US torture report casts shadow of doubt over ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

The damning US Senate Intelligence Committee report on Bush-era CIA interrogation techniques has cast a new pall over the 2012 film “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Kathryn Bigelow’s docudrama about the hunt for Osama bin Laden ignited controversy for implying that the “enhanced” interrogation techniques of the detainee program helped lead to finding bin Laden. Bigelow claimed that torture was a part of the story that couldn’t be ignored.

The U.S. Senate report released Tuesday found that the coercive techniques led to no unique intelligence, a conclusion that seemed to officially debunk part of the narrative suggested by “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Senator Diane Feinstein, the Democratic chair of the Intelligence Committee that released the report, had been one of the most vocal critics of “Zero Dark Thirty”. In a 2012 letter to Sony Pictures co-signed by Republican Senator John McCain, Feinstein called the film “factually inaccurate” and wrote that filmmakers had an obligation not to “shape American public opinion in a disturbing and misleading manner.”

Bigelow was asked about the report on “The Daily Show” on Tuesday while promoting a short film about elephant poaching and the ivory trade.

“We made the movie based on the reporting that we did,” said Bigelow. “I applaud transparency in government, so I think it’s good that it’s out there. It’s complicated. It’s very, very, very complicated.”