Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, continuing their ongoing bombardment of the Obama administration (wasting endless amounts of time and money doing so), sued the CIA and the Department of Defense to force them into showing how much access was provided to Kathryn Bigelow and Marc Boal for their upcoming film about Osama Bin Laden. Trust me, my friends, if the inefficient Bush administration had killed Osama Bin Laden as they should have done no “conservative watchdog group” would be crying foul here.
“I find this recent document discovery troubling,” said [Peter] King in a statement this morning. “The Obama Administration’s extremely close, unprecedented, and potentially dangerous collaboration with these filmmakers is a serious matter that deserves serious scrutiny.”
Peter King chairs the Homeland Security Committee, according to this source.
Make no mistake, research like this is not unheard of. The “controversy” has been brewing for a while and believe me, this won’t be the end of it. From an LA Times story back in May:
“Part of the challenge for us is to capture how difficult this was because there is a version of it that in hindsight, it just looks like it fell into place,” Boal told Department of Defense officials at a meeting last July, according to a transcript. “That is why I just wanted to ask you hypothetically about what could have happened wrong, because it makes it more dramatic when it all goes right.”
The access Bigelow and Boal have had to CIA, DOD and other government officials is not unheard of for Hollywood productions. “Battleship” director Peter Berg embedded for a month with Navy SEALs in western Iraq as research for his upcoming SEAL film “Lone Survivor,” and filmmaker Lionel Chetwynd was granted an hour with President Bush for a 2003 movie he wrote for Showtime, “DC 9/11: Time of Crisis.”
The letter Judicial Watch sent turned into a lawsuit. So far, this is the statement by Bigelow/Boal:
“Our upcoming film project about the decade long pursuit of Bin Laden has been in the works for many years and integrates the collective efforts of three administrations, including those of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, as well as the cooperative strategies and implementation by the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency,” the statement said. “Indeed, the dangerous work of finding the world’s most wanted man was carried out by individuals in the military and intelligence communities who put their lives at risk for the greater good without regard for political affiliation. This was an American triumph, both heroic, and non-partisan and there is no basis to suggest that our film will represent this enormous victory otherwise.”
Uh, yeah, you bet they will do whatever they can to shame the Obama Presidency. Yes, even for this. Which is one of the reasons why I really hope it’s a Best Picture contender.
One of the dangers of being tea-bagged too often – you begin to believe in a conspiracy between Hollywood, the CIA, the President and the Navy Seals.
Somebody order up some straightjackets.
Who gives a shit? Mr.President could be out of office in a couple of months.
I don’t want to seem pretentious because you’re a professional writer, and I’m not, but you might want to change the “they” in the first sentence of your last paragraph to “Judicial Watch”, to whom, I’m guessing, that “they” refers to. As it stands, it kind of looks like “they” refers to Bigelow and Boal and that the sentence in question is intended to dispute the last sentence of Bigelow’s and Boal’s statement. Considering the larger context of the article, I can understand your intent; it just was a little confusing to me, at first.
Yawn.
Aren’t all of these politicians a bunch of fuckin’ liars anyway?
For the first time, I wish King was in my district so I could vote him out in November.
Peter King from Long Island, NY. What a faux-patriot. Always spouting and screaming to get on the 10 o’clock news. If any politician has ever used 9/11 as an opportunist it is him. Loud bark with no substance.
Is this why we’ve heard almost nothing about this movie? No pictures, no plot synopsis, no trailer, no poster.
as long as the film’s content and/or integrity doesn’t suffer who cares what the tea baggers say or do lol
It’s extraordinary how these people behave. In a sane world, Judicial Watch would have no credibility, but some people just want to hear this – they want to hear anything anti-left wing – and will willingly ignore the full facts and the bigger picture in favour of rhetoric and bombast. What a fucking joke. They can stick their lawsuit up their arse.
I keep forgetting about Zero Dark Thirty…It’s probably gonna rule. Besides, don’t the right-wing idiots realize that Hollywood is all about money, legacy, finding tax-breaks, and stroking various egos? Sounds like a pretty nice affirmation of right-wing ideals to me.