Here’s a brief overview of the real events behind The Report. And so one would think if there was a narrative that said this program worked, it would’ve been found somewhere in those 6.2 million documents.” “This is the CIA’s own accounting of their program, and it’s an amazing puzzle that Dan was able to put together out of 6.2 million documents. “Before we can identify a story is true or not, we have to identify what the facts of the story are.”īurns stresses that the report is about facts. What I chose to say is that, ‘This movie is based on this report,’” Burns explains. “I made a choice not to say at the beginning of this movie, ‘Based on a true story’. But the primary source for the film was the declassified executive summary itself. Burns tells TIME he consulted the work of investigative journalists like Jane Mayer and James Risen, the autobiographies of CIA officials, interviews with military and law enforcement experts on interrogation, and interviews with the senators on the Intelligence Committee.
