09/10/15 – Jason Leopold – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
On the line, I've got Jason Leopold.
He is the co-author with Kai Henderson of this new piece at Vice News, Tequila, Painted Pearls, and Prada, How the CIA Helped Produce Zero Dark Thirty, and that was, of course, the mainstream propaganda flick about the killing of Osama Bin Laden that came out, what, I guess a couple years ago now.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Jason?
Hey, Scott.
Good to be with you.
Very good to have you here.
Again, with the Freedom of Information Act, you've got the documents.
It's all about, well, it's a great illustration, I think, of the CIA's relationship with the media, the media's relationship with the CIA, how easygoing it all is.
So much of the time, apparently, that kind of thing.
So first of all, I guess, tell us, who's Mark Boal, and how did he get this job?
Yes.
Well, Mark Boal is actually, Mark Boal's a former journalist, former investigative journalist.
He's written for Mother Jones, The Nation, Playboy Magazine, and he is also the Oscar award-winning screenwriter and a producer.
He is the screenwriter of The Hurt Locker.
So that is, you know, what was his big movie.
He co-produced that with Catherine Bigelow, who is the director of that movie and an Oscar award winner in her own right.
And these documents that I received, just to sort of characterize them for your listeners, they are CIA Inspector General reports, two reports.
One report is about former agency director Leon Panetta and disclosures that he made, classified information that he revealed in the presence of Mark Boal after bin Laden was killed.
The other report is a potential ethics violation involving Hollywood filmmakers.
That is a separate report and investigation that the CIA Inspector General did to determine how its officers interacted with the filmmakers, Mark Boal and Catherine Bigelow, and whether they violated ethics by accepting gifts.
And both reports had conclusions in which the Inspector General determined that there were potential violations of federal law.
The matters were both referred to the Justice Department for prosecution.
In the case of Leon Panetta, it was the disclosure of classified information.
And in the case of the ethics violation, it was potential bribery of government officials and witnesses.
The Justice Department declined to prosecute in both cases and referred the matter back to CIA for administrative action.
And which then took place swiftly and severely, right?
Well, no.
And with the CIA on the ethics side, or excuse me, with the ethics violation, basically what the CIA did is they issued some new ethics guidelines and policies for its officers whenever they deal with Hollywood.
And one thing that stands out in this Inspector General report on the potential ethics violation is that the officers who interacted with Mark Boal and Catherine Bigelow while they were making this movie about the hunt for Bin Laden and the fact that the U.S. killed him, was that they had no idea what the, you know, they were given no guidance on ethics.
So for example, you know, what's really fascinating about these documents is that it does not just show how they interacted with Mark Boal and Catherine Bigelow, and it does not just show how the CIA had a hand in drafting the script and co-producing this movie.
It shows that these filmmakers showered the CIA officers, at least 10 National Clandestine Service officers, with gifts ranging from expensive bottles of tequila to fake pearl earrings, which at the time when Catherine Bigelow gave an officer pearl earrings, I'm sure that the officer did not realize that they were fake, and, you know, expensive dinners.
And so it's very rich in detail.
Now let me just add that the role that the CIA had with, you know, with this movie, there were some details that were already known.
What I'm revealing that's new here is that I'm revealing that the fact that these reports have never been released, these are previously unreleased reports, and the reports, you know, describe the extent to which the CIA was involved in this film.
The investigation into Leon Panetta's disclosures is dated March 2014, so just about a year, a little more than a year ago, and the ethics report is September 2013.
So these reports have never been released.
They do provide incredible new detail showing how far and how involved the CIA was with the creation of this movie.
Yeah, it's an interesting thing about how on one hand, they're willing to basically, it sounds like, let the CIA write the whole script, more or less, but then I know that there were at least a few who had tried to follow up with the movie makers here, who had said, yeah, but you know, did you check these facts?
I mean, to what extent did you do journalism to verify that the things you put in this movie are true?
And they go, oh, it's just a movie, oh, it's just a movie.
But at the same time, of course, the whole point of the movie is they're trying to tell you this is the way it happened.
We know because the CIA told us.
Yeah, again, you know, what's really interesting about this is that the documents show, there's a great time, by the way, let me just add that there's a great timeline in these documents.
It's actually in my story as an image, as we sort of posted it prominently.
But there's a great timeline in here, and it shows that Markle read the script over the phone to the CIA's Office of Public Affairs.
Now, the Office of Public Affairs is the liaison with the entertainment industry.
He read the script over the phone.
They objected to several scenes that were in the script, in which Markle wrote that detainees were interrogated with dogs, or dogs were present in the interrogation room, that detainees were being punched and kicked, and that CIA officers were partying on a roof of the building and shooting off guns.
And the CIA, in these documents, it says CIA officers would never do such a thing.
So he took that out.
He took that out of the script.
So it's a great example of how the agency really, really did play a role in this.
And the question also becomes, who was helping who?
Was it the CIA helping them, or was it the Bigelow and Boll helping the CIA?
I think it worked both ways.
On one hand, the CIA and the Obama administration really wanted to get their narrative out there about Bin Laden.
And Bigelow and Boll really, really wanted access.
They wanted access to the agency.
All right, y'all.
We got to take this break.
Hold it right there.
We'll be right back with Jason Leopold reporting for vice.com.
Tequila, painted pearls, and Prada.
Now the CIA helped produce Zero Dark Thirty.
Back in a minute.
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See if we can make a little bit of money.
My email address is scott at scott horton dot org.
All right, you guys.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
All right, Jason.
Welcome back.
Let's see how you sound.
Sound good on this end.
How am I sounding there?
Oh, yeah.
Way better than your cell phone.
Very good.
We'll go on like this.
Oh, the commercial.
It got in our way.
But we're discussing how the CIA helped write, basically, the screenplay for Zero Dark Thirty, which is the dramatization of the raid on Osama bin Laden's house.
And of course, I think we actually skipped all this.
We're in the very interesting nitty gritty details here, but we sort of missed the real meta narrative here, whatever you call it, the larger narrative here, which is torture.
Not that you miss it in the article.
I'm just saying so far in the interview, torture led us to bin Laden.
Thank goodness for torture.
And every time that we had a real debate about torture and it started coming to a head, you had always, and it's happening again right now, you always have these guys come with this full court press saying, hey, torture saved American lives.
That's their narrative.
Because we tortured this guy, he admitted this thing.
And that's what led us to that guy.
But now we know that nothing to do with a courier led to Osama bin Laden.
It was a Pakistani intelligence official or a general who walked right into CIA headquarters and handed him right over.
The whole thing about the courier was a lie.
Not just that they tortured somebody into admitting that it was, you know, you should follow this courier.
Never mind the entire, you know, fiction in the movie about how they follow the white truck down the highway and all their crap they made up.
Right.
Right.
Well, I think that, you know, there's many good points that you made here.
And let me just say as part of this narrative where, you know, this is a multilayered narrative.
What you know, what everyone should know is that Mark Boal and Catherine Bigelow began working with the CIA in 2010.
So before bin Laden was killed, they were actually working with the CIA on a movie called Tora Bora.
And it was about the fact that, you know, how the CIA let bin Laden slip through its fingers, you know, after 9-11.
Mark Boal contacts the CIA in April of 2011 and says he's traveling to Afghanistan and he's contacting the CIA the way, as Leon Panetta requested, if he ever intended to go there.
And he's making that call.
Two weeks later, the CIA, you know, in this joint operation, kills bin Laden.
So Mark Boal scraps this, you know, this script and starts working on Zero Dark Thirty.
What's important to note about this timeframe, Scott, is that this and the way that the CIA, you know, provided Boal and Bigelow with this intelligence information about the operation is that this also took place when the Senate Intelligence Committee was investigating the efficacy of the CIA's program and the CIA's torture program and what the Senate Intelligence Committee ultimately found out is that the, you know, use of torture did not result in any unique or valuable intelligence, no intelligence that could be deemed actionable.
And one thing that they noted was that, you know, the torture of several detainees that the CIA claims, you know, led to the courier that led to bin Laden just, you know, did not pan out.
It was not true.
So on one hand, you know, you had the CIA that obviously wanted to get its narrative out there and how better to get your narrative out than to use Hollywood to make a movie about how torture played a role in killing bin Laden and leading, you know, us to bin Laden and his death and get that out to a mass audience.
You know, Zero Dark Thirty made a worldwide box office over $130 million.
