Documents uncovered recently by Vice News reporter Jason Leopold are revealing some troubling connections between Hollywood and the CIA. In an audit report from 2012 which details the CIA’s engagement with the movie giant, it is revealed that the CIA has been involved with at least 22 entertainment projects between 2006 and 2011.
Several of the projects named include The Devil’s Light, Covert Affairs, BBC’s The Secret War on Terror and the History Channel documentary Air America: The CIA’s Secret Airline. Projects included in this report range from books and movies to reality television.
Most of the projects the CIA becomes involved with have to do with “CIA culture or historical events”. Their involvement seems to be tied to an effort to debunk “myths” about CIA and intelligence work in order to lighten the image of the organization.
One troubling example is found in the movie Zero Dark Thirty. The film is about a CIA agent named Maya who continues the hunt for Osama bin Laden even after her authorities object and ask her to drop the case.
While the real analyst her character was based on was involved with torture, lied about its effectiveness to Congress, failed to report two eventual 9/11 hijackers who entered the country and was deeply involved with intelligence failures, the dark side was not depicted in the film. The film was even controversial for painting a bright condoning picture of CIA torture, claiming it eventually led to finding Bin Laden.
The revelations about recent meddling in Hollywood by the CIA are only the most recent in a long history. The coordination began in the 1950s when the CIA tried to work with “hyper-patriotic anticommunist industry members” and recruited Luigi Luraschi who worked as head of censorship and proceeded to remove any scene that painted a bad light of Americans.
