PBS Feature on CIA Torture

What is humorous is two politicians suggesting that the CIA report is false and misleading. Isn't that what politicians do all the time? But also what film is accurate as history? And more, what history is accurate? Politicians write propaganda books as well and promote propaganda films. 



[From article]
Years later, the film is still controversial — especially given the 6,000-page senate report detailing the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” during the War on Terror that took place during the Bush administration from 2001 to 2006. That report, which revealed many disturbing facts about the extensive use of torture on CIA detainees, also indicates that none of the information received through torture led the CIA to the capture of Osama bin Laden.
Last night, six months after the Senate committee released a truncated, 525-page excerpt of the complete report (much of which remains classified), PBS’Frontline devoted an hour to how the CIA managed to legally clear the EIT program, how many of its architects still defend the torture practices, and how the organization influenced the depiction of its practices in Zero Dark Thirty.
[. . .]



Zero Dark Thirty, on the other hand, was billed as non-fiction — an act of cinematic journalism. It’s a film that the Frontline report argues is representative of the CIA’s version of events, especially considering that the source material was a collection of CIA-provided documents. Senator Feinstein admits in the Frontline report that she walked out of the film after twenty minutes, calling it “so false.” Former senator Udall openly calls it propaganda, especially since he and other senators had access to CIA documents that provided alternate realities.
[. . .]



Michael Isikoff, co-author of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, criticizes Bigelow’s film in the Frontline report, saying, “Movies like Zero Dark Thirty have a huge impact. More people see them and more people get their impressions about what happened from a movie like that than they do from countless news stories or TV spots.” And that’s entirely true, and the crux of the debate surrounding the film. Its filmmakers may argue that Zero Dark Thirty is a piece of journalism, but that’s dubious considering their limited sources (and the basic fact that people do not go to a multiplex for solid journalism). It’s a piece of art, and art is subjective; Zero Dark Thirty, then, is as morally ambiguous as the torture it displays on screen.
[. . .]
The subject of this debate is not whether torture is bad, but rather if the torture committed by CIA operatives was worth the immorality that comes along with it. History proves it wasn’t justified, and Zero Dark Thirty gives the impression that it was. If Zero Dark Thirty, then, offers the CIA’s version of the facts to a large audience, the accounts of recent history are uncomfortably misleading — which only proves worrisome for future generations who deserve an unmuddled understanding of the truth.

http://decider.com/2015/05/20/frontlines-episode-on-torture-makes-a-case-that-zero-dark-thirty-was-government-propaganda/?_ga=1.1142456.866968644.1432153635

‘FRONTLINE’S’ EPISODE ON TORTURE MAKES A CASE THAT ‘ZERO DARK THIRTY’ WAS GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA
By Tyler Coates
May 20, 2015 11:45 AM