Moore recruits kings of spin to counter critics

News:

"Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 looks like a film, sounds like a film and, after its triumph at the Cannes festival, certainly wins awards like a film.

But its US release this summer is looking more like a political campaign than a Hollywood premiere, and now the production has hired two of Bill Clinton's most fearsome spin doctors to handle the anticipated brouhaha from its stinging election-year critique of President George Bush.

Mr Moore has set up a campaign-style 'war room' to counter his critics, headed by two veterans of the Clinton-Gore years, Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane. 'We will allow no attack on this film to go without a response immediately,' Mr Moore told yesterday's Los Angeles Times. 'And we will go after anyone who slanders me or my work, and we will do it without mercy. And when you think 'without mercy', you think Chris Lehane.'"