CHAPTER 2
Opening the Doors: Why and How the CIA Works with Hollywood
The CIA claims that it began cooperating with Hollywood in the 1990s to help reverse its image in film and television, since these mediums have usually depicted the Agency as a rogue, immoral outfit with a penchant for assassination and failure. Additionally, the CIA often frames its early cooperation efforts within the concepts of accuracy and education, stressing the danger of letting its negative image go unchecked. Indeed, Paul Barry claimed, “Hollywood is the only way that the public learns about the Agency.”1 Since most Americans “do not do their own research,” he continued, “Hollywood’s depictions of us become very important,” especially as they shape the judgments Americans pass on the Agency’s performance. As a result, Barry claimed that the CIA now works with Hollywood to increase the “accuracy” of its image and to inform the public about its role and activities.2 Likewise, Chase Brandon argued that in the 1990s, the CIA finally realized that people were always going to make movies and TV series that featured the CIA, and “that if we didn’t work with them, we were leaving ourselves open for misrepresentation. We have systematically been typecast as the bad guys in one movie after another,” he said. “So we decided to help the industry portray the agency more accurately and fairly portray the CIA in scripts.”3 The desire to ameliorate the Agency’s negative image and to “educate” the public through motion pictures undoubtedly factored into the CIA’s original decision to work with the industry. But these were not the only motives. The desire to reassure Americans about the need for intelligence in a post–Cold War world, to counter congressional accusations that the CIA had grown too secretive, and to conduct damage control in the wake of the Aldrich Ames case also played a major part. These factors belie the
