The 2004 documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11 generated controversy before, during, and after its release a few months prior to the 2004 U.S. presidential election. The film, directed by Michael Moore, criticizes the Bush administration's attempt to pursue Osama bin Laden in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, as well as the Iraq War. Although Fahrenheit 9/11 was generally praised by film critics and won various awards including that year's Palme d'Or, the content was criticized by several commentators for accuracy, and lack of context. Additionally, the distributors protested Moore's inaction on unauthorized copying.

Controversy over the film's content Shailagh Murray described Fahrenheit 9/11 in The Wall Street Journal as a "harshly satirical and controversial portrait of the Bush presidency."Murray, Shailagh. "Fahrenheit 9/11 Has Recruited Unlikely Audience: U.S. Soldiers", The Wall Street Journal. July 12, 2004. Stephen Dalton of The Times wrote that the movie "hits enough of its satirical targets to qualify as an important and timely film."Dalton, Stephen. Fahrenheit 9/11, The Times. October 16, 2004. Desson Thomson says "there is more to Fahrenheit 9/11 than partisan ridicule. ... What's remarkable here isn't Moore's political animosity or ticklish wit. It's the well-argued, heartfelt power of his persuasion."Thomson, Desson. "Fahrenheit 9/11: Connecting with a Hard Left", The Washington Post. May 18, 2004. Author and blogger Andrew Sullivan expressed the opposite view, writing that Moore's film is "deeply corrosive of the possibility of real debate and reason in our culture."Sullivan, Andrew. Blinded By The Light, Time magazine. July 12, 2004. Canadian journalist Linda McQuaig wrote in response to Sullivan: "Hell, the media shut down real debate long ago. It is precisely because the debate has been so thoroughly corroded by the mainstream media ... that Moore's film is being so gratefully received by so many."McQuaig, Linda. "Fahrenheit 9/11 Places Real Issues in the Spotlight", The Toronto Star. July 11, 2004. Denis Hamill considers Fahrenheit 9/11 to be a "corrective to the daily drumbeat of right-wing talk radio.

English-American journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens and Democratic politician Ed Koch contended that Fahrenheit 9/11 contains distortions and untruths and is propaganda.Koch, Edward. "Moore’s propaganda film cheapens debate, polarizes nation", World Tribune. June 28, 2004.Jones, Terry. Truth or tale, experts analyse 'Fahrenheit 9/11' , ABC Lateline. July 26, 2004. Hitchens also compared Michael Moore to Leni Riefenstahl in his critique for Slate magazine, saying, "Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl." He later labeled Moore "a completely promiscuous opportunist [and] extremely callous person."

Author and political commentator Peter Holding called Hitchens' analogy "hysterical, unfair and offensive," adding that "some of the criticism directed towards Moore's film displays the very same characteristics for which Moore's film has been criticised". Fellow Slate columnist and Iraq war critic David Edelstein, though generally supportive of the film, wrote Fahrenheit 9/11 "is an act of counterpropaganda that has a boorish, bullying force", but called it a "legitimate abuse of power." Prominent French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy agreed the war was "a bad idea", but was sympathetic to the neoconservative point of view and disagreed with what he perceived to be the film's "core" argument, that "we have no reason to be interfering" in the Middle East.Broudy, Oliver. , Salon magazine. April 6, 2005. Joe Scarborough alleged that Moore has ducked criticism and dodged interviews from both him and Hitchens.

Moore has published both a list of facts and sources for Fahrenheit 9/11 and a document establishing agreements between the points made in his film and the findings of the 9/11 Commission, an independent, bipartisan panel charged by Congress and U.S. President George W. Bush with investigating the facts and circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks.Moore, Michael. Factual Back-Up For Fahrenheit 9/11 , michaelmoore.com, July 10, 2004.

Bush reading to school children Early on in the film, Moore explains that Bush continued reading "The Pet Goat" with a classroom of second graders at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida for an extended period of time after being told of the attacks.

The school's principal, Gwendolyn Tose-Rigell, explained, "I don't think anyone could have handled it better. What would it have served if he had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?" Some of the schoolchildren, now grown, have expressed similar views; Mariah Williams, one of the students, stated in 2011 that, "I'm just glad he didn't get up and leave because then I would have been more scared and confused."

A 9/11 Commission staff report, titled Improvising a Homeland Defense, said: "The President felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening.", page 22

According to senior White House correspondent Bill Sammon and his inside look at the Bush administration's response to 9/11, Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism from Inside the White House, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was holding up a legal pad upon which he had written a message telling Bush not to say anything yet.

