SpicyTricks

Peter King, chair of the House of Representatives homeland
security committee, cited a report suggesting the White House hopes the
film will boost President Obama's election bid.




New York Times writer Maureen Dowd said film-makers had "top-level access".




The White House called that report - and Mr King's claims - "ridiculous".




Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader who had spent almost a decade
in hiding since fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001, was killed in May in a
raid into Pakistan by members of an elite Navy Seals special forces
team.




The killing of the man behind the 9/11 terror attacks marked the recent high point in Mr Obama's presidency.




Since then the president has been dogged by joblessness, a
sluggish economy and partisan bickering and gridlock in Washington and
has seen his approval rating slip.



'Home-stretch boost'

In the aftermath of the raid, senior US military officials
decried media leaks of information to the news media, saying they
jeopardised future operations.




On 6 August, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote
that Sony Pictures had begun producing a film about the Bin Laden raid
by Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, the Oscar-winning director and writer
of The Hurt Locker, which portrayed a squad of US bomb-defusers in Iraq.




"The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most
classified mission in history," Ms Dowd wrote, adding that the film
would "no doubt reflect the president's cool, gutsy decision against
shaky odds".




Ms Dowd said the film was due to be released in October 2012,
"perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost to a campaign that has
grown tougher".




In a letter to the inspectors general of the CIA and the Department of Defense,
Mr King, a New York Republican, asked officials to investigate the
extent to which the White House, the CIA and Department of Defense
discussed "the advisability of providing Hollywood executives with
access to covert military operators and clandestine CIA officers".




He also queried whether the film would be submitted for
pre-screening and what steps the Obama administration had taken to
ensure no operational secrets were revealed, along with other matters.



Open access

"The administration's first duty in declassifying material is
to provide full reporting to Congress and the American people, in an
effort to build public trust through transparency of government," Mr
King wrote.




On Wednesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said
suggestions the administration had provided secret information to the
film-makers were "ridiculous".




He said the White House press office makes an effort to
ensure that news articles, documentary films and Hollywood productions
about the president are accurate, and aims to accommodate film-makers
who seek interviews with White House officials.




"We do not discuss classified information," Mr Carney said.




"And I would hope that as we face a continued threat from
terrorism, the House Committee on Homeland Security would have more
important topics to discuss than a movie."