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A political watchdog organization recently found out that Hollywood director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal were granted access to highly secret information about Osama bin Laden's capture, and they're not happy about it.
The website Judicial Watch reported today that it had gotten a hold of 153 pages of transcripts detailing meetings between the filmmakers and officials from the Department of Defense as well as the CIA. In the transcripts, it becomes apparent that Bigelow and Boal spoke to a member of SEAL Team 6, and were granted access to the secret area where planning for the bin Laden raid was carried out.
The meetings were held to help Bigelow and Boal get details for a film they're making about bin Laden's killing by U.S. troops.
Judicial Watch is upset about the news because they claim to have been trying to get the White House to release photos of bin Laden after he was killed, to no avail.
But in an August 2011 piece for the New York Times, Maureen Dowd speculates that the moviemakers got the access they asked for because the film will essentially be part of Obama's re-election campaign. She wrote:
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 only catch is that while Dowd and Judicial Watch report that the film is scheduled to be released this October, The Hollywood Reporter suggests it will be released in December -- after the election.
