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In 'The Report,' Setting the Record on Torture Straight

Associated Press

   NEW YORK - The unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on the
   CIA's detention and enhanced interrogation program runs approximately
   6,700 pages and includes some 38,000 footnotes. It doesn't exactly
   scream Hollywood.

   But from an early stage, writer-director Scott Z. Burns was drawn to
   the Congressional quest to detail and bring to light the CIA's
   torturing of detainees in the wake of Sept. 11. He zeroed in,
   ultimately, on Daniel J. Jones, the lead investigator for the Senate
   Intelligence Committee, who toiled for five years on an investigation
   that culminated with the 2014 release of a 525-page summary. Its
   findings discredited the still widely held belief that torture
   techniques contributed to the capture of Osama bin Laden.

   "The Report," written and directed by Burns and starring Adam Driver as
   Jones, is the story of that report and Jones' struggle to release it.
   At a time when false narratives come by the blizzard, the film is a
   heavily researched, star-laden, big-screen effort to set the record
   straight.

   "Whatever narrative you want, you can find. They're all out there on
   the internet waiting for you. Whatever confirmation bias you walk into
   a situation with, you'll find the narrative you dreamed up waiting for
   you," says Burns. "I guess I still believe that there are facts. I want
   very much to live in a world where facts inform storytelling."

   Since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, "The Report" has
   stood out as something more akin to a '70s thriller -- an
   inner-government "All the President's Men" that takes the audience
   inside a legal struggle that some, like the late Sen. John McCain, saw
   as a battle for the very ideals of American democracy.

   "The Report," which Amazon Studios is releasing in theaters this
   weekend, is also a kind of cinematic counterpoint to Kathryn Bigelow's
   "Zero Dark Thirty." That film, released two years ahead of the report's
   unveiling, suggested a link between information gleaned by torture to
   the Bin Laden raid. An ad for "Zero Dark Thirty" is seen momentarily in
   the background of "The Report" while Jones is striving to get his
   findings released -- one more obfuscation standing in his way.

   At the time, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein,
   D-Calif., and McCain condemned "Zero Dark Thirty" as "grossly
   inaccurate" and guilty of "perpetuating the myth that torture is
   effective." Feinstein wrote to the CIA , suggesting it had
   intentionally misled the "Zero Dark Thirty" filmmakers.

   "Kathryn Bigelow and (screenwriter) Mark Boal, the narrative they have
   in their film is consistent with the CIA narrative that they provided
   to the White House, the Department of Justice, the intelligence
   committee and eventually the public," says Jones. "It was our report
   that uncovered that this narrative was, in fact, not accurate and
   largely fabricated -- and fabricated for the purposes of cleansing the
   use of these enhanced interrogation techniques."

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