Documents Reveal Special Access Given to Filmmakers for Pic About Bin Laden Raid

The conservative website Judicial Watch has posted documents revealing the extent to which the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA gave access to filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal as they prepared their upcoming movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Although leaders of Special Operations Command could not talk to them, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Mike Vickers said that they would make available an unidentified NavySEAL who was involved in the planning.

"That's dynamite," Boal said, according to a transcript of the conversation he and Bigelow had with Vickers and others.

"That's incredible," Bigelow said.

Vickers added that the Seal TEAM member would "speak for operators and he'll speak for senior military commanders, because their all the same tribe and everything, and so you should get most of what you need from him. Now, again the reason Adm Olson and Adm McRaven didn't want to talk is this command conflict of interest. And then with REDACTED the only thing we ask is that you not reveal his name in any way as a consultant, because again, it's the same thing, he shouldn't be talking out of school, this at least, this gives him one step removed and he knows what he can and can't say, but this way at least he can be as open as he can with you and it ought to meet your needs and give you lots of color."

The full transcript of the filmmakers' interiew with Vickers is here.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, last year called for an investigation into whether the filmmakers were given classified information. Suspicions were raised after the New York Times mentioned the access given to the filmmakers in a column in August.

Also released were emails and other documents revealing some coordination with Glover Park Group, a lobbying firm, and other documents suggesting that access was given to a CIA facility.

King said in a statement on Wednesday, “After reviewing these emails, I am even more concerned about the possible exposure of classified information to these filmmakers, who as far as I know, do not possess security clearances. 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. 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? The emails also tell of these filmmakers being allowed to tour the CIA’s vaults, which is absolutely shocking to those of us who know the sensitive nature of materials kept there.

“Also troubling is the fact that the Democratic lobbying firm Glover Park Group was so intimately involved in brokering these filmmakers’ access to clandestine officers and potentially special operators only weeks after the mission and when details were otherwise still very closely guarded, and one of Glover Park’s primary contacts within the Administration, CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf, left shortly thereafter to join President Obama’s reelection campaign in Chicago.

“This is a very serious issue. We simply cannot forget what then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates said a week after the raid: ‘Frankly, a week ago Sunday, in the Situation Room, we all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out bin Laden. That all fell apart on Monday, the next day.’”

The movie, "Zero Dark Thirty," to be released by Sony, became a flashpoint for conservatives over orginal plans to release it in October, during campaign season. The release date has since been moved to Dec. 19.