In mid-April of this year, Variety reported on HBO Documentary Film’s purchase of a new documentary about Al-Qaeda entitled “My Trip to Al-Qaeda.” The article also noted that the movie “is a collaboration between [Alex] Gibney, who picked up an Oscar in 2007 for ‘Taxi to the Dark Side,” and Lawrence Wright, the journalist and author on whose solo stage show the doc is based.: That stage show, the article stated, “was in turn developed from Wright’s 2006 book “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.”

After reading “The Looming Tower,” I look forward to the HBO premiere of the film (reportedly set for sometime this Fall) and hope that the liberal politics of Mr. Gibney do not diminish the film’s value as an educational and informative motion picture that will create more awareness of the history of Al-Qaeda.

When Wright’s non-fiction book about Al-Qaeda was released four years ago, many critics praised it. A New York Times review noted that “‘The Looming Tower’ is not just a detailed, heart-stopping account of the events leading up to 9/11, written with style and verve, and carried along by villains and heroes that only a crime novelist could dream up. It’s an education, too…” Hugh Hewitt (conservative radio show host, who, in full disclosure, works with me at Salem Communications) was quoted in the transcript of a 2006 interview with Wright as saying that the book is:

“…so comprehensive, that no matter what someone’s politics, they’re going to have to walk away from this saying this is a truly extraordinary and fair and balanced account.”

For those who have not read ” Tower,” the book is a fascinating account of the foundation and growth of Al-Qaeda, a detailed depiction of events and incidents that ultimately led up to the attacks of September 11th. One of the great qualities of this book is that it examines the goals and the obstacles of both Al-Qaeda and the government agencies working to protect our nation’s security. Looking back at the history of the terrorist organization, it is easy to see how Al-Qaeda’s previous attacks foreshadowed the destruction they caused on September 11th. For instance, Wright wrote about the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania noting that:

Al-Qaeda’s first documented terrorist strike bore the hallmarks of its future actions. The novelty of multiple, simultaneous suicide bombings was a new and risky strategy, given the increased likelihood of failure or detection.

Wright went on to write the following about the organization:

Death on a grand scale was a goal in itself. There was no attempt to spare innocent lives, since the concept of innocence was subtracted from al-Qaeda’s calculations.

In the book, Wright also focuses on the intelligence failures in the United States that were heavily criticized after the 9/11 attacks and he writes knowingly about “a bizarre trend in the U.S. government to hide information from the people who most needed it.”

This film coming to HBO sounds like a great opportunity for the station to tell a compelling story from Wright about the history of Al-Qaeda. One hopes that controversial filmmaker Alex Gibney, who also worked on the film, does not detract from the success of the production. Gibney is well-known for a lot of high-profile documentaries that he has worked on in the past. An Esquire article from earlier this year noted that in some of his earlier films, Gibney has told…

…the stories of the spectacular thieves at Enron (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, nominated for an Academy Award), American torturers in the war on terrorism (Taxi to the Dark Side, winner of the Academy Award), and… Jack Abramoff …

With taking on such subjects, Gibney has proven that he is not afraid to steer into controversial political battles.

In fact, Gibney has contributed numerous far-left pieces to “The Huffington Post” on many controversial subjects. In one article he wrote, “The Bush administration will go down in history as the Torture Team,” adding that “the Bush administration spent its time…trying to rewrite its own legal definition of torture so that it could use the techniques without having to use the T-word (Donald Rumsfeld’s phrase) which doesn’t poll well.”

In another piece, Gibney asked if former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was stupid and compared him to Gollum from “Lord of the Rings,” noting that Gollum is “a creature pulled hopelessly and inexorably by the lure of power.”

“My Trip to Al- Al-Qaeda” has the potential to be a great and compelling motion picture but it would likely alienate any fair-minded viewer if Gibney’s strong ideology overwhelmed the story Wright wants to tell. (Several years ago, HBO’s film “Recount” about the 2000 presidential recount made that mistake and received criticism for its harsh and unflattering portrayal of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, an aspect of the film that turned off conservative viewers, including myself.)

The ongoing war against Al-Qaeda is a long and complicated one that does not receive the level of attention it should from the mainstream media. If this new film proves as engrossing, exciting and blatantly appealing as the book, it could bring more attention to Lawrence Wright’s non-fiction book and the ongoing threat posed by this terrorist organization.

One hopes that Gibney’s liberal political ideology does not stand in the way of that respectable purpose.