Declassified: CIA Helped Produce Hollywood Blockbuster That Grossed over $100 MillionBy Carey Wedler The documents reveal that throughout the filmmaking process, filmmaker Mark Boal was in close contact with Leon Panetta, who was the head of the CIA when the film went into development and production. The documents include two reports, Alleged Disclosure of Classified Information by Former D/CIA [Director of CIA] from March, 2014 and a September 2013 report from the Inspector Generals office called Potential Ethics Violations Involving Film Producers. The relationship between Boal and fellow filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow, who made The Hurt Locker in 2009, began a year before the raid on bin Laden in Pakistan, when the pair sought to make a film titled Tora Bora about the CIAs failure to capture him. However, bin Laden died, nullifying the films premise. Only days after Obama announced bin Ladens death in May of 2011, Boal was in contact with Panetta in the hopes of making a film about the killing. According to Vice News, Less than three weeks after bin Ladens death, Boal and Michael Feldman, a public relations representative for Tora Bora, met with CIA officials to discuss the new project. Further, the CIA gave Boal access to CIA personnel and facilities less than a month after bin Laden was killed in order to further his research for the ZDT screenplay. Boal was even invited to a CIA award ceremony around the same time, though the Inspector Generals report seemed unclear as to who had invited him the CIAs Office of Public Affairs or Panetta himself. Panetta denied any knowledge of his presence and said he would have been unable to recognize Boal, even though he sat at the same table as Boal and Bigelow at the 2010 White House Correspondents dinner and instructed them to contact him when they were ready to make Tora Bora. The CIA ethics report confirmed that The [bin Laden] operation team provided the filmmakers background on the intelligence portions of the [bin Laden] raid. Boal and Bigelow made multiple visits to CIA headquarters in Langley, VA and also met with officials in Los Angeles and Washington D.C. One official claimed Boal needed to talk to Agency officers as part of the project to get a feeling of what it was like to hunt [bin Laden]. The developing script for Zero Dark Thirty was continuously reviewed by CIA agents. Boal [read] his script over the telephone to public affairs officers on October 26, November 1, November 18, and December 5 so that [public affairs] could determine if the script inadvertently exposed any sensitivities. While some technical changes included removing a dog from an interrogation scene and cutting scenes of drunken parties for accuracy, more serious manipulation appears to have transpired. According to Vice News, Other concerns were raised about detainee debriefing scenes that depicted captives being punched and kicked. Further, according to the documents, as well as a memo released in 2013 that also indicated the CIAs involvement in the film, It appears that an early version had Maya [the protagonist CIA agent] participating in the torture. But during their conference calls, the CIA told Boal that this was not true to life. Others have begged to differ, arguing the bigger picture was intentionally deceptive. Former counterterrorism official for George W. Bush, Richard Clarke, said The movie left the American people with the impression that torture worked and that without it we never would have been able to trace the trail back to Abbottabad and to find bin Laden. Senator Dianne Feinstein an authoritarian lawmaker who has personally squared off with the CIA actually walked out of a screening of the film because it depicted torture as essential to finding bin Laden. I couldnt handle it because its so false, she said. Senator Mark Udall, who was a member of the intelligence committee, called the film a form of propaganda, so that the general public believes this is what happened when in fact the facts dont prove that to be the case. While the CIA manipulated the narrative of the film, the filmmakers also managed to manipulate CIA agents. The released documents reveal Bigelow and Boal took agents out to expensive dinners, sometimes totaling over $1,000. Boal told one of the agents on whom Maya was based that he could get her tickets to a Prada fashion show. She declined, but that didnt stop Boal from attempting to have her to sign a release form so he could not be sued for his depiction of her. Another officer relaxed at a Malibu beach house with Boal, though the agent claimed he paid for his own trip and notified the agency about where he was going. Other gestures were not as genuine. The filmmakers allegedly gave agents a bottle of tequila they said was worth hundreds of dollars, but upon doing (super-secret-special ops) research online, the agents found it was worth $169.99, at best. Bigelow gifted an officer black Tahitian pearl earrings, but when they were turned over for investigation into possible ethics violations, they were judged to be fake. These incidents prompted the investigations into ethics violations, as well as potential inappropriate leaks of classified information. Contact between CIA officials and Boal and Bigelow was eventually broken over these concerns, but the Department of Justice failed to act upon urgings from the CIA that Boal and Bigelow be investigated for ethics violations. Of course, the CIA was not investigated, either. While the government is no stranger to pushing narratives through cinema, the story of Zero Dark Thirty is particularly jarring because Osama bin Laden was, for years, a foundational tenet of the adventurist war on terror. The filmmakers could have depicted the governments inability to find him for a decade (granted, this was Boal and Bigelows intention, though they still sought the CIA and Panetta as their source of information). They could have investigated and told a story about the murky circumstances surrounding bin Ladens death. They could have explored the fervent war hysteria of the American populace, spurred by perpetual propaganda from the establishment pitting Osama bin Laden as a bogeyman warranting total imperialist intervention. Instead with box office revenue over $130 million worldwide they added to that fanaticism with the help of the government that created it. Also Read: Zero Dark Thirty Falling on the World Image Credit This article (Declassified: CIA Helped Produce Hollywood Blockbuster That Grossed over $100 Million) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org. Duh, really? Along with the MSM scripts..oh and the famous 9/11 live action film. Right got it. Bin Laden died in 2002 in a CIA Hospital of Marsfans disease. so the entire film is BULLCRAP! OBL died in December 2001. Other than that, your post is good. lol. So not surprised that piece of crap film was CIA. More crap to sell the sheeple who cant deal with 9/11 truth. WTC 7.no Osama body..dumbsh!t Americans! WTC 7 and no body. Why would anyone believe anything the government prints or speaks? Co-produced by the Zionist Mossad. oh please, this is all the American people are going to be told about the massive government-film industry going back decades? Id throw up, but havent eaten anything yet today. Bin Laden died in December 2001 of Marfan Syndrome. Towards the end of his life, Bin Laden (CIA code name Tim Osman) was flown to the United Arab Emirates for kidney dialysis by CIA doctors. Zero Dark Thirty is nothing more than a fairy tale. Just like the Barrack Obola presidency. I post the same thing regarding ObL often where I normally post on my major hometown newspaper. Its incredible how people who are like-minded, and cant stand Barry Davis, for some reason, believe him when he says he authored the SEAL Team 6 operation. The only reason ObL was killed by SWAL Team 6, is because ObL outlived his usefulness as a boogeyman. The new boogeyman is ISIS. A creation brought to you by the CIA Mossad. War is a racket. Check out the movie Lord of War with Nicholas Cage. That movie was pretty dumb. So I believe the CIA probably did help. Never watched the propaganda because I knew it for exactly what it was. I served 22 years I lived it. 22 years of hearing propaganda 24/7. One learns to recognize it easily when force retired disabled. Then waiting 27 years for a broken neck operation and 19 years for a back operation. While being diagnosed with AS in 2002 (a 3 year death sentence).. I never believed the bull in the first place. Either Bin Laden died years before that or he is still alive. obama needed this to distract people from his other failures and crimes. 