Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal Matt Sayles/AP
CIA emails show how Hollywood filmmakers got access to bin Laden info
Director and screenwriter were favored over reporters and documentarians.
For everyone who didn't get special access to information about the Osama bin Laden raid, today was a little bit discouraging as new e-mails revealed CIA officials gushing over Hollywood filmakers at the expense of trained reporters and documentarians.
The filmmakers given top notch access have been known for months: Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, the team behind the Oscar-winning film The Hurt Locker and the upcoming film on the mission to kill bin Laden Zero Dark Thirty. But we never got to see who was vying with them for access to details on the bin Laden raid, a group that includes former New York Times reporter Howard Blum, the History Channel and The BBC. Typically, details about deliberations over who wins and who loses in the competitive game of CIA access remains a secret, but thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative legal group Judicial Watch, those conversations became public today.
From the outset, CIA, White House, and Pentagon officials began discussing the various Osama bin Laden projects with a slight degree of favoritism toward Bigelow and Boal's film. But pretty quickly the Oscar-winning pair blew away the competition and a highly-cordial subject-filmmaker relationship ensued.