape charged with emotion and starved for information. The result is that we have had little detailed debate about the radical turn US policy has taken since 9/11.

Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire places the Bush Administration's original justifications for war in Iraq within the larger context of a two-decade struggle by neo-conservatives to dramatically increase military spending while projecting American power and influence globally by means of force.

At the same time, the documentary argues that the Bush Administration has sold this radical and controversial plan for aggressive American military intervention by deliberately manipulating intelligence, political imagery, and the fears of the American people after 9/11.

This update of the critically acclaimed documentary features the theatrical version of the film, along with ten new post-election interviews with prominent political observers on topics ranging from the 2004 presidential campaign to the Democratic Party's struggle to define itself in a time of war.

Narrated by Julian Bond, Hijacking Catastrophe features interviews with more than twenty prominent political observers, including Pentagon whistleblower Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who witnessed first-hand how the Bush Administration set up a sophisticated propaganda operation to link the anxieties generated by 9/11 to a pre-existing foreign policy agenda that included a preemptive war on Iraq.

Joining Kwiatkowski in a wide-ranging, accessible, and ultimately empowering analysis of American foreign policy, media manipulation, and their global and domestic implications, are former Chief UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams, author Norman Mailer, MIT professor Noam Chomsky, Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin, defense policy analyst William Hartung, author Chalmers Johnson, and Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff (Ret.).

At its core, the film places the deceptions of the Bush Administration within the larger frame of questions seldom posed in the mainstream: What, exactly, is the agenda that drove the administration's pre-war deceptions? How is 9/11 being used to sell this agenda? And what are the stakes for America, Americans, and the world if this agenda succeeds in being fully implemented during a second Bush term?

INTERVIEWS INCLUDE
Tariq Ali | Benjamin Barber | Medea Benjamin | Noam Chomsky | Kevin Danaher | Mark Danner | Shadia Drury | Michael Dyson | Daniel Ellsberg | Michael Franti | Stan Goff | William Hartung
Robert Jensen | Chalmers Johnson | Jackson Katz | Michael T. Klare | Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (Ret.) | Norman Mailer | Zia Mian | Mark Crispin Miller | Scott Ritter | Vandana Shiva | Norman Solomon | Greg Speeter | Fernando Suarez del Solar | Immanuel Wallerstein | Jody Williams | Max Wolff

Post-2004 Interviews include:
Van Jones | Naomi Klein | Thomas Frank | Mel Goodman | George Lakoff | Norman Mailer | Cindy Sheehan | Craig Unger | Tim Wise | Howard Zinn

Produced, Written & Directed by: Jeremy Earp & Sut Jhally
Edited by: Sut Jhally & Kenyon King

ABOUT THE PRODUCERS
The Media Education Foundation (MEF) is one of the leading producers of documentaries dedicated to media and cultural analysis. The National Priorities Project (NPP) is the nation?s leading organization dedicated to monitoring the military budget and government spending priorities. For further information about this film, please contact:
Jeremy Earp, Producer | tel 413.320.1977

Sut Jhally, Executive Producer | tel 413.584.8500 ext. 2301

For further information about supporting the production and distribution of this film, please contact:

Adi Bemak, Development Director | tel 413.584.8500 ext. 2111

A COLLABORATION BETWEEN
National Priorities Project
17 New South St., Suite 302 | Northampton MA 01060-4077
tel 413.584.9556 | fax 413.586.9647
info@nationalpriorities.org | www.nationalpriorities.org

Media Education Foundation
60 Masonic St. | Northampton MA 01060
tel 413.584.8500/800.897.0089 | fax 413.586.8398/800.659.6882
info@mediaed.org | www.mediaed.org

Hijacking Catastrophe is not currently being screened in theatres.

Links to analysis of the Wolfowitz/Bush Doctrine by Hijacking Catastrophe Interviewees:

Norman Mailer, "The White Man Unburdened"
An analysis of the cultural underpinnings of Bush's push for war, from the New York Review of Books.

Karen Kwiatkowski, "Karen Kwiatkowski Archive"
A collection of articles by the recently retired USAF lieutenant colonel, who spent her final four and a half years in uniform working at the Pentagon.

Chalmers Johnson, "Who's In Charge?"
A review of Daniel Ellsberg?s new memoir, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, from The London Review of Books.

Daniel Ellsberg's website

Chalmers Johnson, "The Scourge of Militarism"
Author of the prophetic Blowback and the forthcoming Sorrows of Empire, on the scourge of militarism, the neo-cons and American empire.

Norman Solomon, "War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy"
Text of a speech delivered at the Brazilian Social Forum on Nov. 8, 2003.

Scott Ritter, "Is Iraq a True Threat to the U.S.?"
A prescient pre-war piece by the former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq.

Immanuel Wallerstein, "The Eagle has Crash Landed"
The famed globalization theorist on militarism and the decline of American empire.

Paul William Roberts, "Pax Americana and the Bush Doctrine"
Benjamin Barber?s Fear's Empire: War, Terrorism and Democracy, reviewed in a Globe and Mail.

Shadia Drury, "Noble Lies, the Neo-cons, and Iraq"
Leading scholar of American neo-conservatism and author of Leo Strauss and The American Right and Terror and Civilization, Drury shares her ideas about the Bush administration in an interview with Danny Postel.

William Hartung, "The Hidden Costs of War"
Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute, Hartung offers a comprehensive analysis of the economics of Bush foreign policy in the Fourth Freedom Forum publication.

Vandana Shiva, "Terrorism as Cannibalism"
Shiva, physicist and natural resources activist, discusses the dangers of the post 9/11 world.

Kevin Ramirez, "Uncle Sam Hustles to Keep the Ranks Filled"
Ramirez's campaigns to educate young people about military recruitment are discussed in this article from The Catholic Reporter.

Website for Michael Franti's band Spearhead.

Project for the New American Century (PNAC) Links:

Project for the New American Century (PNAC) website.

PNAC's "Statement of Principles" (June 3, 1997)

Letter to President Clinton on Iraq (June 26, 1998)

PNAC Report "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century" (September 2000)