President Barack Obama might have won the Nobel Peace Prize a tad prematurely, but he may be making a bid for the Oscars. The Daily Caller reports that documents obtained by Judicial Watch reveal that the White House “worked closely with producers of a movie about the successful killing of Osama bin Laden and pushed them to incorporate the administration’s talking points.”
In a Hollywood-Washington collaboration for the ages, Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal eagerly adopted the Obama adminstration’s talking points, much to the delight of senior White House officials:
The filmmakers “are basically using the WH-approved talking points we used the night of the operation,” according to a June 2011 e-mail Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers sent to the Pentagon’s PR chief, Douglas Wilson.
Those talking points described the raid as a “gutsy decision” and played up the president’s role.
The director and screenwriter also took advantage of unique access to the U.S. Navy’s Seal Team Six–thanks to the assistance of Democratic Party lobbyists, who were supposed to have been kept far away from the Obama White House, but have continued playing a major role in the administration:
The records also show that Bigelow and Boal were allowed to meet with one of the raid’s planners from Seal Team Six and were escorted through a high-security facility at CIA headquarters dubbed “The Vault.”
The CIA and Pentagon visits were arranged by The Glover Park Group, a Democratic lobbying group with close ties to many White House officials.
As Breitbart News’ John Nolte pointed out in January, the film was originally–and cynically–planned for release shortly before the November 2012 elections, and concerns were raised about the possibility that filmmakers might have had access to classified information, even as the administration refused to release details such as images of Osama bin Laden’s death.