Welcome to the Terrordome
Inside America's newest terrorism museum.
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Here's a scenario likely to terrify visitors—including Democratic National Convention delegates—in Denver. You are walking down the 16th Street pedestrian mall on a bright summer day. Children are riding bicycles. Families are picnicking. Suddenly a huge fireball explodes, shaking the earth and scorching everyone its path. Sirens wail. Ambulances rush to the scene. America's worst nightmare—a domestic terrorist attack—has once again come to pass.
Thankfully, this event did not really happen. But you can experience a virtual version of the next terrorist bombing in the American heartland at one of Denver's oddest convention-week attractions: the country's newest museum devoted exclusively to terrorism. Opened Monday afternoon with a visit from Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, the Center for Empowered Living and Learning (The CELL) is a high-tech, multimedia, Technicolor exhibit devoted to educating the American public about the realities—and root causes—of terrorism. Located in a modern building next to the futuristic Denver Art Museum, the exhibit is designed to educate the general public about what its creators term "the most important global issue of our time."
The exhibit includes graphic film footage and interactive displays devoted to terrorist acts around the world, ranging from the PLO massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics to the Oklahoma City bombings, the July 7, 2005, attacks on London Transport, and of course 9/11. Analysis is offered by familiar faces such as Rudy Giuliani and Michael Chertoff—as well as more unusual choices, like a former Archbishop of Canterbury. Civil-liberties issues are not ignored, though they get relatively short shrift. (Ironically, the exhibit includes an observation from Rand Corporation expert Brian Jenkins who notes that the actual risk to an American of being killed in a terror attack is about one in a million, compared to one-in-7,000 or -8,000 chance of being killed in a car accident.) (Article continued below...)
Organizers of the exhibit say it is totally nonpartisan and has no political message. But it may not be an accident that the $7 million exhibit was conceived and funded by Lawrence Mizel, a wealthy Denver homebuilder and longtime Republican Party donor, who, according to federal records, is a maxed-out contributor to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. In an interview, Mizel told Terror Watch he was only trying to increase public awareness and understanding of a global problem.
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Michael Isikoff has been an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek since 2004. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential politics and other national issues. His book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September, 2006. The book was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball w/ Chris Matthews.
Ever since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. His blog "DeClassified: Investigative Reporting in Real Time," which appears regularly on Newsweek's Web site and is written with MarkHosenball, has become a must-read for senior U.S. intelligence officials. Isikoff and Hosenball won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online.
Isikoff's June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, Isikoff obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." The book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976.
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