CHAPTER 3
Necessary and Competent: The CIA in The Agency and In the Company of Spies
While TheClassifiedFilesoftheCIA never made it to viewers, other CIAassisted projects began to appear by the turn of the millennium. These texts were not as tightly controlled by the Agency, which had recruited its own production company, provided the source material, and secured script-review rights for the joint CIA-TPP project. Rather, these new collaborations focused on an entertainment liaison assisting outside creators in the preproduction and production stages in order to shape the finished product’s tone and content. Two of the earliest examples of this type of collaboration are Showtime’s movie IntheCompanyofSpies (1999) and the CBS television series TheAgency (2001–2003). Directed by Tim Matheson and written by Roger Towne, IntheCompanyofSpies was a Paramount Studios production featuring Karl Pruner as a CIA operative who is captured and eventually executed by North Korean officials. In order to retrieve the officer and the information he uncovered before his death, Pruner’s superiors bring an operative out of retirement (Tom Berenger) to lead a small team dedicated to the task. Based on a story written by the former CIA analyst Robert Cort, the film was originally envisioned as the first installment of a CIAbased film franchise.1 CBS’s TheAgency debuted two years after IntheCompanyofSpies and was one of three spy shows that premiered just weeks after 9/11. But unlike its competitors, Alias and 24, The Agency focused primarily on the inner workings of the CIA rather than on dramatic action and suspense. The show’s central cast featured the director of the CIA, a few special operations officers, and a small band of employees from the Directorate of Science and Technology. Gil Bellows, Gloria Reuben, Paige Turco, Beau
