CIA veteran comments on ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

Movies about espionage are nothing new, but there’s something unique about Zero Dark Thirty, the new Hollywood film which depicts the 10-year manhunt for Usama bin Laden (UBL).  The movie opens today in the Washington D.C. area and received a rare statement from Acting CIA Director Michael Morell.

Today, in the Washington Post, 31-year CIA veteran Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. speaks out on the accuracies and inaccuracies in the film.  Rodriguez, the author of Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives, takes issue with how enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT) are depicted in the film, but also suggests that the movie oversells the role that EIT played in getting UBL.  Ultimately, however, Rodriguez encourages readers to go see the movie.

Here’s the opening:

It is an odd experience to enter a darkened room and, for more than 2.5   hours, watch someone tell a story that you experienced intimately in your own life. But that is what happened recently as I sat in a movie theater near Times Square and watched “Zero Dark Thirty,” the new Hollywood blockbuster about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

When I was head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center from 2002 to 2004 and then director of the National Clandestine Service until late 2007, the campaign against al-Qaeda was my life and obsession.

Read the rest.

HT: Mindy Belz