Mark boal coming up. 19th, nationwide on friday january 11th. An extraordinary movie. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Good evening. Tonight i can roar to the American People and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of alqaeda. And a terrorist who is responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children. For over two decades, bin laden has been alqaedas leader and symbol, and continued plot attacks against our countries, friends and allies. The death of bin laden signifies the most significant achievement to date in our effort counterterrorisms professionals to work tire loalsly to achieve this outcome. The American People do not see their work nor know their names but tonight they feel the satisfaction of their work and the result of their pursuit of justice. Rose that was president obama in may announcing the killing of americas most wanted terrorist. A new film about to be released by the oscar winning director Kathryn Bigelow and screen writer mark boal examines the tenyear hunt for bin laden. It is called zero dark thirty, and here is the latest trailer. Can i be honest with you . I have bad news. Im not your friend, im not going to help you. Im going to break you. Do you have any questions . I want to make something absolutely clear. If you saw someone coming to rescue i want you to know that youre wrong. This isnt, theres nobody else, theres just us. We are failing. You really believe this story, Osama Bin Laden . Yeah. What convinced you. Her confidence. If youre right, the whole worlds going to want in on this. You will never find him. It is one of the few moments rose this is movie journalism that snaps and stains and par fi the decades clamor and clutter into narrative clarity with a sale tree kick. Joining me is scribe writer mark boal and director of zero dark thirty Kathryn Bigelowing im very please to do have them back at this table, welcome. Thank you. Rose i dont know where to start. Let me start with the idea of bin laden and his, and the search to find him. When did that get inside your brain so that you thought maybe maybe. Sometime, i dont remember exactly when. Rose it was before hurt locker was it not. It was around then, and after hurt locker was finished we were talking about what the next picture might be. With a decided to focus on the attempt to kill bin laden in from the editors of cooks illustrated magazine, its torabora in 2001 when special forces more or less had him in americas test kitchen with your host christopher kimball, one square mile box. And the peas of the world were featuring test kitchen chefs on him eyes of the world were julia collin davison, bridget lancaster, becky hays, with on him and it was fresh in everybodys mind. We were working on that film for adam ried in the equipment corner and jack bishop in the a number of years researching it, writing it and we were tasting lab. Pretty close to actually make it discover the secrets of americas foremost food testers a couple months away. Rose it was about and tasters, today on americas test kitchen. Torabora. A subject i pursued on this program many times. Its one of the great today on americas test military stories of our time. Kitchen, julia shows chris how rose had him in your to make a moroccanstyle chicken sight and he slips away. Tagine at home, th and the story of u. S. Special forces working with local afghan warriors in the culture clash there. So that was the idea. And then things changed. Rose things changed meaning what happened. But take back before the fact. You were working on the movie before the may operation. Yes. We were, i was actually casting, i was auditioning actors. We had a scout in kazakhstan and we had a trip in order to see the area in which i would be replicating in kazakhstan and history intervened. Rose what intrigued you about this story. Why is it so intriguing of all the options you had coming off the Great Success of hurt locker . Well i think both of us thought this was potentially certainly a fascinating story. Maybe the worlds greatest man hunt. And no question perhaps the worlds most dangerous man. Rose pretty good element. Pretty good element. Rose and intense interest in this from around the world. Exactly. But i think we were both curious just as americans or as citizens, what have you, what was going on there, why did it take so long, we were they doing. You have america the most powerful nation on the planet and you have this guy and ten years to try to unpack that and take people behind the scene and show them what it would be to be an intel officer, what it would be like tracking him and to bring that hunt to life and how they did it. Rose so the questions come up before, how much cooperation from the c. I. A. Dod from the whitehouse, a. And did it affect at all the release date . Well the release date was generated by the production schedule. I only finished the movie id say about 10, 12 days ago. Rose right. So we couldnt have release this movie any earlier than we are releasing it now. Rose [indiscernible] it helps, it definitely helps but mark was reporting the story and he was the one communicating with various sources. And really kind of getting inside that community in order to tell this story as faithfully as we could. Rose what did you know, both of you, but what did you know before may that you were working on . What kind of story were you doing. I was completely focused on toraboa. Rose really. Do you know why he got away from torabora. Can we make that movie. I can show you in the movie. Rose can you make that movie now . I dont know. Rose you worked on it, you got the elements there. Just like in story how they got them. Theres no one piece of the intelligence puzzle. Its a constellation, its a lot of different thing coming together. Rose ive always been interested in that because all the people who sort of around that story have come here to this table. So how did you go about building on the announcement that the president made that night all of us, that sunday night waited for him to say what he said. So what do you do then . Because this is not