Oscar winning director Kathryn Bigelow, center, stands on the sets during the shooting for her upcoming film about Osama bin Laden in Chandigarh, India. -AP Photo

WASHINGTON: A House committee chairman charged Wednesday that the CIA and Defense Department jeopardized US security by cooperating too closely with filmmakers producing a movie on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.    

Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King, a Republican, first raised questions about the bin Laden movie last summer, but said newly released documents confirm his suspicions.

The filmmakers are director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, who won Academy Awards for the motion picture ''The Hurt Locker.''

King referred to documents obtained by Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information Act request. He said the filmmakers received ''extremely close, unprecedented, and potentially dangerous collaboration'' from the Obama administration.

Judicial Watch said the documents show that the Defense Department granted Bigelow and Boal access to a ''planner, operator and commander of SEAL Team 6'', the unit that killed bin Laden in Pakistan.

Other documents, Judicial Watch said, show that the filmmakers met with White House officials on at least two occasions about the film. A CIA email indicates that Bigelow and Boal were granted access to ''the vault,'' which is described as the CIA building where some of the tactical planning for the raid took place, Judicial Watch said.

Pentagon press secretary George Little disputed some of the allegations, He said that while a planner was suggested as a possible point of contact for information on the Osama bin Laden raid, a meeting between that planner and the filmmakers never occurred.

He said the Defense Department engages on a regular basis with the entertainment industry on movie projects, and the goal is to ''make them as realistic as possible. We believe this is an important service that we provide.''

Little added that Pentagon officials did meet with producers of the film but said, ''We have never reviewed a script of the movie.''

Little also denied that the cooperation was an attempt to boost President Barack Obama's election chances, and said the movie would not be out until after the election. There was no immediate comment from the CIA or the White House.

Opinion

Editorial

Ties with Tehran
Updated 24 Apr, 2024

Ties with Tehran

Tomorrow, if ties between Washington and Beijing nosedive, and the US asks Pakistan to reconsider CPEC, will we comply?
Working together
24 Apr, 2024

Working together

PAKISTAN’S democracy seems adrift, and no one understands this better than our politicians. The system has gone...
Farmers’ anxiety
24 Apr, 2024

Farmers’ anxiety

WHEAT prices in Punjab have plummeted far below the minimum support price owing to a bumper harvest, reckless...
By-election trends
Updated 23 Apr, 2024

By-election trends

Unless the culture of violence and rigging is rooted out, the credibility of the electoral process in Pakistan will continue to remain under a cloud.
Privatising PIA
23 Apr, 2024

Privatising PIA

FINANCE Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb’s reaffirmation that the process of disinvestment of the loss-making national...
Suffering in captivity
23 Apr, 2024

Suffering in captivity

YET another animal — a lioness — is critically ill at the Karachi Zoo. The feline, emaciated and barely able to...