“Zero Dark Thirty” screenwriter Mark Boal drew a strong response from Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., after chalking up criticism of depictions of sensitive information in his film to politics.
In an interview with CNN, King said Boal’s opinion of what is classified or sensitive information doesn’t matter, saying instead that the fact that he had access to information used for the film is the bigger concern.
“Who cares what Mark Boal says,” King said. “He doesn’t decide what’s sensitive and what’s classified, so I don’t care what he has to say . . . What I’m talking about is pressuring special operators, people who put their lives on the line, pressuring them to cooperate with Hollywood producers,”
The bigger concern is that those associated with the film while Boal was writing it may have had access to information and agents that they should not have.
King’s comments follow a letter sent to Sony Pictures Entertainment from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., criticizing the use of torture as part of the “Zero Dark Thirty” plotline.
The movie is about the hunt for and killing of Osama bin Laden by the U.S. Navy’s Seal Team 6.
“There is an investigation going on about some of the information that they used,” McCain said Wednesday on Fox News. “And clearly, I think they got the slant of those who are defending, in my view, what is unconscionable, and that is torturing people.
"When it gets around the world that the United States of America tortures people, any information that we could gain from doing that — if we ever did — harms the image of the United States far more than the value of any information we might obtain.”
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