The National Security Archive, a nonprofit founded by journalists and scholars in 1985 "to check rising government secrecy," has published all of the available official government documents about the mission to kill the leader of al-Qaeda.

The poster for the blockbuster movie Zero Dark Thirty features black lines of redaction over the title, which unintentionally illustrate the most accurate take-away from the film - that most of the official record of the hunt for Osama bin Laden is still shrouded in secrecy, according to the National Security Archive's ZD30 briefing book, posted today at www.nsarchive.org. The U.S. government's recalcitrance over releasing information directly to the public about the twenty-first century's most important intelligence search and military raid, and its decision instead to grant the film's producers exclusive and unprecedented access to classified information about the operation, means that for the time being – for bad or good – Hollywood has become the public's "account of record" for Operation Neptune Spear.

As often happens when the government declines on secrecy grounds to provide an authoritative account of a controversial event, leaked, unauthorized and untrustworthy versions rush to fill the void. In this extraordinary case, a Hollywood motion picture, with apparent White House, CIA, and Pentagon blessing and despite its historical inaccuracies, is now the closest thing to the official story behind the pursuit of bin Laden.

A waterboarding scene from the film "Zero Dark Thirty."

Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of the New York University Center on Law and Security and author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First One Hundred Days, explains seven simple steps to making US torture and detention policies once again acceptable to the American public, as illustrated in "Zero Dark Thirty."

Snip:

As its core, Bigelow’s film makes the bald-faced assertion that torture did help the United States track down the perpetrator of 9/11. Zero Dark Thirty -- for anyone who doesn’t know by now -- is the story of Maya (Jessica Chastain), a young CIA agent who believes that information from a detainee named Ammar will lead to bin Laden. After weeks, maybe months of torture, he does indeed provide a key bit of information that leads to another piece of information that leads… well, you get the idea. Eventually, the name of bin Laden’s courier is revealed. From the first mention of his name, Maya dedicates herself to finding him, and he finally leads the CIA to the compound where bin Laden is hiding. Of course, you know how it all ends.

However compelling the heroine’s determination to find bin Laden may be, the fact is that Bigelow has bought in, hook, line, and sinker, to the ethos of the Bush administration and its apologists. It’s as if she had followed an old government memo and decided to offer in fictional form step-by-step instructions for the creation, implementation, and selling of Bush-era torture and detention policies.

Today, January 11 2013, marks 11 years to the day after the administration of George W. Bush opened the terror detainee center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And today, Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, opens nationwide. My review of the film is here.

(Thanks, Laura Poitras!)]]> http://boingboing.net/2013/01/11/the-7-easy-steps-steps-to-lear.html/feed 63 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/06/zero-dark-thirty-teaser.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/06/zero-dark-thirty-teaser.html#comments Mon, 06 Aug 2012 20:02:03 +0000 Jamie Frevele http://boingboing.net/?p=175043

Before May 2, 2011, Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow was working on a movie about the manhunt for Osama bin Laden. After May 2, 2011, she had to rework her movie a bit, because that manhunt officially ended when SEAL Team 6 tracked down their target and killed him. Then it was revealed that Bigelow got some help from the CIA, which no one minded at all. And then she was told that her movie, which depicts a successful mission by the current president and the military to find the world's most wanted terrorist -- and was set to be released in October -- might look like propaganda and influence the presidential election in November, so it is now being released in December. But here's an even more interesting piece of information about Zero Dark Thirty: Chris Pratt is in it. Parks and Recreation's Chris Pratt. That Chris Pratt.

'Zero Dark Thirty' trailer: Kathryn Bigelow hunts for Osama bin Laden [/Film]