It's clear that President Barack Obama is the darling of Hollywood, but does he return the favor by leaking celebrities covert information that threatens American lives?
That's the claim made by a group of former military and C.I.A. officers in the "Dishonorable Disclosures" video above, which aired on TV and has been viewed over 800,000 times on YouTube.
The group, the Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund Inc (OPSEC), attacks the President for taking credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden and for supposedly endangering American lives by leaking high-level information to Hollywood insiders.
Retired CIA officer Fred Rustmann says in the video that days after the killing of bin Laden, Hollywood elites were invited into the White House for a briefing on exactly how the raid took place. Rustmann says the administration leaked "what kind of sources we had, what kind of methods we used, all for the purpose of making a Hollywood movie."
The Hollywood movie he is referring to is "Zero Dark Thirty," which is directed by Oscar-winning Kathryn Bigelow and is set to come out in December. Last year, Rep. Peter King asked for an investigation into allegations that Obama leaked classified information to the filmmakers--allegations which the administration dismissed as "ridiculous."
As Rustmann speaks, the image in the background is of Bigelow receiving her Oscar--the first ever won by a female director--from Barbra Streisand for "The Hurt Locker."
When the video discusses the supposed briefing Hollywood got days after the raid, Obama is shown speaking in a small theater to Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and others. The only problem is, that image was taken in March 2010 at the White House Family Theater before a screening of the HBO mini-series "The Pacific," The Hollywood Reporter points out. It's unlikely that Obama is spilling secrets about how he killed bin Laden--a whole year before it happened.
Retired USMC Lt. Colornel Bill Cowan says in the video, "Somewhere in this administration, perhaps at the highest levels, there are people that don’t understand… When we divulge national security information such as the identity of the organization that killed Osama bin Laden, we have now put all of those men, all of their families, everybody around them at some sort of risk." Obama divulged the covert information to Hollywood for political gain, the retired officers in the video claim.
On OPSEC's website, the group continues the accusation, quoting a column by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, “The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history."
Dowd continued, specifically citing "Zero Dark Thirty" writer Mark Boal, “It was clear that the White House had outsourced the job of manning up the president’s image to Hollywood when Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently – to the surprise of some military officers – at a C.I.A. ceremony celebrating the hero SEALs.”
OPSEC's video campaign is the latest of a series on attacks of Obama's relationship with Hollywood. Earlier this month, an anti-Obama group emailed its supporters the telephone numbers of agents of Hollywood Obama donors like Bill Maher, Morgan Freeman, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and JJ Abrams, asking the group members to call and complain about a "likely illegal attack ad on Mitt Romney."
This year, Obama has raked in big campaign contributions at fundraisers at the homes of actor George Clooney, actors Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, producer Tyler Perry and, mostly recently, mega-producer Harvey Weinstein.
Check out photos of celebrities who love Obama:
