'Zero Dark Thirty' Inaccurate? CIA Complains About Torture Depiction in Oscar-Candidate Movie

[TITLE CORRECTION] The Academy Awards Nominations announcements will take place on January 10, 2013, and 'Zero Dark Thirty' has thus not been nominated for an Oscar yet.

The CIA is unhappy about the portrayal of torture in the acclaimed Hollywood film "Zero Dark Thirty," which follows the agency's hunt and killing of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

CIA acting director Michael Morell posted a public letter to agency employees on the CIA website, complaining that the film makes it seem like information extracted from prisoners through now-unlawful torture methods was crucial and necessary tracking down bin Laden, a portrayal he said is false.

"The film creates the strong impression that the enhanced interrogation techniques that were part of our former detention and interrogation program were the key to finding Bin Ladin. That impression is false," wrote Morell.

"As we have said before, the truth is that multiple streams of intelligence led CIA analysts to conclude that Bin Ladin was hiding in Abbottabad. Some came from detainees subjected to enhanced techniques, but there were many other sources as well."

The statement from Morell follows a letter sent by a bipartisan group of senators--including John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war for four years during the Vietnam War--urging the filmmakers to include a disclaimer about the ineffectiveness of torture.

"Use of torture in the fight against terrorism did severe damage to America's values and standing that cannot be justified or expunged," said the letter from Senators John McCain, Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin.

"It remains a stain on our national conscience. We cannot afford to go back to these dark times, and with the release of 'Zero Dark Thirty,' the filmmakers and your production studio are perpetuating the myth that torture is effective. You have a social and moral obligation to get the facts right," they said.

In a response statement, filmmaker Kathyrn Bigelow said, "The film shows that no single method was necessarily responsible for solving the manhunt, nor can any single scene taken in isolation fairly capture the totality of efforts the film dramatises."