THAT’S CLASSIFIED
Scott Z. Burns explores the CIA’s post-9/11 use of torture techniques…
After working on everything from The Bourne Ultimatum to Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects, The Informant! and Contagion,
Scott Z. Burns was primed to write and direct CIA drama The Report. “The model was really 1970s political thrillers, things like All The President’s Men,” he says, “movies I had always admired, that were stories about people who want to tell the truth when a system pushed back against them.”
Here, the core drama is not Watergate but revelations about the Agency’s use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks on American soil. Developed by two military psychologists, John Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, these brutal, dehumanising and highly illegal tactics included sleep deprivation and waterboarding – designed to extract “unique” information from terror suspects about possible anti-US plots.
What resulted was a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, led by staffer Daniel J. Jones (played by Adam Driver), which saw a small team comb through 6.3 million pages of classified documents across five years. Condensed from 6,700 pages to a heavily redacted 500, the resulting report was nevertheless shocking. “I started reading it and was aghast by what was in it,” says
Burns, who began to realise these jigsaw pieces could build a fascinating picture.
Among the facts: the CIA was aware that these techniques did not lead to vital intel but continued using them anyway. But with Jones’ investigation spanning the Bush and Obama administrations, powers-that-be ultimately tried to shut his report – and him – down. “Steven Soderbergh [who produces] had a great way of putting it,” says Burns. “It’s a guy who is given plans to build something and he goes to work for five years, keeps his head down, then looks up and realises he’s built his own gallows.”
With Driver’s character ensconced in a CIA basement or meeting informants in the shadows, The Report could easily have been a dry experience. But Burns, who hasn’t directed a feature since 2006 debut Pu-239, holds no punches when it comes to showing flashback “interrogation” scenes. “We had really good stunt people and technical advisors, both showing us how waterboarding worked but also making sure everyone was safe. But even so, it was very upsetting to watch.”
Now it’s coming out, does Burns feel The Report will embarrass the CIA? “I hope what it does is show people that the way our government is meant to work is a series of checks and balances,” he answers. “The fact that we attempted to conceal this is embarrassing for much more than the CIA; it’s embarrassing for the Bush administration who created this programme; it’s embarrassing for the Obama administration for not fully prosecuting the people [involved]. For me, there’s enough embarrassment to go around.”
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