Hollywood’s CIA ties exposed: Celebs or special agents?

US filmmakers and movie stars have helped whitewash the image of US spies for years, portraying them as heroes who sometimes have to resort to drastic measures for the greater good.

Here’s the list:

• Angelina Jolie. She visited CIA headquarters for consultancy while preparing for her role in ‘Salt’, a 2010 spy thriller. Her activism around the globe, however, makes one wonder exactly how deep her relationship with the CIA might run.
• Jennifer Garner. The star of TV series ‘Alias’ where she played a CIA double agent, Garner was invited to visit Langley. In 2004, she even starred in a short recruitment video for the agency.
• Sean Penn. His interview with Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman (also known as “El Chapo”), which was soon followed by the latter’s arrest, fueled speculation that Penn might be a US intelligence asset.
• Ben Affleck. He starred as CIA Deputy Director Jack Ryan in the 2002 thriller ‘The Sum of All Fears’, as well as in 2012, Affleck produced and starred in ‘Argo’, a film lauding the CIA’s efforts to rescue US diplomats during the Iran hostage crisis.

CIA and Filmmaking

There are even claims that Walt Disney himself cooperated with the CIA and aided their anti-communist efforts during the Cold War.

In the 1990s, the spy agency set up a liaison office to woo Hollywood filmmakers and scriptwriters in order to influence the CIA’s portrayal in their works.

• ‘Zero Dark Thirty’, a 2012 dramatization of the manhunt for Osama bin Laden that whitewashed the use of torture by US spies as a tool for gaining valuable information.
• Films based on the works of the late Tom Clancy, such as ‘The Sum of All Fears’ and ‘Clear and Present Danger’, which The Atlantic once described as “a centerpiece of CIA propaganda in the 1990s.”
• ‘Homeland’, a TV series about fictional efforts by the CIA to battle terrorists both at home and abroad.

Image credit: Vincentas Liskauskas