[iwar] [fc:The.CIA.Spins.Itself]

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Subject: [iwar] [fc:The.CIA.Spins.Itself]
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The CIA Spins Itself
 Tired of its bad-guy image, the symbol of national secrecy is ready for the
right kind of close-up.


 By PATRICK GOLDSTEIN, TIMES STAFF WRITER

<a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/custom/cotown/la-000077797sep29.story?coll=l">http://www.latimes.com/business/custom/cotown/la-000077797sep29.story?coll=l>
a%2Dheadlines%2Dbusiness%2Denter

For years, the Central Intelligence Agency had an image problem. 
Whenever agents were portrayed in movies or TV shows, they almost always
were the bad guys.  So the agency sent in an operative to remedy the
situation: Chase Brandon, a veteran CIA officer and the agency's first
official liaison with Hollywood. 

"I guess you could say I've become the first overt spokesman for the
covert side of the agency," says Brandon, who spent 25 years as an
undercover operative, mostly in Central and South America.  "I figured
that if I gave out a name and a phone number, people would call.  And it
worked.  Suddenly the phone started ringing."

Over the last several years, Brandon has led an effort by the embattled
spy agency to encourage show business projects that portray the CIA in a
less sinister fashion.  The accessibility has paid off: The fall TV
season features three new programs that cast the CIA in a flattering
light.  "The Agency" is a CBS show about agency derring-do that debuted
on Thursday; "Alias," which debuts Sunday on ABC, stars glamorous
newcomer Jennifer Garner as a kickboxing super-spy; and "24," a Fox
series debuting Nov.  6, stars Kiefer Sutherland as an elite operative
racing to uncover a presidential assassination plot.  Brandon, 54, also
served as a technical consultant for the films "Sum of All Fears," a Tom
Clancy thriller starring Ben Affleck as CIA super-agent Jack Ryan, and
"Bad Company," an action comedy that features Anthony Hopkins and Chris
Rock as mismatched CIA operatives.  Both are scheduled for release next
year. 

About five years ago, the agency decided it needed to improve its
entertainment image after years of being portrayed negatively in films
and novels as a shadowy organization populated by rogue operatives
specializing in Cold War skullduggery and crackpot assassination
schemes.  The characterization wasn't entirely inaccurate to those who
believe the many books and articles written by former agency officers
criticizing the CIA's intelligence-gathering and counter-terrorist
operations, especially in the Middle East. 

While the CIA was getting a cinematic black eye, the FBI, the Secret
Service and the armed services had cooperated with friendly filmmakers,
often with impressive results.  After the success of "Top Gun," the 1986
film starring Tom Cruise as a gung-ho Navy fighter pilot, Navy
recruiting went through the roof. 

"We've always been portrayed erroneously as evil and Machiavellian,"
says Brandon by phone from CIA headquarters in Virginia.  "It just took
the agency a long time to follow what the FBI and the Pentagon have
done, and engage filmmakers and support projects that portray us in the
light we want to be seen in."

He's especially enthusiastic about "Sum of All Fears," the Clancy
thriller due out next summer from Paramount Pictures.  Affleck spent a
day sitting with Russian analysts from the CIA, and Brandon worked
extensively with director Phil Alden Robinson, creating technical
abilities for the film's characters that were "realistic if not
actualistic."

Translation: "We wanted the movie to have something in the realm of what
we have now, without revealing exactly what our real capability is.  If
I did that, it might make the movie really realistic, but then I'd have
to go to jail."

The Clancy film is a far cry from "In the Line of Fire," a 1993 thriller
that starred Clint Eastwood as a Secret Service agent who matches wits
with a ruthless killer bent on assassinating the president.  Brandon
said the Eastwood film offered an extraordinarily realistic depiction of
Secret Service work.  "But who was the villain?" he asks.  "A psychotic
rogue CIA agent.  Why? Because 'rogue CIA agent' had become convenient
shorthand for a bad guy, even though that wasn't who we were at all."

Brandon doesn't hold a grudge.  One of the people he spent the most time
with while working on "The Agency" was its executive producer, Wolfgang
Petersen, who directed "In the Line of Fire."

The CIA has naturally been in full crisis mode since the Sept.  11
terrorist attacks, so show business concerns have taken a back seat.  An
"Agency" premiere at CIA headquarters was canceled.  The network also
pulled the show's premiere episode, which had the CIA foiling a plot by
a terrorist linked to an Osama bin Laden cell to blow up a posh London
department store. 