So, you know, it was so, you know, intense in terms of what was taking place behind the scenes that, you know, Dianne Feinstein, who was the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, when she learned that the CIA was, you know, providing details and had worked with Bigelow and Bull at the same time her committee was writing this report and giving them this narrative about bin Laden, she took the unprecedented step of writing to the president of Sony Pictures and basically saying that they had an obligation to correct the record on what this film portrayed.
So, you know, that's the context in all of this and you make a very, you know, good and important point about torture.
This week we are seeing the release of a book called Rebuttal.
This is a book that contains essays from former top CIA officials in which they rebut the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's torture program.
And so this has been going on, obviously, you know, this story is not going away.
This issue of torture, this debate about torture, who controls the narrative, you know, continues.
And these documents that, you know, I obtained through this Freedom of Information Act lawsuit is another part of that, you know, that narrative, another wrinkle to the story.
And so it's, you know, it plays a very, very important part.
You know, it's interesting, too.
They did a movie that was just exactly the same movie.
I'm pretty sure with the same torture narrative, I'm not sure what the differences were.
But for the Learning Channel or the Discovery Channel or one of those, and it has the heroic red haired CIA lady and everything, it's the exact same movie, pretty much.
You know what I'm talking about?
Have you sued for the documents on that script, too?
Yeah, I've actually, you know, requested a number of different documents related to, you know, the work that the CIA has done or, you know, their roles with, you know, with Hollywood.
And I think that, look, you know, I'm not this is this is I'm not breaking new ground here.
You know, the CIA's role with Hollywood, their work with Hollywood goes back decades.
There's been books written about it.
But it's always interesting to see, you know, the evolution of that, how if anything has changed.
I mean, you know, like I said, certainly these documents are, you know, are fascinating for many, many different reasons, as well as the fact that it led to the creation of this, you know, new ethics policy that that the CIA put out.
But I'm still waiting on everything else.
You know, Scott, that, you know, documents, it takes a long time to get them.
I'm a very patient man.
And hopefully that will eventually come through.
Yeah.
Hey, it's a virtue.
It certainly works out for you and your reporting.
In fact, thank you.
There's been, you know, I don't know, not to change the subject, but there's been at least a handful of just profiles of you and the journalism that you're doing because of how far out in front of everybody else you are and so much of this stuff.
So I mean, that really speaks to the value of the work you're doing.
So, you know, I have to tell you, they already are all telling you.
All right.
So thanks.
Yeah.
Now.
And now.
So the thing about, well, all these gifts that they accepted, it's sort of, you know, is beside the point.
The real point is how much the CIA influenced the way that they wrote the movie and produced it and made them look and all that.
I mean, that's the real meat of it.
But then again, as you say, looks like they're breaking the law.
You know, going both ways here, really coming and going.
And of course, then there's complete, you know, impunity and a complete lack of accountability.
The I.G., you said, recommended it to the Justice Department.
And they said, nah.
Yeah.
And I think that that is very important to know in the context of how the Obama administration has aggressively pursued the leak of classified information, the disclosure of classified information, how the administration has aggressively prosecuted individuals for disclosing this information.
But, you know, I think these documents are another, more evidence to show that not all leaks are equal, Scott.
You know, this was Leon Panetta.
There was a disclosure of classified info.
It's interesting also because he, as director of the CIA, he has this sort of instant declassification authority.
He could say something will be instantly declassified.
So the fact.
It's kind of interesting that they investigated that at all.
I mean, after all, there's official leaks in The New York Times and Washington Post every day, that kind of thing.
What was different about him leaking this than those kind of situations?
You know, the issue about this was the fact that and yes, I left that out, was that Mark Boal, what happened was that after Bin Laden was killed, the, you know, maybe about six weeks later or excuse me, less than a month later, the CIA held an award ceremony, what they call the Bin Laden Award Ceremony, was held at CIA headquarters in a tent outside of headquarters, attended by about 1,300 people, including the Navy SEALs.
Mark Boal was invited to this.
He secured an invitation to this classified award ceremony.
He does not hold the security clearance.
And his presence there concerned a number of people who were present, who were, you know, at this award ceremony.
And they found that, you know, on one hand, Leon Panetta, you know, did he extend an invitation to Mark Boal?
Did he know he was there?
There was conflicting information about that.
