‘Zero Dark Thirty’ writer: Film probe echoes McCarthy era

The screenwriter of “Zero Dark Thirty,” Mark Boal, said his use of interrogation techniques in the film were accurate and that pending Senate investigation brought him “a chill.”

The left have accused Mr. Boal and his colleagues of defending torture, merely for including it in the film, but he has come out to defend their depiction just a couple weeks after award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow did the same.

“We’ve been accused of defending torture because there are disagreements in some quarters as to exactly which detainee undergoing exactly which form of interrogation first produced the lead that led to [Osama] Bin Laden and thus … we shouldn’t have included it,” Mr. Boal said Tuesday night to an audience at a Loyola Marymount University, according to the Los Angeles Times. “I can’t understand the logic to that. If we left the torture out, we’d be whitewashing history. Interrogations were clearly part of how this lead developed.”

The screenwriter said the investigation by Congress is reminiscent of the blacklisting era.

“When the Senate intelligence committee launches a secret investigation I certainly feel a chill,” he said, according to the Times. “As far as I know, Congress hasn’t launched a formal investigation of filmmaking since the House UnAmerican Activities Committee did so in the late 1940s. I really don’t think we need a remake of that.”

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