King on bin Laden Movie's Ties to White House: 'Unprecedented … Potentially Dangerous'

Rep. Peter King has been the most vocal politician regarding collaboration charges against the White House in connection to the upcoming film about the death of Osama bin Laden.

Now, we’re learning King had every right to be worried.

King released a new statement today in light of the just-released information that details just how closely Obama officials worked with the filmmakers behind the movie, set for a late 2012 release.

Filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal may have set out to tell a blockbuster, election-year story about one of the most highly classified operations in American history, but through these emails they’ve ended up telling a damning story of extremely close, unprecedented, and potentially dangerous collaboration with top officials at the CIA, DoD, and the White House and a top Democratic lobbying firm. 

After reviewing these emails, I am even more concerned about the possible exposure of classified information to these filmmakers, who as far as I know, do not possess security clearances.  The email messages indicate that the filmmakers were allowed an unprecedented visit to a classified facility so secret that its name is redacted in the released email.  If this facility is so secret that the name cannot even be seen by the public, then why in the world would the Obama Administration allow filmmakers to tour it?  The emails also tell of these filmmakers being allowed to tour the CIA’s vaults, which is absolutely shocking to those of us who know the sensitive nature of materials kept there.

Also troubling is the fact that the Democratic lobbying firm Glover Park Group was so intimately involved in brokering these filmmakers’ access to clandestine officers and potentially special operators only weeks after the mission and when details were otherwise still very closely guarded, and one of Glover Park’s primary contacts within the Administration, CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf, left shortly thereafter to join President Obama’s reelection campaign in Chicago.

This is a very serious issue.  We simply cannot forget what then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates said a week after the raid:  ‘Frankly, a week ago Sunday, in the Situation Room, we all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out bin Laden.  That all fell apart on Monday, the next day.’

King followed up the statement by sending letters to Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael G. Vickers and Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell including his worries about the potential leak of classified information to the team behind the new film.