The bin Laden Raid Back in Spotlight

President Obama with Nobel Peace Prize

BBC - Peter King, chair of the House of Representatives homeland security committee, cited a report suggesting the White House hopes the film will boost President Obama's election bid. New York Times writer Maureen Dowd said film-makers had "top-level access." The White House called that report - and Mr King's claims - "ridiculous." Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader who had spent almost a decade in hiding since fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001, was killed in May in a raid into Pakistan by members of an elite Navy Seals special forces team. The killing of the man behind the 9/11 terror attacks marked the recent high point in Mr Obama's presidency. Since then the president has been dogged by joblessness, a sluggish economy and partisan bickering and gridlock in Washington and has seen his approval rating slip.
Home-stretch boost

Maureen Dowd

In the aftermath of the raid, senior US military officials decried media leaks of information to the news media, saying they jeopardised future operations. On 6 August, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that Sony Pictures had begun producing a film about the Bin Laden raid by Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, the Oscar-winning director and writer of The Hurt Locker, which portrayed a squad of US bomb-defusers in Iraq. "The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history," Ms Dowd wrote, adding that the film would "no doubt reflect the president's cool, gutsy decision against shaky odds".

Ms Dowd said the film was due to be released in October 2012, "perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost to a campaign that has grown tougher". Read full story here: News New Mexico

The bin Laden Raid Back in Spotlight