The administration takes a break from its
war on whistle blowers to provide classified information to filmmakers
BY GLENN
GREENWALD
Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow (Credit:
Reuters/Toby Melville)
(updated below)
As is now well
documented, the Obama administration
has waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, prosecuting more of them
under espionage statutes than all prior administrations combined:twice
as many as all prior administrations combined,
in fact. They are attempting, or have attempted, to imprison whistleblowers
whoexposed
corrupt and illegal NSA eavesdropping,
dangerously inept efforts to impede Iran’s nuclear program (which likely
strengthened it), the destructive
uses of torture, and a litany
of previously unknownU.S.-caused
civilian deaths and other American war crimes.
But there’s one type of leak of
classified information that the White House not only approves of but itself
routinely exploits: the type that glorifies the President for propagandistic
ends. The transparency group Judicial Watch brought FOIA lawsuits against
the administration seeking information regarding the Osama bin Laden raid,
but the administration insisted
in federal court that the
operation is secret and thus not subject to disclosure (even as they were
leaking
details about the raid to
the press). At the same time, Judicial Watch
has also
sued the White House seeking
documents showing the administration’s collaboration with Hollywood filmmakers
— The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark
Boal – who have been planning a big-budget, studio film from Sony recounting
the raid that killed bin Laden, oh-so-coincidentally scheduled for release
in October, 2012, just before the election (that’s clearly a coincidence
because Democrats, unlike those Bush/Cheney monsters, do not exploit national
security for political gain). And, oh, just by the way: as The New York
Times reported
in January, “Michael
Lynton, the Sony Pictures chief executive, has been a major backer of President
Obama and last April attended and paid the donation fee for a high-priced
political fund-raising dinner for the president on the Sony studio lot
in Culver City, Calif., which was rented by the Democratic National Committee.”
As Maureen Dowd wrote
last year:
The White House is
also counting on the Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal big-screen version of
the killing of Bin Laden to counter Obama’s growing reputation as ineffectual.
The Sony film by the Oscar-winning pair who made “The Hurt Locker” will
no doubt reflect the president’s cool, gutsy decision against shaky odds.
Just as Obamaland was hoping, the movie is scheduled to open on Oct. 12,
2012 — perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost to a campaign that
has grown tougher.
The moviemakers
are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history
from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for
leaking classified information than the Bush administration.
[In response
to the controversy and a
Congressional investigation into whether they were illegally provided with
classified information about the raid, Sony executives, last January, moved
the film's release date to December 19, after the election.]
As part
of a court order in the Judicial
Watch lawsuit, the Obama administration yesterday disclosed dozens of emails
from
the DoDand the
CIA documenting that, as
NBC News put
it, “the Obama administration
leaked classified information to filmmakers on the raid that killed Osama
bin Laden.” Politico‘s Josh Gerstein added:
“Just weeks after Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency officials warned
publicly of the dangers posed by leaks
about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, top officials at both agencies
and at the White House granted Hollywood filmmakers unusual access to those
involved in planning the raid and some of the methods they used to do it.”
The internal administration documents
— which pointedly note that the film has a “release date set for 4th
Qtr 2012 (Sep-Dec)” — reveal enthusiastic cooperation with the filmmakers
by top-level DoD officials, including Undersecretary of Defense Michael
Vickers, all done at the direction of the White House. The very first DoD
email indicates the request to work with the filmmakers came from the White
House. Then-CIA Director Leon Panetta is deemed “very interested in supporting”
the film. The documents also reveal a meeting between the filmmakers and
Obama’s chief counter-Terrorism adviser John Brennan and National Security
Council Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, at which the two White House officials
shared information about “command and control.” The DoD officials meeting
with the filmmakers were given the White House talking points from the
night of the raid, which including hailing the President’s actions as
“gutsy” and stressing the heavy involvement of the White House in the
raid.
In a meeting with Bigelow and Boal,
Defense Undersecretary Vickers promised that, from Vickers, “you are going
to get a little bit of operational stuff,” but the bulk of operational
details would have to come from “Secretary Gates, Adm. Mullen, Hoss Cartwright.”
At that meeting, they even plotted how to get the filmmakers classified
information without appearing to do so. Here is the CIA’s transcript of
that part of the discussion (MV is Undersecretary Vickers; MB is Boal;
KB is Bigelow):
In other words: military commanders
have been lecturing everyone on the evils of talking about classified programs,
so we can’t look like we’re violating that, so we’ll instead direct
some lower-level planner whose name you can’t use to tell you everything
those commanders would tell you. Also, note how the name of the SEAL
planner who was to meet with the filmmakers has been blacked out in these
documents, and the administration still refuses to reveal that name —
but it’s perfectly OK to give that information to Hollywood filmmakers
so they can produce the best possible cinematic hagiography of the President.
Obama defenders love to claim that
— unlike Bush strutting around in his fighter pilot costume — the cool,
sophisticated Obama does not boast of his imperial conquests. But as Dowd
noted, Obama’s “aides have made sure there are proxies to exuberantly
brag on him” about bin Laden’s corpse, and now — after the President
himself allowed a tongue-wagging Brian Williams into the sacred Situation
Room to produce that
cringe-inducing hagiography
— here they are secretly encouraging Hollywood to dramatize his oh-so-brave
and powerful kill, and leaking classified information to do it. Here, from
the DoD’s summary of one of the meetings, is what Undersecretary Vickers
(USDI) told them about how to make the film:
At one point during that meeting,
Vickers had spilled so many glorifying details about the raid that he actually
apologized for “talking too much” — something Pentagon officials are
never guilty of when it comes time to be held accountable in a court or
at Congress — and the filmmakers assured him: “No, no. You’ve been so
great. You’ve been incredible. . . . So extraordinary. So extraordinary.”
So let’s review the Obama administration’s
rules: leaking classified information is a grave crime — espionage! —
when done to blow the whistle on serious government corruption, deceit
and illegality, and it merits decades in prison. But when it’s done to
enable Hollywood to produce a propaganda film glorifying the great and
“gutsy” Commander-in-Chief, then it is a noble and patriotic act.
UPDATE: As numerous
people in comments and elsewhere have noted, the film’s new December release
date still makes it likely that glorifying trailers and other film buzz
will be heavily circulating prior to the November election.
On a different note: I wonder if
any MSNBC shows will find the time today to mention these newly disclosed
documents. Would it have been news there if Bush national security officials
had been secretly meeting with and passing classified information to conservative
filmmakers in order to enable the production and release of a Bush-glorifying
Hollywood propaganda film a few weeks before the 2004 election?
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