Poitras Harassed For Years based on Fake News and Dislike

[grarpamp]

https://www.apnews.com/d69a8e6db867477795f4152d0511bbf9
Filmmaker learns why she endured airport stops for years

WASHINGTON (AP) — Laura Poitras’ travel nightmare began more than a
decade ago when the award-winning filmmaker started getting detained
at airports every time she tried to set foot back in the United
States.
Poitras, 53, knows U.S. government officials are not exactly fans of
her politically sensitive work.
She was stopped without explanation more than 50 times on foreign
travel, and dozens more times on domestic trips, before the extra
searches suddenly stopped in 2012. Only now is Poitras beginning to
unravel the mystery, which goes back to a bloody day in Baghdad in
2004.

Members of a U.S. Army National Guard unit from Oregon reported seeing
a “white female” holding a camera on a rooftop just before they were
attacked. David Roustum, 22, an Army National Guardsman from West
Seneca, New York, was killed. Several troops were wounded. Some
guardsmen who saw Poitras suspected she had a heads-up about the
attack and didn’t share that information with American forces because
she wanted to film it. If true, Poitras would have broken U.S.
criminal law.
Poitras called the allegation false and said she didn’t film the attack.
“There is no ambush footage,” Poitras told the AP. “That’s the
narrative that they created, but it doesn’t correspond with any
facts.”
After the attack, a lieutenant colonel, whose name was redacted from
documents, reported the woman with a camera to his superiors. No
action was taken.
But after returning home, the lieutenant colonel was contacted by
author John Bruning of Dallas, Oregon, who was interviewing guardsmen
for a book about their experiences in Iraq. According to the
government’s documents, the author learned about the woman filming on
the rooftop before the ambush.
In an email exchange on Jan. 15, 2006, Poitras confirmed to Bruning
that she was filming in the area the day of the attack, but didn’t
think she could help the author with his research.
Bruning declined to speak to the AP about Poitras.
But in his sworn statement to military investigators, he said he
believed Poitras had prior knowledge of the attack.

Poitras worries her ordeal will resume.
She is seeking more information from the government. A federal judge
in Washington ruled late last month the FBI hadn’t provided adequate
justification for withholding some information.
“I don’t know if the investigation is ongoing,” she said. “I don’t
know if it was ended or why it was ended.”