If you were watching Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential primary debate, you might have noticed Amazon Studios advertised a trailer for their movie, The Report. Let me save you some trouble — it’s not worth watching.
Soon-to-be-released on Amazon Prime, The Report centers on the 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against senior al Qaeda officers. Adam Driver stars as the primary author of the report, Democratic staffer Daniel Jones. Annette Bening plays the role of Democratic California Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
In The Report’s trailer, as somber music percolates, Driver complains that al Qaeda’s strategic operations director and 9/11 ringleader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. The CIA, Driver excitedly adds, “claim they saved lives, but what they actually did was make it impossible to prosecute a mass murderer …” Bening, playing Feinstein as a heroine against grave government injustice, caps off the trailer with the words, “We will not allow this to be covered up.”
Sadly, these talented actors do not do their subjects justice. They play heroes, whereas their subjects were actually villains.
That’s no fault of the movie makers; it’s the fault of Feinstein and Jones themselves. The actual report totally ignored why and to what effect the CIA used these interrogation techniques. The evidence, willfully ignored by Jones and Feinstein, is clear.
The CIA’s techniques saved lives. Not only did the measures help the CIA understand al Qaeda’s structure and operations, they led to the identification of attack planners and of Osama bin Laden’s courier. And contrary to their claims of a conspiracy, senior Democrats had been briefed on the measures at the time they were taken.
That’s what made Senate Democrats’ conduct so abhorrent in their handling of the actual report. They had known all along, yet they sold the CIA down the river and pretended they had no prior involvement. And their resulting report’s bias against the CIA also explains why not a single Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee supported its findings.
The facts are clear: The CIA saved lives and Democrats were in favor of their doing it. That filmmakers are going to let Democrats rewrite the history in such a self-serving way is quite unfortunate.
