Judge rejects release of info on Bin Laden by movie makers

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A US judge has refused
to allow the public release of information
divulged by the CIA to the producers of the
film “Zero Dark Thirty,” a judicial source told
AFP on Wednesday.
The Hollywood movie about the hunt for 9/11
mastermind terrorist Obama bin Laden relied
on information disclosed to its director
Katherine Bigelow and the movie’s screenwriter
Mark Boal by the US Central Intelligence
Agency.
The names of key figures involved in the
planning of the top secret mission were sought
by the non-governmental group Judicial Watch,
which had argued in a court filing that since
they had been revealed by US intelligence, they
no longer could be classified as secret.
Judicial Watch in its suit in US District Court
criticized the Barack Obama administration,
which it said “gave the Hollywood filmmakers
unusual access to classified intelligence
information, including the names of CIA
operatives involved in the Bin Laden raid.”
US District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras,
however, dismissed the petition in an August
28 ruling which found that names of four CIA
officials and a member of the Navy Seal team
involved in planning the raid were not
included in the movie, and therefore could
remain secret.
“In short, Judicial Watch does not know — and
outside of this suit, apparently has no way of
learning — the names of these individuals,”
Contreras said in his ruling.
“That fact is strong evidence that those names
are not in the public domain.”
The US Justice Department had argued that
making the names public would create an
“unnecessary security and counterintelligence
risk.”
Contreras issued his decision as defendants
accused in the September 11, 2001 attacks
await a military ruling in a similar request,
expected in a hearing later this month at the
Guantanamo Bay military base.
James Connell, an attorney for one of the
defendants — Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, also known as
Ammar al-Baluchi — is seeking to learn as
much as the Hollywood directors got in
preparation of the movie.
“The ruling that the CIA is able to hide
information from the public about Zero Dark
Thirty does not mean that the prosecution can
hide the same information from Mr al-
Baluchi’s lawyers,” said Connell, whose
Pakistani client is identified in the movie as the
prisoner subjected to torture in a secret CIA
prison.
Al-Baluchi’s uncle, alleged 9/11 mastermind
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, also is to be tried at
the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The other defendants are Mustapha al-Hawsawi
of Saudi Arabia and Yemenis Ramzi Binalshibh
and Walid bin Attash.
The five face the death penalty if convicted for
their roles in the 2001 attacks by Al-Qaeda
militants in which hijacked planes were used to
strike New York, Washington and Shanksville,
Pennsylvania, killing 2,976 people.
The defendants have been held at the US “war
on terror” detention center since 2006.