The fervor over Zero Dark Thirty, the allegations that it condones torture, and its alleged factual inconsistencies have seemingly come to a head. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Senators Dianne Feinstein, Carl Levine, and John McCain “are raising the possibility that the CIA might have misled director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal and are demanding that the agency turn over documents that could clarify the question.” [source]
While it’s all well and good that the Senators’ time is being spent on trying to figure out who led the writer and director to believe that torture was used to solicit information – something that has been in the headlines and under fire for the last decade or so – it strikes me as amusing that this search for information is the bureaucratic equivalent of the plot in Zero Dark Thirty. Bigelow and Boal have done something that the Senators are unhappy with. Thus, the Senators must find out who provided this information and its subsequent discontents.
So, they’ll play the role of Maya (Jessica Chastain) and demand that action be taken.
They’ll point out and play on the inconsistencies of a letter that “contradicts the Senate Intelligence Committee’s recently released report, which concluded that no information obtained through torture played a constructive role in tracking bin Laden to the hiding place in Pakistan where he ultimately was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs. The Senate study was based on information from members of the CIA, including Morell.” [source]
And, doesn’t much of the information discovered through Zero Dark Thirty stem from inconsistencies? Admittedly, these inconsistencies could have been coerced through beatings, etc., but these Senators seem to be bullying Morell and the filmmakers with semantics of “constructive.” In truth, the information in ZDT needs to be coupled with serendipity and being at the right place at the right time in order for it to have any “constructive” impact in tracking bin Laden.
What I find most interesting of all is that the Senators are not denying torture – which is probably a good thing considering there’s proof that it occurred. Rather, they are saying that nothing was gained from torture, or “enhanced-interrogation techniques” regardless of the fact that interrogators performed these techniques for years. Much like it would have been irresponsible for Bigelow and Boal to posit that torture – and any information that came from it – would have led directly to the capture of bin Laden, it seems equally as irresponsible for these Senators to assert that absolutely nothing from these years-long practices elicited any information that – in some small way or another (much like in the film) – led to the discovery of bin Laden.