Many studio executives worry that moviegoers may dismiss films about
terrorist and anti-terrorist activities as pale imitations of the real
thing.  Brandon disagrees.  "I don't think these films and TV shows
trivialize what we're doing," he says.  "Right now the American public
needs a sense of reassurance.  If anything, a show like 'The Agency'
couldn't be more timely.  Our whole national consciousness is going to
change.  And I think a responsible film or TV episode about the agency,
even one that weaves elements of terrorism into the story line, can show
the magnitude of what's at stake."

Brandon also believes that fallout from the terrorist attacks will
inspire Hollywood to make films celebrating old-fashioned heroism and
bravery. 

"This situation is very much akin to World War II, except that instead
of fighting for our lives because of a far-away disaster ...  we're
fighting because something right smack in the heart of America was
attacked.  The great films about World War II were very spiritually
invigorating, and I think you'll find a lot of people wanting to see
that kind of heroism again."

Brandon obviously has offered assistance only to films that present the
agency in a positive light.  He refused to cooperate with two upcoming
Universal films, "The Bourne Identity" and "Spy Game." He said the
script for "The Bourne Identity," an adaptation of the 1984 Robert
Ludlum novel, was "so awful that I tossed it in the burn bag after Page
25."

When "Spy Game" was in development, Brandon met with the film's
director, Tony Scott, and one of its screenwriters to explain agency
procedures and protocol.  Set during the Cold War, the film stars Robert
Redford as an agency operative nearing retirement who discovers that his
protege, played by Brad Pitt, has been jailed in Beijing on espionage
charges after trying to break a prisoner out of China.  The film is
scheduled for release Nov.  21. 

"We were eager to cooperate," Brandon said.  "But when I saw a final
rewrite, it had taken a turn for the worse.  It showed our senior
management in an insensitive light, and we just wouldn't be a part of
that kind of project."

Michael Beckner, one of the film's writers, defends the movie's
portrayal of the agency.  "It's a very accurate depiction of the way
agents operated in the morally ambiguous climate of the Cold War," says
Beckner, who also created "The Agency," which received considerable CIA
cooperation.  "There are things in the story that might make the agency
uncomfortable, but in the end, it's about sacrifice and doing the right
things for the right reasons."

The agency seems to have given filmmakers broad latitude in terms of
fictionalizing events.  The opening episode of "The Agency" shows the
CIA foiling a plot to kill Fidel Castro during a visit to America--quite
a turnabout, given that the CIA once spearheaded efforts to assassinate
the Cuban dictator.  Brandon says it's not entirely preposterous to
believe the agency could be on the opposite side of the fence today. 

"Times have changed," he says.  "It's not implausible for there to be a
series of circumstances where the agency's talents would be used to
protect Castro."

The agency also cooperated with "Bad Company," a film that takes such a
broadly comic approach to CIA work that its studio pulled it from its
scheduled December release, worried that audiences might not find the
spoof so funny after the terrorist attacks.  It also has supported
"Alias," a show creator J.J.  Abrams says is intended as escapist
entertainment. 

"It's like a good comic book," Abrams says.  "It's something to take
your mind off the horror of real life.  I wouldn't know how to deal with
real-life terrorism and attacks on America.  That's not what the show's
about at all."

Brandon says he doesn't have any problems with the lightweight tone of
some CIA projects.  "Everyone needs to find a way to let go a little,"
he says.  "I've already seen Colin Powell find a way to laugh and joke
with reporters to break the tension.  We're trained to be hard as nails,
but we know how to relax and laugh too.  A little levity isn't such a
bad thing."

No one knows for sure how viewers will react to seeing CIA-inspired
dramas juxtaposed with its participation in real-life events.  But if
nothing else, the agency seems to have a flock of new fans in Hollywood,
supposedly a bastion of liberal anti-agency sentiment. 

"I don't think we could've done a show about the CIA 10 or 15 years
ago," says "Agency" executive producer Gail Katz.  "But people's
attitudes have changed.  We may have questioned their methods in the
past, but I don't think we're questioning their goals right now.  When
we were doing press interviews before the terrorist attacks, a lot of
people were asking 'Why do a show about the CIA?' Well, no one's asking
that question now."

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