Covert operations: How the CIA works with Hollywood - Listening Post (Feature) — Transcript

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1. 0:03against Harvey Weinstein watch any
2. 0:10big-budget war movie are taken a spy
3. 0:13thriller and you could walk away not
4. 0:15knowing just how much your movie
5. 0:17experience was shaped by the Pentagon or
6. 0:19CIA however a trove of official
7. 0:22documents obtained under us freedom of
8. 0:24information laws and published this year
9. 0:27detail the dealings between filmmakers
10. 0:30and intelligence officials at Langley
11. 0:32Virginia the CIA headquarters probably
12. 0:36the best known are zero dark thirty and
13. 0:38Argo but they've also assisted the
14. 0:40television show homeland how do we do
15. 0:44they've also assisted alias who work for
16. 0:47very enemy who thought you were fighting
17. 0:4924 CBS series called the agency Venice
18. 0:54Venice they assisted a film called the
19. 0:58son of all fear starring Ben Affleck
20. 1:00Captain Jack Ryan CIA Charlie Wilson's
21. 1:03War is a really good example where they
22. 1:06maintained the idea that oh you know are
23. 1:09we really doing the right thing by
24. 1:11arming the Mujahideen the forerunners of
25. 1:13the al-qaeda terrorist organization in
26. 1:15Afghanistan in the 1980s
27. 1:20there kind of question that in a kind of
28. 1:22jokey way like the last caption in the
29. 1:25in the film Charlie Wilson's always
30. 1:26something like oh we Came we saw but
31. 1:28then we mucked up the end game or some
32. 1:30joke you know it's like no that's not
33. 1:32what you did actually and you know it
34. 1:34because the original script in the
35. 1:35original book that you base this on
36. 1:36doesn't say that you armed terrorists in
37. 1:39a really horrific conflict it's the
38. 1:41whole organization behind it at a
39. 1:44systemic level and that term Charlie
40. 1:47Wilson's War into this you know
41. 1:49saccharine benign movie throughout the
42. 1:531990s the CIA worked with Hollywood very
43. 1:57specifically on movies that portrayed
44. 1:59the CIA is sort of a heroic force
45. 2:02protecting America most of the movies
46. 2:04were based on Tom Clancy books actually
47. 2:07so yeah The Hunt for Red October and
48. 2:08that entire franchise you know the lead
49. 2:12character Jack Ryan is this like super
50. 2:14heroic figure and he's like constantly
51. 2:16you know taking down bad guys and saving
52. 2:20America saving the world from various
53. 2:21threats whether it's Islamic terrorism
54. 2:23or the IRA or ultimately white
55. 2:25supremacists
56. 2:28between them the CIA and the US
57. 2:30Department of Defense have had varying
58. 2:33levels of input from simply clarifying
59. 2:35points for authenticity to actually
60. 2:37writing parts of scripts on more than a
61. 2:40thousand eight hundred movies and TV
62. 2:41shows
63. 2:43when it comes to influencing filmmakers
64. 2:45shaping the story the Pentagon is
65. 2:48usually in a stronger negotiating
66. 2:49position than the CIA because of the
67. 2:52hardware at its disposal it can shut
68. 2:54down a movie before a scene is ever shot
69. 2:56[Music]
70. 2:58the Department of Defense is actually a
71. 3:00much more powerful player in the
72. 3:02entertainment industry for basically
73. 3:04financial reasons the Department of
74. 3:07Defense has expensive toys
75. 3:10they have submarines they have aircraft
76. 3:12carriers they have tanks and they have
77. 3:14the personnel to operate each of those
78. 3:17things so if a filmmaker wants to make a
79. 3:19war movie they often will approach the
80. 3:21Department of Defense and basically
81. 3:22asked to borrow that equipment and the
82. 3:25Department of Defense will say maybe but
83. 3:28can I see your script and they'll either
84. 3:30say this is great we love the way that
85. 3:32the military is portrayed in this we
86. 3:34will go ahead and collaborate with you
87. 3:35or they may say we hate the way that
88. 3:38we're portrayed and refused to
89. 3:39participate when the Pentagon does agree
90. 3:44to support a film there can be some
91. 3:46scripting strings attached and the
92. 3:48Vietnam War is clearly a sore point in
93. 3:50the hug a reference to a u.s. operation
94. 3:53that poisoned Vietnamese farmland was
95. 3:56removed and in the Bond film Tomorrow
96. 3:58Never Dies a suggestion that the u.s.
