A man known as “Sam Bacile” directed the feature film “The Innocence of Muslims”, which is stirring up anger in the Islamic world against Americans, leading to riots against the US Embassy in Egypt and the killings of four Americans at the US embassy in Libya.
My phone is burning up this morning with inquiries from network news, national magazines and other news media inquiring about “Sam Bacile.”
I don’t recall hearing of anybody by that name prior to yesterday.
This morning I spoke to a national news magazine, a network news producer, and the former Editor of a LA daily newspaper. Nobody knows anything about Sam Bacile.
NPR says: Most Americans knew nothing about “Innocence of Muslims.” That’s the film that has set the Muslim world on fire, causing protests in Egypt and Libya that led to the death of the U.S. envoy to Libya, Christopher Stevens.
The bottom line is that we know very little about Sam Bacile, the man who produced the film. But The Wall Street Journal caught up with Bacile before he went into hiding.
According to the Journal, Bacile raised “$5 million from 100 Jewish donors” and he produced the film using 60 actors and 45 crew members.
Bacile told the Journal that he made the film to expose “Islam as a hateful religion.”
“Islam is a cancer,” he told the paper. “The movie is a political movie. It’s not a religious movie.”
In another interview, Bacile told the Associated Press that he was a real estate developer and an Israeli Jew, but Israeli authorities told the wire service they have no records of him being a citizen.
Our library did not turn up any footprint for Bacile. They turned no property, phone, licenses nor court records. And Bacile had not made news until today.
