May 2, 2013

HBO’s “Manhunt: The Search for Bin Laden”: Way Cooler Than “Zero Dark Thirty”

HBO Documentary Films

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Manhunt: The Search for Bin Laden
HBO Documentary Films
100 minutes

Forget Zero Dark Thirty. Instead, check out director Greg Barker’s intimate look at the dogged nerds and tough-guy CIA officials who spent decades on Osama bin Laden‘s trail. This doc (based on Peter Bergen’s 2012 book) has the pulse of a Michael Mann thriller, tracing the hunt from long before Al Qaeda became a household name. It offers a fascinating glimpse at “the Sisterhood,” a crew of female CIA analysts who were “borderline obsessed” with nailing bin Laden in the 1990s. Details of their vital desk work are contrasted with interviews with former CIA higher-up (and torture advocate) Marty Martin, who refers to his “gangsta”-like role harvesting intel overseas.

Manhunt premieres Wednesday, May 1 (the two-year anniversary of the mission that killed bin Laden) at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT. Check out the trailer:

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This review originally appeared in the May/June issue of Mother Jones.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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