The 1996 Sean Connery movie that helped start a war in the Middle East: “It’s not a nice legacy”
There are many reasons, both justified and not, for starting a war, but in terms of the most unexpected, unlikely, or outright bizarre, a Sean Connery movie has to be somewhere near the very top of the list.
Sometimes, the truth can be stranger than fiction, and in this case, it’s a little bit of both. While the 2003 invasion of Iraq was predicated on the belief that Saddam Hussein had a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, which were never found during the military operations, Connery played his part, too.
Not directly, of course, but he was still somewhat guilty by association, albeit through no fault of his own. In July 2016, the Chilcot Report was published, a public inquiry that explored the reasons why the United Kingdom had become involved in the Iraq War, with the findings largely dated from 2001 to 2009.
In the report, it was revealed that MI6 disseminated information to “a small number of very senior leaders,” which included then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, in September 2002, which suggested that “a new source on trial with direct access” had discovered that Iraq was developing and creating chemical and biological weapons, which could potentially be transported and deployed in glass containers.
The intelligence wasn’t questioned at the time, but in the aftermath, the report did note that “glass containers were not typically used in chemical munitions, and that a popular movie has inaccurately depicted nerve agents being carried in glass beads or spheres.” That movie would, in fact, be The Rock, where Connery and Nicolas Cage infiltrated Alcatraz to stop Ed Harris from obliterating San Francisco.
Jack Straw, who was the Foreign Secretary at the time, questioned MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove about how a mystery source came up with “silver bullet intelligence,” and while the response confirmed that the source did exist, it was acknowledged they “may not have written up the intelligence in the manner which was being claimed for him.” In short, it was fabricated and lifted from a Michael Bay blockbuster.
Despite MI6 reaching the conclusion over a month before the initial invasion began in March 2003 that they were being fed false intelligence, no senior members of the government or military were told that the so-called evidence wasn’t entirely verifiable, or even true, or nicked from a Hollywood action flick.
Needless to say, The Rock‘s co-writer, David Weisberg, was incredulous. “What was so amazing was that anybody in the poison gas community would immediately know that this was total bullshit, such obvious bullshit,” he said after the Chilcot Report was published.
“If you’d just asked a chemical weapons expert,” he added. “It would have been immediately obvious it was ludicrous.”
While Bay’s film can’t be entirely blamed for the invasion of Iraq, it nonetheless had a small role. As much as it continues to endure as one of the best and most entertainingly rewatchable actioners of the 1990s, Weisberg understatedly admitted that, thanks to the Chilcot Report intimating that The Rock was a factor in the conflict, “It’s not a nice legacy for the film,” which is still selling things remarkably short.