a story that anybody inside at that time was talking about. Well, thats not exactly right. Rose i know i know its not exactly right. They were on tv pretty quickly giving a talk. And considering that it was a pretty recent special forces mission, there was a lot of discussion about it in washington and details were coming out all over the place. But the intelligence hunt was, took a little longer to report out. Rose is what came out from brennan and what we now know, is it different . Its been, its been, its been clarified over time. Rose when he was shot, that kind of thing. The details of the raid have come into better focus. Rose how do you explain that variance. I dont think theres any great mystery to it. Rose is it the fog of war or something else. 20 odd guys and they all have slightly different recollections and informations being passed up the food chain very quickly and you know, its pretty remarkable. I mean theyre being debriefed probably within minutes, you know, and then as soon as they land, im sure theyre being debriefed and people then passing that information along. It doesnt seem that extraordinary to me. But i will tell you that we were, i thought that there was going to be a 40minute fire fight in this movie. And we were actually, because rose extraordinary 20 minutes. Yes. Probably that was first information out from the assault. The first description. Rose is that, would you say youre made to make that kind of movie, the last 40 minutes, to capture the essence of that 40 minutes. That somehow when it comes to action, you par. Extraordinary. Well thank you very very much. That was a very logistically challenging sequence to shoot, but fascinating. I mean obviously. Rose why fascinating. Why fascinating. Because just learning about the methodology how the special forces operate. For instance you know the way they move, theres a kind of methodical nature to the way they move, very careful, very considered. And having to shoot in a quote unquote low light condition because it was meant to be a moonless night. So we were shooting, we decided, we opted for a digital format in order to do that. We also used real night vision lenses that we put on to the lens themselves. So then we had to go into of no light conditions so that those lenses would operate, they would operate, you know, to the best of their ability. So that was basically we had to figure out all the logistics, all the choreography. We built that compound from the ground up, and it had to be built with a really pretty serious foundation because of the black helicopters and the roto wash would have taken apart any normal lets say movie set tore taking that down. There were a lot of physical elements before we broke down. Rose what sound me was how many doors they had to blow up to get to him. You had some sense there was a compound yes but they would walk in and therefore they would be there and go get him. It wasnt like that at all. No not at all. Rose and these guys trained every aspect. I think some of thats been overstated. Rose the training. I think some rehearsals but most of the training to my understanding had to do with the fact that these helicopters wee fairly experimental at the time and werent used in combat mission at all. There was a lot of questions about the avionics in which we saw in the aftermath one of the helicopters actually crashed. So it was from a military perspective getting the guys to and from was one of the most unusual parts because they operate using technology that hasnt really been used before. Rose i should set this up for the audience at home who hasnt obviously seen the movie. This is a story how they would lead him to pakistan and a story about how they made a decision to go in and either capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. Theres are two different stories. And theres the story. Theres a third story when they go in and actually do it. Two for the price of one. Rose talk about the c. I. A. Aspect of this. How long did it take them to get on the trail that would lead them somewhere . Because we know that after 9 11 i mean they were all kinds of things going on with American National security people to get somebody to give some information as to where Osama Bin Laden was, to get their hands on Osama Bin Laden. Well, i mean my humble opinion, mark did an extraordinary job of reporting this and then out of the reporting turning this into an incredibly dramatic screen play. Im the recipient of that trying to transform those pages into a screen. But early on and again indemnify understanding from the first hand accounts, there was a courier that was somebody that in the case of this movie, the woman in the Intelligence Community decided to focus on. Rose played by jessica beautifully played by jessica chastain, she pursued the courage, the conviction that there was something in this lead. There are multiple leads that various people are tracking but there was something in this lead. She has a theory that there were two, when they were acquiring information, there were two individuals that, whose whereabouts were withheld. And that was the courier and that was Osama Bin Laden. Everybody else there was information on. So that was significant in and of itself but these two individuals were you know kind of rose they were the too you knew nothing about. You knew nothing about. Rose and maybe there was and therefore there was a kind of significance in the fact that you knew nothing. And that was certainly in the early days im sure that was important, important enough to pursue. Rose so if i go find a young agent that looks like jessica chas tain that was at the center of this team that found the courier. Well first of all, we, you know, there are some public figures that are represented. Everybody else in the film, we didnt have actor that had any physical resemblance because these are Civil Servants and we want to be respectful of their privacy. Rose but you know. Its not to say there arent attractive people at the c. I. A. There actually are. Rose of course. But you know them. You know them. Well, the film, i dont want to