Arthur Kent, seen in 1998, became a celebrity while reporting live for NBC during the 1991 Gulf War.Arthur Kent, seen in 1998, became a celebrity while reporting live for NBC during the 1991 Gulf War. (Mary Butkus/Associated Press)

Arthur Kent, the Canadian journalist called the Scud Stud for his coolness under fire during the 1991 Gulf War, has sued the makers of the feature film Charlie Wilson's War.

In his filing, Kent claims his intellectual property rights have been violated because footage used in the 2007 film about covert U.S. dealings in Afghanistan was drawn without his consent from his 1986 reporting on the war-torn country.

Charlie Wilson's War was directed by Mike Nichols and starred Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

Kent has been travelling to Afghanistan for the last 27 years, and in 1986 was reporting on the Soviet war with the Afghans.

His lawsuit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles, relies on international copyright laws, under which the original creator of a work must give permission for it to be used, even if it was sold to or created for a news outlet.

Kent, who lost a bid to become a provincial legislator in a Calgary riding in the Alberta election last month, is now a documentary filmmaker with his own website, Sky Reporter, that concentrates on news out of Afghanistan.

He has covered the country from the 1979 Soviet invasion through the Taliban government and the current attempts to rebuild the country, and he is currently working on documentary films about Afghanistan.

In the early 1980s, he was an independent reporter and photographer overseas, and in 1986, he began reporting jointly for the CBC, NBC News and The Observer newspaper of London.

Kent came to international attention for his live coverage of Iraqi Scud missile attacks during the 1991 Gulf War, when he broadcast nightly from the top of the Dhahran International Hotel in Saudi Arabia.

He worked for NBC as a foreign correspondent and was host of Dateline NBC from 1989 to 1992, but was fired after a contract dispute. He sued for breach of contract in a lawsuit settled in March 1994.

Universal has not commented on Kent's latest lawsuit.