White Helmets

It might as well be called Back to the Future, Part IV, for the film, like the country it speaks to, seems stuck forever in that time warp moment of revenge and hubris that swept the country just after 9/11.

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.

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.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33587.htm

CIA documents obtained by Vice show the extent to which the agency went to assist the filmmakers behind 2013 Oscar Best Picture nominee Zero Dark Thirty in its favorable portrayal of torture as a method of obtaining information in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

The documents reveal that a few weeks after bin Laden was killed in May 2011, Zero Dark Thirty screenwriter Mark Boal was allowed to attend CIA’s classified awards ceremony honoring those who were part of the team.

The documents also show that the CIA later allowed Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow access to numerous CIA operatives who were involved in the clandestine operation. During those meetings, the filmmakers wined and dined the CIA officers and presented them with thank you gifts.

The documents show that director Bigelow met repeatedly with one officer, who was the inspiration for Jessica Chastain’s character in Zero Dark Thirty, and gave her a pair of Tahitian pearl earrings as a thank-you gift during a meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. During a separate encounter at the Soho House in Los Angeles, Bigelow reportedly offered to host a private screening of the film at the exclusive club.

https://news.vice.com/article/tequila-painted-pearls-and-prada-how-the-cia-helped-produce-zero-dark-thirty

 The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, released in December 2014, showed that Bikowsky was not only a key part of the torture program, but also one of its chief apologists, resulting in the media giving her the moniker "The Unidentified Queen Of Torture"

Despite the CIA's insistence on the professionalism of its interrogation program, according to two well-informed Agency sources, one particularly overzealous female officer had to be reprimanded for her role. After Mohammed was captured, the woman, who headed the Al Qaeda unit in the CTC, was so excited she flew at government expense to the black site where Mohammed was held so that she could personally watch him being waterboarded. ... Coworkers said she had no legitimate reason to be present during Mohammed's interrogation. She was not an interrogator. "She thought it would be cool to be in the room," a former colleague said.

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou was interviewed about the arrest and extraordinary rendition of Canadian citizen Maher Arar, which occurred in September 2002 at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Kiriakou said a senior woman CIA counter-terrorism officer ordered the rendition over the objections of her subordinates. Arar was sent to Syria where he was tortured and held for almost one year. In reference to the episode, he referred to the film Zero Dark Thirty.