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.

As of January 12, the DoD and the CIA “have failed to produce any records responsive to plaintiff’s requests or demonstrate that responsive records are exempt from production,” the suit says. “Nor have they indicated whether or when they will produce any responsive records.”

Full piece here.

King’s interview with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly earlier today revealed new details about the investigation and why the congressman thought the leak may have happened in the first place.

The New York Republican told Kelly the proof for his initial suspicions about the leak revolved around how much information about the raid hit the press shortly after it occurred.

“That compromised our assets on the ground,” he says.

His concern grew after reading a Maureen Dowd column in the New York Times “almost bragging that the administration would give Sony and [Director] Kathryn Bigelow unprecedented access to the most classified operation in history.”

That was enough to ignite a preliminary investigation by the Defense Department into the matter, King reveals. And, apparently, investigators found something worth pursuing.

“The Inspector General has decided to go ahead with a full investigation,” King said. “I feel very vindicated on this … they wouldn’t be wasting their time on this if they didn’t think there was at least probably cause.”

King didn’t accuse the Obama administration of purposely leaking info for a project which could cast Obama in a positive light. Instead, he pointed to a less nefarious cause.

“Sometimes you have amateurs running the operation,” he says, while later adding he’s glad Sony is making a movie of the raid.

“This should be made into a movie. This was so heroic, and it was a tremendous accomplishment,” he says.

The bigger story may be how much information Obama officials gave to the filmmakers to make the movie a reality.

The Pentagon is investigating whether members of the Obama administration leaked classified information to director Kathryn Bigelow of “The Hurt Locker” fame to help shape the film.

Rep. Peter King, who heads the House Homeland Security Committee, has questioned how much information was shared about the U.S. special operations mission in Pakistan that killed the al-Qaida leader in May. King on Thursday released a December letter from the Pentagon saying that the inspector general’s office covering intelligence matters “will address actions taken by Department of Defense personnel related to the release of information to the filmmakers.”

The untitled bin Laden film, in the works for months before the actual raid, is expected to hit theaters at the end of 2012.

It was not the public’s ambivalence to the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq that caused director Nick Broomfield to portray our soldiers as adrenalized murderers in “Battle for Haditha” or cinema legend Brian De Palma to do the same in “Redacted.” Nor is it a sudden focus on capitalism, as filmmaker Peter Berg suggests in the article, that is motivating Universal Studios suddenly to produce “Lone Survivor” four years after its publication. It is politics.

Numerous books have analyzed politics in Hollywood, including Ben Shapiro’s recent Primetime Propaganda: The True Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV. So, the fact that Hollywood is an unabashedly liberal community is no revelation. But filmmakers’ covert attempts to shift public opinion to the left needs to be understood better.

Berg explains that Hollywood now “supports these men” but fails to disclose that this is because our troops have a new boss. The equation is simple: When the commander-in-chief is a Republican, Hollywood sees him as a corporate stooge and jingoistic warmonger. But when he is a Democrat, he is a visionary and a reluctant hero.

Hollywood does not make films that celebrate American values and our men and women in uniform during GOP administrations. Those films could send the wrong message and stir public sentiment in favor of a disliked president. But trade in a Right-wing saber rattler for some hope and change, and suddenly a powerful propaganda machine positively portrays the country that today’s president leads. The new message: Feel good, America. We are noble, just like our cosmopolitan president. Let’s give him four more years and keep feeling great about ourselves.

Fast forward to the upcoming film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, which is slated for release in October 2012, just before the election. Some conservatives worry that the filmmakers — Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal — will spend more time praising President Obama for his “gutsy call” than they will on the heroes who tracked, found, and killed the late al-Qaeda chief. But those fears are unfounded.

Bigelow and Boal understand the firestorm that they would unleash. Instead, they are likely to create a genuinely great movie that makes our intelligence agencies and special forces look like gods among men. They may even throw George W. Bush a bone, which will make them look magnanimous and their critics seem small. It will be enough that the film will make people feel warm about the country and its leadership a few weeks before the election they vote. That’s their goal, and that’s the power that Hollywood has to influence our culture.

The real question isn’t: “Can Hollywood make a film that presents American values in a good light?” That’s not a problem. The question should be: “Would Hollywood produce it if their man wasn’t in the Oval Office?”