97. 4:00did not win the war was cut out in Iron
98. 4:03Man a reference to soldiers suicides was
99. 4:06removed again at the Pentagon's
100. 4:08insistence
101. 4:09the CIA's presence in Hollywood is
102. 4:12harder to detect it goes back to the
103. 4:17early days of the Cold War and was
104. 4:19designed to counter a propaganda effort
105. 4:21coming out of the Soviet Union the CIA
106. 4:25placed undercover agents in major
107. 4:27studios where they monitored left-wing
108. 4:29screenwriters and directors this was at
109. 4:32the height of Cold War paranoia and
110. 4:33Hollywood was under the scrutiny of the
111. 4:36US Congress is investigating alleged
112. 4:38communist influence and infiltration in
113. 4:41the moving picture industry the agency
114. 4:44started influencing scripts one senior
115. 4:46executive at Paramount Pictures working
116. 4:49covertly for the CIA described how to
117. 4:52counter what the Soviets were saying
118. 4:53about the persecution of African
119. 4:55Americans quote well-dressed Negroes
120. 4:58unquote would be planted in certain
121. 5:00films what happens in the 1990s is that
122. 5:04the cold war ends and all of a sudden
123. 5:06the CIA is left without a visible viable
124. 5:09enemy to justify its existence they were
125. 5:11going to continue they had to do
126. 5:13something to improve their public image
127. 5:15and one of the responses to that crisis
128. 5:18was to begin to work with Hollywood to
129. 5:21convince the American public that in
130. 5:24Congress that they were still worth
131. 5:27being an institution in 1996 the CIA's
132. 5:33entertainment liaison office in
133. 5:35Hollywood began offering free support to
134. 5:37movies that featured the agency chase
135. 5:40Brandon an intelligence agent and cousin
136. 5:43of actor Tommy Lee Jones was the CIA's
137. 5:45first liaison officer he's credited as a
138. 5:48technical adviser on a host of Hollywood
139. 5:50blockbusters such as the recruit
140. 5:52starring Al Pacino as a veteran CIA
141. 5:55officer our failures are known our
142. 6:00successes are not in reality Brandon was
143. 6:05far more than a mere adviser on the
144. 6:07recruit he helped pitch the film to
145. 6:09Disney that eventually produced and
146. 6:11distributed the movie and was involved
147. 6:14in the script writing
148. 6:15recruit as another CIA liaison officer
149. 6:19put it Hollywood is the only way the
150. 6:21public learns about the agency which
151. 6:23begs the question should the public be
152. 6:25learning about the CIA from the CIA
153. 6:27without even being aware of the agency's
154. 6:30role in the production process
155. 6:31these issues became public with the
156. 6:34release of one of the biggest CIA
157. 6:36hollywood collaborations to date zero
158. 6:38dark thirty a film about the search for
159. 6:41a sama bin Laden you really believe this
160. 6:43story Osama bin Laden the zero dark
161. 6:46thirty was a really unusual case I think
162. 6:48for the CIA in terms of how it works
163. 6:50with Hollywood the CIA gave the director
164. 6:53and screenwriter a lot of access to the
165. 6:55agency they bounced a lot of ideas back
166. 6:57and forth and they wanted to really kind
167. 6:59of tightly control the narrative that
168. 7:01this was putting out it backfired though
169. 7:04because very quickly after the movie
170. 7:06came out it was criticized for
171. 7:08suggesting that torture somehow had
172. 7:10played a role in the information
173. 7:12gathering that led to the capture and
174. 7:14assassination of Osama bin Laden torture
175. 7:18and the CIA's use of it especially after
176. 7:209/11 were already under investigation
177. 7:23when zero dark thirty was released the
178. 7:26Senate Intelligence Committee wrote a
179. 7:27letter to the production studio Sony
180. 7:29Pictures they said we believe the film
181. 7:32is grossly inaccurate and misleading in
182. 7:34its suggestion that torture resulted in
183. 7:37information that led to the location of
184. 7:39a sama bin Laden zero dark thirty s
185. 7:42director Kathryn Bigelow eventually had
186. 7:44to respond to the allegation that her
187. 7:46film was making the CIA's case for
188. 7:48torture in an editorial for the Los
189. 7:51Angeles Times
190. 7:52she wrote that critics were quote
191. 7:53confusing depiction with endorsement
192. 7:55torture was as we all know employed in
193. 7:58the early years of the hunt that doesn't
194. 8:00mean it was the key to finding bin Laden
195. 8:02it means it's a part of the story we
196. 8:04couldn't ignore that's more of a problem
197. 8:07with the film industry and the creative
198. 8:09industry total disinterest in the
199. 8:13responsibilities of the ideological
200. 8:14products that they create and this is
201. 8:16why you can have a very liberal town
202. 8:18full of very liberal or even sometimes
203. 8:21left-wing celebrities and
204. 8:24rector's but actually they create films
205. 8:27that are very much in keeping with the
206. 8:29American Empire project the CIA rarely
207. 8:32has any kind of public credit that
208. 8:34suggests that they had any hand in
209. 8:36shaping the narrative of that film that
210. 8:38lack of transparency I find incredibly
211. 8:40problematic because it doesn't allow the
212. 8:44viewer to be a smart critical viewer how
213. 8:48about this why don't they just have at
214. 8:49the beginning of each film made with the
215. 8:51support of the Central Intelligence
216. 8:52Agency let's see how long the practice
217. 8:54lasts then because it won't because
218. 8:57people will look at it and say oh it's
219. 8:59one of those propaganda films