Obama administration under fire for granting access to Hollywood film-makers in apparent violation of official policy

This article is more than 8 years old

This article is more than 8 years old

The Obama administration is under fire for granting Hollywood film-makers clandestine access to the Navy Seal team that killed Osama bin Laden in apparent violation of official policy.

Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal were given unprecedented information about the 2011 raid to help them make Zero Dark Thirty, a forthcoming film about the event.

Documents released under freedom of information laws showed the Pentagon and CIA divulged secret information about the commando unit, known as Seal Team Six, which killed the September 11 mastermind.

The filmmakers were shown a classified facility, whose name was redacted in the released documents, and toured CIA vaults. They were also shown the CIA's replica of Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Peter King, the Republican chairman of the Congressional Homeland Security committee, said on Wednesday the documents told a "damning story of extremely close, unprecedented, and potentially dangerous collaboration" with filmmakers.

King asked: "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 documents will fuel Republican accusations that Obama is using the raid for partisan political gain in the presidential election. It may also anger those upset at the administration's hard line against government whistleblowers.

The story first surfaced in Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times on 7 August 2011, which reported the filmmakers' "top-level access".

Judicial Watch, an advocacy group, sued the Pentagon under the Freedom of Information Act and last week obtained hundreds of pages of emails and transcripts exchanged between the filmmakers.

They met senior officials including Michael Vickers, under-secretary of defence for intelligence, John Brennan, Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser, and Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser.

Vickers promised to "give everything that you would want" and stressed the need for confidentiality given that the mission was top-secret. He said: "The basic idea is they'll make a guy available who was involved from the beginning as planner, a Seal Team 6 Operator and Commander."

In an email, Bigelow, who won an Oscar for The Hurt Locker, wrote: "That's incredible." Boal also responded: "That's dynamite."

The White House responded by echoing a statement by Obama's press secretary last year when he ridiculed allegations that the administration had leaked classified material to the filmmakers.

The film was originally set for release just before November's presidential election but has been pushed back to December.