But there was a, you know, when Leon Panetta was giving a speech, his speech contained classified information.
He identified the Navy SEALs, you know, by name, the ground commander by name, you know, information that would otherwise be classified.
They found that his speech itself was classified as secret when it should have been top secret.
So there were, you know, there was a complete breakdown of safeguarding, you know, information here.
And so they decided like, oh, wow, we, you know, we need to investigate, one, how did Mark Boal get here?
How did he get an invitation?
Who authorized it?
What was really fascinating is that when they was confronted with this, you know, when Leon Panetta was confronted with, did you know that Mark Boal would be here?
He said, no.
In fact, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be able to identify Mark Boal anyway, because I've never met him.
Well, guess what?
The inspector general found that Leon Panetta's story didn't check out, because a year earlier, he did meet Mark Boal.
He also met Catherine Bigelow.
He sat with them at a table at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and included with these documents is the seating chart of the White House Correspondents' Dinner, showing that Leon Panetta sat with Boal and Bigelow, and it was at this Correspondents' Dinner that he said to them, if you ever need anything, you need any help from the agency with your, you know, with your movies, with this Bin Laden movie, give us a call.
And so that's sort of why they, you know, part of the reason why they kind of, you know, continue to push this.
I did note that the, you know, the oddity of it is that, you know, as director of the CIA, he's considered what one would call an original classification authority.
So he could also just kind of instantly declassify.
But you know, the information that he revealed that should have been top secret contained, you know, Defense Department information, particularly or specifically some NSA information.
So and Mark Boal, you know, was there to hear it all.
Yeah, it's still kind of puzzling, because, you know, usually there's only two kinds of leaks.
The kind that the official government, somebody on the level of Panetta or, you know, the White House wants in the media, which is perfectly fine, or, you know, someone heroically trying to tell the truth about government crimes to the American people.
And then they go to prison, and they're treated, you know, they're charged with espionage and this kind of thing.
And now, obviously, this didn't go that far.
But it seems like, man, there must have been a political vendetta somewhere, somebody had a vendetta, but maybe between the National Intelligence Director and Panetta or something for this to go that far against Panetta, or because I'm trying to think like the counterfactual, they just invited Bob Woodward to that thing to write it up for the Washington Post, or Walter Pincus, or David Ignatius, or something, that would have been just perfectly fine, right?
Or is it that there were so many people there watching, or?
Yeah, but actually, that's a, that's an interesting point.
And one, the, you know, one of the issues that came up is that journalists obviously don't get the same sort of access that, you know, these Hollywood filmmakers get.
They certainly get access, Scott, we know that we know that Walter Pincus, for example, gets plenty of leaks and, and access to, you know, to the CIA.
However, this was something that was just so unique and extraordinary, because Mark Boll, the screenwriter, was invited by, you know, the top officials, he was meeting with top officials, he, you know, they, these officials said that they didn't consider him to be a journalist.
They considered him to be, you know, Hollywood, you know, a Hollywood screenwriter.
So he was, you know, his treat, he was treated differently.
But you know, it, it's very clear that, as I noted, that, you know, not all leaks, not all disclosures are treated the same.
And this was still a disclosure of classified information to in the presence of someone who was not clear to receive it.
And there was no accountability for that.
Whereas, you know, the disclosure of a name, right, the name of an officer to some of the New York Times, by John Kiriakou, and that name was never printed, you know, resulted in John Kiriakou, former CIA officer, being, you know, sent to prison for two years.
And they even pursued him on espionage charges.
You know, and the same with David Petraeus, the former, other, you know, former head of the CIA, although he, you know, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.
So you know, the, it just comes down to, you know, the fact that, you know, they chalk this up as a mistake, an oversight, disorganization.
And that was it.
All right.
Well, listen, I'm sorry.
I've kept you over time.
And I know you got to go.
But thanks so much for your time and great reporting here, Jason.
As always.
Thanks, Scott.
Always appreciate it.
And always great to speak with you.
All right.
So that's Jason Leopold.
He's at news.vice.com.
Tequila, painted pearls, and Prada, how the CIA helped produce Zero Dark Thirty.
We'll be right back in a sec.
Hey, y'all.
Scott here.
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Hey, y'all.
Scott here.
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Of course, I've never charged for my archives in a dozen years of doing this, and I'm not about to start.
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