CIA in the cinema: A former special agent’s take on Hollywood
By Casey Gillis on Oct. 04, 2007
In 2003, Paul Kelbaugh, then-Associate General Counsel for the CIA, got a phone call from someone within the agency asking him to meet with a VIP.
A VIP could be anyone, Kelbaugh said, so he had no real clue who he’d be meeting.
In this case, it turned out to be a very important person: Robert De Niro, who was there to do research for “The Good Shepherd,” his 2006 film about the creation of the CIA.
During his day there, the actor/director spent four hours with a group of covert agents who happened to be on site that day.
One of Kelbaugh’s most vivid memories from that meeting was when De Niro asked an agent why nobody said “the” before CIA when talking about it.
“Do you put the word ‘the’ in front of God?” the agent responded.
Those of you who have seen “The Good Shepherd” know De Niro used that exact quote in the film.
“I’m watching that movie a couple years later,” Kelbaugh said, “and I’m going, ‘I know where Robert De Niro got that!’”
Last week at a Lynchburg College lecture called “Strange Bond: The CIA and the Cinema,” Kelbaugh shared this and other stories from his 29 years working in the intelligence community.
For most of his time with the CIA — we civilians can still use “the” in front of it — there was a strict policy about not cooperating with Hollywood filmmakers who wanted to make movies about the agency.
“Spooks, spies and secret agents work in the dark,” Kelbaugh said. “We don’t want to share our secrets.”
The agency was established on Sept. 18, 1947, and since then, there have only been 50 movies that with CIA-related storylines, Kelbaugh said.
During that same time period, about 400 vampire movies have been produced.
There have also been plenty of movies about the FBI, mostly because it regularly let filmmakers go behind the scenes to do research for movie projects, Kelbaugh said.
The first movie to incorporate the CIA was 1950’s “The Flying Saucer,” which, from a clip Kelbaugh showed, seemed to employ lots of shrieking women and cheesy voiceovers.
Its main character was a good-guy CIA agent who drank heavily, smoked heavily and “in the first five minutes, he was already hitting on the blonde woman,” Kelbaugh said — a characterization that will pop up often in later spy movies.
It wasn’t until 47 years later that the CIA finally began working with Hollywood.
In 1997, the agency created a Media and Hollywood Liaison Office, but the first film they officially consulted on, a made-for-television Showtime movie called “In the Company of Spies,” was nothing to write home about.
The first successful film they cooperated with was 2001’s “Spy Game,” which starred Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. (On a scale of one to 10, Kelbaugh said the film is a seven in terms of accuracy.)
Plenty of other CIA-centered spy movies were released between “The Flying Saucer” and “Spy Game.”
Some filmmakers got it right. Some didn’t.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Alfred Hitchcock made two spy movies: 1946’s “Notorious,” which was about the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a U.S. intelligence agency formed during World War II, and 1959’s “North by Northwest,” which was about the CIA.
“Alfred Hitchcock was fascinated with the intelligence community,” Kelbaugh said. “He was fascinated with spooks, spies and secret agents.”
After Hitchcock, the genre shifted and a series of spy comedies were released. During the 1960s and 1970s, established comedians like Woody Allen, Jonathan Winters, Peter Sellers and Walter Matthau all played CIA agents.
“The In Laws,” another comedy starring Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, was released in 1979 and was one of the more successful ones.
“This was fascinating in that this movie made money,” Kelbaugh said. “… Up to this point, this is pretty much the idea America has about the CIA.”
Meanwhile, the FBI was still cooperating with directors and getting all the good press, while the CIA was still refusing to do so.
“(The attitude was,) ‘We will not open our doors to Hollywood,’” Kelbaugh said. “‘Let them make whatever movie they want.’”
And that’s what Hollywood did, releasing films like “Scorpio,” “The Spook Who Sat by the Door” and, in 1975, “Three Days of the Condor,” which starred Robert Redford as a bookish CIA researcher who goes underground after all of his coworkers are assassinated.
“It’s totally inaccurate, but one of the great spy movies,” Kelbaugh said. “… We watched it at the CIA, and we laughed. We said, ‘We’re not that smart.’”
Then came two authors whose work would eventually be made into successful films and whom Kel-baugh said got their facts eerily right.
In the 1970s, Robert Ludlum — now famous for writing the “Bourne” trilogy — wrote “The Osterman Weekend,” which director Sam Peckinpah made into a film in 1983.
Kelbaugh said Ludlum caught the CIA’s attention because he knew what he was talking about.
