Yesterday, U.S. Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY), Chairman of the Committee onHomeland Security, urged a full investigation be conducted into reports that President Barack Obama’s Administration had granted Sony Pictures and Oscar-winning filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow high-level access for a film on the mission in which U.S. Special Operations Forces killed Osama bin Laden.
In a letter to Defense Department Inspector General Gordon Heddell and CIA Inspector General David Buckley, King wrote that the “Administration’s first duty in declassifying material is to provide full reporting to Congress and the American people, in an effort to build public trust through transparency of government. In contrast, this alleged collaboration belies a desire of transparency in favor of a cinematographic view of history.”
Ms. Bigelow won the Academy Award for best motion picture director for the Iraq war adventure "The Hurt Locker," a film that won high-praise.
She was just about finished with her latest project, a film about the Afghan war, when news came out regarding SEAL Team 6’s killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. This presented Bigelow with a problem for her film’s ending. She then decided to re-shoot scenes for her film.
"Only in a Hollywood movie will you see a failed president whose claim to fame is being a community organizer, being portrayed as a hero Commander-in-Chief," said former Marine intelligence officer and police detective Mike Snopes.
According to political strategist Donald Peltier, had President George W. Bush helped a filmmaker with classified material, he would have been skewered by the media and his opponents.
In his letter to Gordon S. Heddell, Inspector General of the Department of Defense, and David Buckley
Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency, Rep. King pointed out that:
Special Operations Command’s Admiral Eric Olson stated that the May 1st raid “was successful because nobody talked about it before, and if we want to preserve this capability nobody better talk about it after,” and that his operators’ “15 minutes of fame lasted about 14 minutes too long. They want to get back in the shadows.” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen stated that “It is time to stop talking,” as “We have gotten to a point where we are close to jeopardizing the precision capability that we have, and we can’t afford to do that. This fight isn’t over.”
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated that “Too many people in too many places are talking too much about this operation, and when so much detail is available it makes that both more difficult and riskier” for such missions in the future.
Leaks of classified information regarding the bin Laden raid have already resulted, according to a June 15, 2011 article in the Washington Post, in the arrests of Pakistanis who were believed by local authorities to have assisted the CIA with the May 1st raid.
Further participation by JSOC and the Agency in making a film about the raid is bound to increase such leaks, and undermine these organizations’ hard-won reputations as “quiet professionals” − reputations important for their continued operational success. And, the success of these organizations is vital to our continued homeland security.
Then King spelled out what information was needed for a Congressional investigation:
• What consultations, if any, occurred between members of the Executive Office of the President, and Department of Defense and/or CIA officials, regarding the advisability of providing Hollywood executives with access to covert military operators and clandestine CIA officers to discuss the [Osama] raid?
• Will a copy of this film be submitted to the military and CIA for pre-publication review, to determine if special operations tactics, techniques and procedures, or Agency intelligence sources and methods, would be revealed by its release?
• How was the attendance of filmmakers at a meeting with special operators and Agency officers at CIA Headquarters balanced against those officers’ duties to maintain their covers? How will cover concerns be addressed going forward?
• What steps did the Administration take to ensure that no special operations tactics, techniques, and procedures were compromised during those meetings?
• To the extent possible to determine, how many human intelligence sources and how many Agency intelligence methods have been compromised due to leaks about the May 1st raid? What effects have these compromises had on the CIA’s collection capabilities? Will Agency participation in a film about the bin Laden raid add to or exacerbate the effects of these compromises?