Reuters:

A government watchdog group is suing the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency, claiming the agencies are refusing to release details of their alleged meetings and communications with director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal.

It has been alleged that Bigelow and Boal — in preparation for the script to their Annapurna Pictures movie about the killing of Osama Bin Laden — received classified information regarding his death.

Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act complaint — which was obtained by TheWrap — in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. The group says the DoD and CIA have not complied with its FOIA requests within the legally required 20 working days.

Judicial Watch sent FOIA requests to the DoD and the CIA on August 9, seeking records of alleged meetings and communications between government officials, the makers of the Bin Laden movie and employees of Annapurna Pictures, according to the group’s complaint.

The DoD and CIA acknowledged they received the requests but said they couldn’t release the alleged information, according to Judicial Watch. The DoD cited “unusual circumstances which impact our ability to quickly process your request,” the suit says. The CIA said the agency was inundated with FOIA requests and couldn’t respond within the legally required 20 working days, Judicial Watch claims.

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This week’s Washington Times column:

Now that White House “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones has resigned, what’s next?

Inevitably, the American mainstream media – ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, et al – must be held to account for sitting on the sidelines as this major story kept building without them, went viral on YouTube, and then became so large that a key appointee of President Obama was forced to step down.

But with their decision to ignore the Jones story, they may have actually done Mr. Obama far more harm than good: Who vetted this guy? How did he get past the FBI? What did he say, and how did he answer the infamous seven-page questionnaire that all Obama appointees were required to fill out? Inquiring Freedom of Information Act minds want to know.

For most people in this country, the resignation was the first they had heard of Van Jones. For this sin of journalistic omission, there’s institutional media blame. Bias is too tame a word for the utter shamelessness on display: Only Republican scandals – real and imagined – matter. (more…)