tell you about me personally. Rose you did the research. I did the research. Rose based on the story before you became a screen writer. Yes and i gathered a lot of firsthand accounts from people that were directly involved in this operation. Rose how did you do that. And was able to somehow make them into a screen play. Rose how did you do that. The same way i would have reported an article if i was writing an article. In the same waive you would report a book or a tv. To me the hardest thing in the word would be to report a tv show because you go would microphone and camera and say talk to me. The second hardest thing would be a book or lets say an article because you say look, i got a source thats pretty particular because my editors are going to require me to point some foundation for this information. The easiest thing would be to go and say look its a movie, its a movie. If you talk to me we can hopefully represent the spirit of what youre saying. But i dont have, im not held to the same journalistic standards. Rose tell me how you work together. Youre the director, hes the writer but this is a team. Well its very collaborative. I mean, i am, i love work thats challenging. I love work that is you know kind of feels, i suppose the only way to describe it is sort of like contemporary. In other words theres Something Interesting working in the space of the iraq war while the wars going on. In this case, you know, a mystery that probably is pretty fascinating to a lot of people in this country. Maybe even many other place in the world. So you know this kind of contemporaneous qualities. You can see rose yes. What more do you want. Rose fabulous screen writers right. Were interested, we have a shorthand now. We made one movie together which was, it did all right the it was a lot of work and it was really a labor of love and this one was too really a labor of love. So weve got kind of a shorthand. Rose there is this scene in which i think she says the courier is in the files. Yes, yes. Rose tell me about that. Well so thats towards the, we spend most of the movie tracking, tracking this ghost to is meant to be the courier. Theres an immense amount of effort trying to find out this guys annual name. Then you find out where they are located in the planet. All you had was his war name. And theres a scene in the film towards the back half of the film 2009 2010. Where they discover, one of the analysts discovers in fact they have the name of the courier in their files so to speak. I dont know if its a computer or filing cabinet. Since shortly after 9 11 and thats something that came out of the reporting i did. And theres a lot in the two hour movie thats you know ten year thats compressed but we thought that was an important piece of information. Rose that gave them the link they needed, a name. A name thats like saying charlie rose from detroit. Its like saying charlie from detroit. Charlie from detroit, excuse me. Getting the name, theres no one thing. Theres no one thing that gets you to the bottom line. That was a huge then you can get the phone number. Now you have a maim and phone number. Then you start listening to the calls. A year goes by listening to telephone calls because theyre listening to calls of the saide family and then locating the people making those crowds and then finding that person in a crowded marketplace and them tracking the car back to the compound. Thats when you see in the movie. Rose look to america. He hadnt bought a cell phone. Its another big turning point. Rose one of the interesting things bit is many of the people in alqaeda learned that lesson, not to deal with, not to use cell phones. He knew it too. He turned the cell phobe off and took the batteries off. That was revealing. Part of what made him pop up on in sort of radar of all this data coming in is wait a second who in 2010 only uses their cell phone once every two weeks. Who does that. Rose also this thing about absence of substance whats that. That was my point about their only two individuals whose whereabouts were being withheld no matter how they tried to ascertain that information. And that was this particular courier and hesman. That gave a kind of significance greater than all the others because that was the case with Osama Bin Laden. A lot of this is hindsight too. They were tracking as you point out, they were tracking many different leads. And its only in hindsight that the courier lead seems to be the winner. Like money rose significant. So significant. Because there was a pareto brotherinlaw in the tribal areas. I think ones going to lead you to the family member. He got killed in a drone strike a couple within six months when this whole thing happened. Up until then they thought maybe hes going to be money for walkins family and the courier. Im sure there were many others. Rose they were dedicated. I want to look at some clips here so we can identify the quality of the action here. This is the scene in which the c it a operative maya played by the extraordinary jessica chastain. Briefs the troops on two narratives about bin laden. Youll notice the panels similar to what we use on the b2. Theyve been muffled with decibel killers but it can hyde what do we need these for, its certainly antiair do you want to brief him . There are two narratives about the location of Osama Bin Laden. The one youre familiar with is ubl is hiding in a cave in the tribal areas surrounded by a large contingent of loyal fighters. That narrative is pre 911. Understanding of ubl. The second mayorive that is living in the city, living in a second with multiple points of egress and entries, access to communications so that he can keep in touch with the organization. You cant run a Global Network and interconnected cells from a cave. Rose there we see her explaining. This scene in fact is talking to before as theyre preparing on this mission and shes sort of providing information. This is a scene where they learn the objective of their profession. Rose before that they did not know. No. It was secret even to them. Rose how soon before the mission did they announce. They knew they