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Filmmakers Given Access on Bin Laden Raid
Kathryn Bigelow, director of 'Zero Dark Thirty,' is seen here accepting an Academy Awards for the film 'The Hurt Locker,' in 2010. (Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images)
The CIA and the Pentagon were involved in an “unprecedented and potentially dangerous collaboration” with an Oscar Award-winning filmmaker and a screenwriter working on a movie about last year’s successful raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, according to New York Rep. Peter King.
King, a Republican who is chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, cited documents obtained and posted by the conservative Judicial Watch legal group. It said it obtained the more than 250 pages of documents through the Freedom of Information Act.
The documents said director Kathryn Bigelow, who won an Academy Award for “The Hurt Locker,” and screenwriter Mark Boal met with a “planner, operator, and commander of SEAL Team Six,” which raided bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound last May, killing the al-Qaeda leader.
The film is titled “Zero Dark Thirty” and was the subject of scrutiny after a New York Times columnist reportedly discovered its existence and said the producers wanted to release it before the November 6 election date. Some Republicans jumped on the project, saying President Barack Obama is trying too hard to politicize the raid on bin Laden’s compound.
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said, “Politically connected filmmakers were given extraordinary and secret access to bin Laden raid information, including the identity of a SEAL Team Six leader.”
The CIA and the Pentagon have mostly declined to comment on the issue, but said there was nothing out of the ordinary in dealing with the filmmakers.
“Our goal is an accurate portrayal of the men and women of the CIA, their vital mission, and the commitment to public service that defines them. The protection of national security equities is always paramount in any engagement with the entertainment industry,” Jennifer Youngblood, a spokesperson with the CIA, told Reuters.
The intelligence agency, she added, has been straightforward in engaging with documentary filmmakers and other members of the entertainment industry.
Another representative of the Pentagon, who was not named, told Politico that the person whose name was given to the filmmakers was not involved directly in the Abbottabad raid.
King, however, expressed concern about exposing potentially classified information to the filmmakers.
“The email messages indicate that the filmmakers were allowed an unprecedented visit to a classified facility so secret that its name is redacted in the released email,” he said in a statement.
“If this facility is so secret that the name cannot even be seen by the public, then why in the world would the Obama administration allow filmmakers to tour it?”
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