Alleged discrepancy on bin Laden's presumed innocence

According to Christopher Hitchens, Moore had argued in a previous public debate that Osama bin Laden was to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and thus questions the treatment of bin Laden in the film. "Something – I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now – has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous 'distraction' from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion." Hitchens was subsequently invited to appear on Joe Scarborough's MSNBC talk show, Scarborough Country, at which point a tape recording of his debate with Moore at the Telluride Film Festival in 2002 was replayed.

When the video ended, Hitchens proceeded to explain: "Why does someone who thought that Osama was innocent and Afghanistan was no problem suddenly switch in this way? Because unless he says that he was dead wrong all along and Osama Laden was innocent and wronged, he can't say that everything else is a distraction from the hunt for Osama." Host Joe Scarborough, a personal friend of Hitchens, agreed with Hitchens and criticised Moore for inconsistency, accusing him of "hypocrisy" for assuming bin Laden is innocent one minute "and yet, in this movie, at the very beginning, he criticizes George Bush for not assuming the bin Laden family is somehow guilty, then letting them out of the country."

Flak magazine editor Stephen Himes, after watching Scarborough Country and reviewing a transcript of the Telluride debate, wrote that Hitchens had misconstrued Moore's remarks: "Hitchens actually performs some Clintonian semantic gymnastics here. Moore's if is not intending 'I think Osama is innocent and the Afghan war is unjustified;' he's trying to make an argument for American due process: 'If he and his group were the ones who did this, then they should be tracked down, captured and brought to justice'." Film critic Christopher Parry also took issue with Hitchens' interpretation of Moore's remarks, writing "If you've got to build a case against Jeffrey Dahmer, you've got to build a case against Bin Laden."

CNN news anchor Daryn Kagan asked Moore why, if he is so willing to uphold the law, he could also be critical of the Bush administration for pursuing Osama bin Laden at the same time. Moore replied:

Saudi flights Moore implicates the White House in allowing relatives of Osama bin Laden to leave the United States without being interviewed at length by the FBI. In his narration in the movie, Moore states that "At least six private jets and nearly two dozen commercial planes carried the Saudis and the Bin Ladens out of the U.S. after September 13." Moore based this statement on the research of Craig Unger, author of House of Bush, House of Saud, whom he interviewed for the film. Passenger lists can be found at the House of Bush website.

Approval of the flights

Christopher Hitchens points to a statement by former counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke, when interviewed by The Hill newspaper in May 2004, in which "he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing [the] Saudi departures." Hitchens says that Moore interviewed Clarke and "either he didn't ask Clarke, who authorized those flights, or Clarke told him it was me and only me, and he didn't think it was good enough to use. ... Either way, that's below the level of trash TV, trash journalism." After quitting his White House position, Clarke became a prominent critic of the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Hitchens contends that the film does not mention Clarke's remarks so that it can criticize Bush for not going after Bin Laden's family, while holding up Clarke as a heroic, anti-war figure.

The filmmaker defended himself in an interview with ABC News correspondent Jake Tapper, answering: "Actually I do [display the] article and it's blown up 40 foot on the screen, you can see Richard Clarke's name right there saying that he approved the flights based on the information the FBI gave him. It's right there, right up on the screen. I don't agree with Clarke on this point. Just because I think he's good on a lot of things doesn't mean I agree with him on everything."

Moore, on his website and in The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader, points to additional statements by Richard Clarke, also published in The Hill, which he believes support his contention that the White House approved the flights.Moore, Michael. The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader, Penguin Books, 2004. The following is a chronological summary:

September 3, 2003: In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Clarke said: "It is true that members of the bin Laden family were among those who left. We knew that at the time. I can't say much more in open session, but it was a conscious decision with complete review at the highest levels of the State Department and the FBI and the White House." March 24, 2004: In testimony to the 9/11 Commission, Clarke indicated that the request was not abnormal, "The Saudi embassy, therefore, asked for these people to be evacuated; the same sort of thing that we do all the time in similar crises, evacuating Americans. The request came to me and I refused to approve it." He goes on to explain that the FBI eventually approved the flights and he describes conversations in which the FBI has said that there was no one who left on those flights who the FBI now wants to interview. March 24, 2004: "I would love to be able to tell you who did it, who brought this proposal to me, but I don't know. The two – since you press me, the two possibilities that are most likely are either the Department of State or the White House Chief of Staff's Office. But I don't know." May 25, 2004: In an interview with The Hill newspaper, published the following day, Clarke said: "I take responsibility for it. I don't think it was a mistake, and I'd do it again." He went on to say that "It didn't get any higher than me... On 9–11, 9–12 and 9–13, many things didn't get any higher than me. I decided it in consultation with the FBI."

The FBI's denial that it had a role in approving the flights