“We’re sitting at Langley, saying, ‘This is pretty close to what’s happening.”
They had a similar feeling after reading Tom Clancy’s 1984 novel, “The Hunt for Red October,” so they invited the author to spend a day at Langley.
During his visit, Clancy told agents he based his book entirely on public records.
“It was a mild, ‘Oh my gosh,’” Kelbaugh said. “We knew the information was out there, but the level of detail he got was a bit interesting to us.”
So when they heard he was working on a second book, “Patriot Games,” the agency let him come in for another tour.
During this time period, mostly thanks to Clancy, many spy movies focused on pencil-pushing agents thrust into fieldwork.
“They were making great spy movies about intelligent guys who (in real life) sit at their desks all day and are bored to tears,” Kelbaugh said.
The decision to work with Hollywood eventually came over a frustration within the agency over its sometimes-negative portrayal.
“(There were) movies where they got it wrong or (where) CIA agents were portrayed as morons,” he said. “… We said, ‘We’ve got brave and patriotic people working here.’”
Now every filmmaker who wants to make a movie about the CIA has the chance to meet with someone from the Media and Hollywood Liaison Office.
“The CIA will at least talk with them, meet with them,” Kelbaugh said. “And help them at least not get it wrong.”
During his 29 years in the intelligence community, Paul Kelbaugh worked as associate general counsel for the Defense Mapping Agency, as a senior policy officer for the National Imagery and Mapping Agency and general counsel for the Central Imagery Office.
He joined the CIA as senior ethics counsel and also worked with the Counter Narcotics Latin America Division and the Counterterrorist Center. For his service, he was awarded the CIA Latin America Division Medal and the CIA Career Intelligence Medal.
Now an adjunct political science professor at LC, Kelbaugh retired from the CIA in 2003, but remained with the agency as a consultant on ethics, covert action and national defense policies.
Kelbaugh’s thoughts on other spy movies
In the Line of Fire (1993): The year this movie — which starred John Malkovich as a disgruntled CIA agent trying to kill the president — was released, the Secret Service received 15,000 more applications, Kelbaugh said. The CIA’s number of applicants dropped.
True Lies (1994): Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as a seemingly boring family man who moonlights as a butt-kicking secret agent.
“I got a lot of respect at home after we saw that movie,” Kelbaugh laughed. “It made parenting much easier. ‘Son, you’ve forgotten where I work?’”
In the Company of Spies (1997): A made-for-television Showtime movie, it was the first project in which the CIA cooperated fully. And nobody saw it.
“We weren’t as smart in 1997 as we are now,” Kelbaugh said. “When somebody says ‘made-for-TV,’ you run the other way.”
The Sum of All Fears (2002): In the film, Ben Affleck stars as a young Jack Ryan, who doesn’t immedi-ately tell his girlfriend he works for the CIA.
“We won’t always tell our families right off the bat where we work,” Kelbaugh said.
In fact, Kelbaugh’s son didn’t know he was a CIA agent until he was a teenager.
“He came home one day when he was 13 years old, and he said, ‘Dad, one of my friends said you work for the CIA.’ I said, ‘What do you think?’ And he said, ‘Dad, I don’t think so.’”
The Recrui” (2003): This Colin Farrell/Al Pacino vehicle is about a young CIA agent looking for a mole within the agency. Part of the story is set at a facility called “The Farm,” where the agency trains covert agents.
This came a little bit too close to the truth, Kelbaugh said.
During shooting, an agent was on the set every day under the guise of a consultant. His real job was to misdirect the filmmakers.
“We didn’t want Hollywood to get too close to the truth,” Kelbaugh said.
Syriana” (2005): The film is based on the memoir “See No Evil,” which was written by former CIA agent Robert Baer about his time in the intelligence community.
All agents sign a lifelong disclosure form, meaning that “anything we write has to be submitted to a re-view board to be edited before publication,” Kelbaugh said. “If they don’t, the CIA can seize their assets.”
Baer didn’t seem to care, and ignored the review board.
His publisher went ahead with the book’s release without the CIA’s final review.
Kelbaugh said they decided not to go after Baer.
“We were convinced, in our wisdom, that it wasn’t going to go anywhere,” he said. “That is until it be-came an Academy Award winning movie starring George Clooney.”
COMMENTS
This movie has some pit-falls but excellent acting and action scenes had me sitting on the edge of my seat. The events that lead up to the attack were very clear and understandable.