Pre 9/11 controversy
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In The Lone Gunmen’s premiere episode, “Pilot”, which aired March 4, 2001, members of the U.S. government conspire to hijack an airliner, almost hitting the World Trade Center, and blame the act on terrorists to gain support for anew profit-making war. The episode aired six months prior to the September 11 attacks.[1]
Response
The creators of The Lone Gunmen could not have had advance knowledge of 9/11. The Pilot episode had its premiere broadcast in Australia just thirteen days before the events of September 11 occurred.[2]
Christopher Bollyn said: “…rather than being discussed in the media as a prescient warning of the possibility of such an attack, the pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen series seemed to have been quietly forgotten.”[2]
Frank Spotnitz, an executive producer of The Lone Gunmen, said: “I woke up on September 11 and saw it on TV and the first thing I thought of was The Lone Gunmen. But then in the weeks and months that followed, almost no one noticed the connection. What’s disturbing about it to me is, you think as a fiction writer that if you can imagine this scenario, then the people in power in the government who are there to imagine disaster scenarios can imagine it, too.”[2]
Robert McLachlan, director of photography on The Lone Gunmen, said: “It was odd that nobody referenced it. In the ensuing press nobody mentioned that [9-11] echoed something that had been seen before.”[2]