Skip to footer

'Zero Dark Thirty': top 3 controversies surrounding the Osama bin Laden film

"Zero Dark Thirty," which tells the story of the hunt and capture of Osama bin Laden, is already garnering critical accolades – and plenty of criticism, too. Here are the top three controversies currently surrounding the film.

2. Does the film hype the role of a young female CIA operative said to have spearheaded the hunt?

Jonathan Olley/Sony - Columbia Pictures/AP
This film image shows Jessica Chastain in a scene from 'Zero Dark Thirty.'

  • By Anna Mulrine Staff writer

Not according to Mark Owen, the pen name of a Navy SEAL who wrote “No Easy Day,” which detailed his role in the operation to kill Mr. bin Laden. 

His book describes “Jen” (a pseudonym) as a “wicked smart, kind of feisty” agent recruited by the agency out of college.

Jen had been working on the bin Laden task force for the past five years. “Analysts rotated in and out of the task force, but she stayed and kept after it,” Mr. Owen writes. “She had been our go-to analyst on all intelligence questions related to the target.”

“Zero Dark Thirty” stars Jessica Chastain as CIA officer “Maya,” who tracks and ultimately finds bin Laden. 

Owen writes that some Navy SEALs worried that Jen was overconfident after she told them that she was “one hundred percent” certain that bin Laden was “the Pacer.” This was the nickname that agents had given to the person they believed to be bin Laden for the way he would walk around a small area of his compound in Pakistan.

In the Showtime series “Homeland,” actress Claire Danes is widely believed to have based her portrayal of her CIA agent character on Jen as well. 

Ms. Danes told The Wall Street Journal that she had the chance to meet a young female CIA operative at the agency’s offices in Langley, Va., upon whom she “loosely modeled” her role.

Like Danes’s character in “Homeland,” “Jen wasn’t afraid to share her opinion with even the highest officers,” Owen writes. “This was her baby. Jen and her team spent five years tracking [bin Laden] to get us where we were now.”

Ms. Chastain says that the woman she portrays is based on a real person and is still active in the CIA. According to The Washington Post, the agent is now in her 30s, remains undercover, and was awarded the agency’s highest medal – but was denied a promotion.

2 of 3
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.