To answer that, just look at Boal’s own work. Far from celebrating the bravery of American soldiers, his 2007 screenplay for Paul Haggis’s “In the Valley of Elah,” portrayed American soldiers as murderous psychopaths who dismember one of their own. Back then, the cowboy from Texas was president.

As for Boal’s last collaboration with Bigelow, while “Hurt Locker” was released under Obama in June 2009 and widely applauded for portraying US GIs in an heroic light, the film was written and shot under Bush. As such it reflects — albeit subtly – Hollywood’s skepticism about Americans in uniform.

The film opens with the sentence “WAR IS A DRUG” and proceeds to show how the war in Iraq takes a toll on the main character, depriving him of love for his child, and creating in him a reckless junkie who puts his men in danger for his own sport. George Bush’s war does that to a man.

There was also the commanding officer who ordered his men to leave an Iraqi to die, and the few political statements were all decidedly in the liberal, “we make them terrorists” vein.

For those of us who love America, as well as the men and women who protect her, Hollywood’s new attitude will be refreshing, even if it is tainted by the certainty that one election can change everything for the worse.

For a more consistent way to see pro-American films made – one that is not dependent on who occupies the White House — more conservatives working need to work in the entertainment industry. We need more conservatives to learn the craft, create films, produce television, and sway the culture. For too long, conservatives have been only reactionary toward what Hollywood produces. We cannot leave America’s most powerful pulpit in the hands of the left.

Bigelow and Boal

The Hill:

A Republican lawmaker from Kansas wants to prevent the administration from helping Sony make a move about the killing of Osama bin Laden.  

The Stop Subsidizing Hollywood Act introduced by Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.) would stop the Obama administration from spending taxpayer money to share information about the killing of bin Laden with Sony Pictures, which is looking to release a film about that event in October 2012. 

Jenkins said the bill, introduced on Friday, is necessary because the government has no role to play in helping the movie industry at a time of fiscal crisis.  

“In an era of 9 percent unemployment, trillion dollar deficits, credit downgrades, and record debt ceiling extensions it is unconscionable that tax payer dollars are being used to aid the Hollywood film industry in fact checking and script research,” Jenkins said. “American families have been forced to go through their budgets line by line and look for ways to tighten their belts, and it is time the federal government does the same.”

Sony, Bigelow and Boal have been given every opportunity to do the right thing and push the film’s release date into late December and out of the political arena. They have CHOSEN not to do so. Furthermore, they were the ones who chose to play politics with this film to begin with, not Rep. Jenkins and not anyone on the Right.

There’s nothing we would all like more than to enjoy a non-partisan, pro-American film about the killing of Osama bin Laden, nothing we would all like more than to anticipate the film we’ve been waiting ten years to see — the one where Hollywood finally takes our side in the War on Terror. But the decision has been made by the Hollywood Left to cynically use a key moment in our history and, worst of all, the bravery and heroism of our troops, as partisan political pawns.

As of right now, conservatives not only have the right to do everything within their power to bring down this film, they have an obligation.

If the filmmakers and studio want to play politics … let’s play.

New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, broke a story last Saturday on the White House’s curious role in the production of a new Hollywood movie that tells the story of the killing of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEAL Team 6. The movie is set to be released October 12, 2012, conveniently just before the November presidential elections.

The movie’s creators are none other than director Kathryn Bigelow and journalist Mark Boal, whose 2009 movie, “The Hurt Locker,” won six Academy Awards in 2010.

The White House has offered Bigelow and Boal a questionable in-depth look into the mission which ended the terror king’s reign and is getting “top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration,” according to Dowd.

Predictably, The Washington Post, Reuters and, The Los Angeles Times led their coverage of the story with White House denials of jeopardizing national security. The Politico took a more balanced approach.

According to a Politico article on the matter, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, has written a letter to the CIA and Department of Defense demanding an investigation into the White House role in allowing unprecedented access into the mission and is quoted as saying, “It shouldn’t have been out there that SEAL Team 6 did this, and there have been so many details out there.” King continues, “And now we find out they are cooperating with a movie — what are we doing?”

White House press secretary Jay Carney chimed in on King’s remarks saying, “We do not discuss classified information and I would hope that as we face a continued threat from terrorism, the House Committee on Homeland Security would have more important topics to discuss than a movie.”

King responded saying, “Obviously, I hit a sensitive nerve, what he said was nonsense — there has been so much classified information released over the last 90 days.”

It appears that a double-standard exists when the presidential administration demands that intelligence agencies take painstaking efforts to seal (no pun intended) leaks of classified information and then are held responsible for anything that does end up in the public domain — a mistake that would most likely cost someone’s career — yet the White House can allow journalists and movie directors top-level access into highly secretive information in order to boost the public’s view of a President who is suffering from unfavorable poll numbers just in time for reelection.

“The Administration’s first duty in declassifying material is to provide full reporting to Congress and the American people, in an effort to build public trust through transparency of government.  In contrast, this alleged collaboration belies a desire of transparency in favor of a cinematographic view of history,” King concludes.

Screenwriter Mark Boal with director Kathryn Bigelow

Our utter failure of a president is looking to Hollywood for an October 2012 Surprise to save his hopes for a second term. Maureen Dowd says out loud what we all knew the moment the movie’s release date was announced:

The White House is also counting on the Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal big-screen version of the killing of Bin Laden to counter Obama’s growing reputation as ineffectual. The Sony film by the Oscar-winning pair who made “The Hurt Locker” will no doubt reflect the president’s cool, gutsy decision against shaky odds. Just as Obamaland was hoping, the movie is scheduled to open on Oct. 12, 2012 — perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost to a campaign that has grown tougher.

The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration.

It was clear that the White House had outsourced the job of manning up the president’s image to Hollywood when Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently — to the surprise of some military officers — at a C.I.A. ceremony celebrating the hero Seals.

“To the surprise of some military officers.” There’s an interesting statement.

So the White House gives filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal all kinds of exclusive access and what does President Downgrade gets in return – between production costs ($25 – $30 million) and advertising — is a $50 -$75 million in-kind political contribution from Hollywood set to hit theatres just a few weeks prior to the November 6 election.

See how that works?

By the way, Oscar season rolls right through December, so that’s no excuse.

I wonder how SEAL Team 6 and the rest of the military feel about this?

Actor Sean Penn on Friday described the killing of Osama bin Laden by US troops as an act of “vengeance”. Penn, famous for his political and social activism, was at the Cannes film festival to present a risk-taking road movie, “This Must Be The Place”, in which he plays an ageing 1980s pop star in search of his father’s Nazi tormentor.

This kind of talk is just the thing that wins over the judges at Cannes.

Give that man the Palme d’Or!

Still, a NY1 reporter went to a Brooklyn school, and found out that students were “not worked up” over binny’s death – but more interested in “weekend gossip.” Apparently, bin Laden doesn’t mean too much to teens, for they were too young to absorb “the impact of his terror.”

Meanwhile, Yahoo says that 66 percent of those searching for “who is Osama bin Laden” were ages 13 to 17.

I guess that beats “what was 9/11?”

Which brings me to some recent tweets, from various teens.

Groydis writes: “Who is Osama bin Laden, and why should i care?”

Asteriot adds, “Who is Osama bin laden? is he famous? am i the only one who don’t know who he is?”

Apparently not you idiot – since Corey-ealtman ponders, “who is osama and why is it important we killed him?”

God help us all.

But, hey, at least they have an excuse. They’re teens.

Unlike Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall, aka Captain Jackass.

Babbling ON Twitter, the dope sneered at the joy expressed over bin Laden’s death, while questioning what really happened on 9/11.

“It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak.”

So, I guess gleefully taking credit for the murders of Americans isn’t enough reason to hate someone?

But hey, maybe if the loved ones of 9/11 victims heard bin Laden speak, they’d find out he’s a great guy!

Anyway, needing to flaunt his own moral superiority, Mendenhall belittled the pain suffered by millions.

Rashard, thank you for keeping the “dumb jock” stereotype alive and kicking.

You’re a role model for our inquisitive youth.

Tonight:

Ann Coulter

Mary Katherine Hamm

Professor Marc Lamont Hill

and some assorted things you’re bound by law to enjoy!

What an extraordinarily revealing set of priorities:

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The video below, the second part of the interview, shows how badly the Obama Administration has bungled the post-mission narrative. If you’ve lost Michael Moore… As Jim Treacher so memorably put it: The Obama Adminstration took their victory lap in a clown car. The segment is also a case study in how the Left has learned how to wrap anti-American language into patriotic rhetoric:

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