Hollywood serves as a powerful recruiting mechanism for spy agencies like the CIA- using the screen to glamorize the work of intelligence operatives worldwide- but it also contributes to some of the biggest misunderstandings of what spies do and how they operate. Join Jack and Julia for a fun and enlightening conversation about what Hollywood gets right- and what it gets wrong- in its portrayal of the spy-world.
On this episode we’ll discuss:
Hollywood serves as a powerful recruiting mechanism for spy agencies like the CIA- using the screen to glamorize the work of intelligence operatives worldwide- but it also contributes to some of the biggest misunderstandings of what spies do and how they operate. Join Jack and Julia for a fun and enlightening conversation about what Hollywood gets right- and what it gets wrong- in its portrayal of the spy-world.
On this episode we’ll discuss:
Straight from the Shoulder, s01e04, Screen of Spies
Julia
Today, we're going to be discussing what Hollywood gets right and what it gets wrong in its portrayal of the spy world. Jack, I'm really looking forward to chatting with you on this. As you and I were talking about, Hollywood simultaneously serves as a fantastic recruiting mechanism for groups like the CIA, glamorizing the work of intelligence operatives. But it also contributes to some of the biggest misunderstandings of what spies actually do and how they operate. Let's begin with the man who is perhaps the world's most famous spy. And no, I'm actually not talking about you here, Jack. I'm talking about none other than Agent 007.
Jack
The first time I saw Sean Connery. I was in a restaurant in London and he walked in and I was sitting with C, the head of the British Intelligence Service. We were with our wives. It's important in life to have a humiliating experience. So he walked in and the entire restaurant fluttered. And I looked at our wives and it was like Bobby socks. They were all excited.
Julia
I bet.
Jack
I didn't do it. The head of the British service did it. He said, We don't get it. He was speaking for me without authorization. We're the real thing. They broke out laughing. They thought that it was a hideous thought that we were the real thing. There he is across the room, James Bond. So many years later, I shared that story with Sean Connery. He didn't think it was as funny as I did.
Jack
But in retrospect, what you really want to, I think, appreciate is he was a very, from my perspective, a very classy actor and played his role very well. Off screen, off screen, and I found him to be a smart gentleman. Now, I did mention to you once that he was a Scotsman, so we need to bear in mind that his enthusiasm for the Queen and the Monarchy may not be quite as keen as it's portrayed in 007 movies.
Julia
Well, that's part of the acting, right? Did he have on screen, did he display some of the characteristics that would make him a good spy?
Jack
Well, his looks, wit, charm matched all of the people I worked with.
Julia
Well, did you know anybody at the agency who reminded you of James Bond?
Jack
Well, I certainly didn't remind anybody of James Bond and I'll leave the others to decide for themselves. But I said he was like Cary Grant. He had that just presence and projected so well. And I think it did a great service to CIA in the sense that many young people saw it and thought that's the real thing. I want to be part of that action. And then they learned that you really have to do things quite differently. And I'm sure we'll get to that eventually.
Julia
Well, what are some of the most, I know that you're not a huge fan of James Bond and his portrayal of what actually happens, but what are the most realistic aspects of James Bond in terms of how he conducted business? I mean, are any of those car chases or information handoffs, is that real?
Jack
You're really pressing me to the wall here because I struggle. You know, those car chases, you're supposed to be a clandestine spy. You're not supposed to be seen racing up and down the Via Venedo. If I could stretch my imagination, I would say at its very best, if you have the composure, courage, and imagination that was portrayed by James Bond, you’d be at the top of the game. And that parts worth emulating. But within the lines.
Julia
Well, one thing about him, and I think you mentioned this, and maybe this goes into the least realistic aspects of James Bond, is he always seems to get everything done by himself. This is something that bothers me about a lot of shows about police departments, and you have this one lead detective who solves the case. Is that something that you see in the agency, or is that pure cinematics where one person kind of gets the whole job done in all the glory?
Jack
Actually, that's a fascinating point, which I haven't dwelled on before. You are actually, I'm going to choose the word carefully, ostracize if you look like a self -promoter, that the attention's all about you. CIA, your career, they don't really cherish and embrace that individuality. They want you to be part of a team. And I can't tell you how many operations, the most, multiple people who are unsung heroes. But you can't have that in a movie. It's like Charlie Wilson's war. It's too boring to say that, you know, you had 50 logistic people driving mules across China, that might make for a good movie scene. But sitting in your office doing papers and editing someone else's cable isn't nearly as exciting.
Julia
Well, I'd like to pick up that theme, Jack. In terms of Charlie Wilson's war, I know that was an operation that you were intimately involved in, particular aspects of it. Is there something about that movie, when you were watching it, that just was just clear to you, was inaccurate? And was it purely for cinema purposes it was inaccurate, or is the historic account inaccurate?
Jack
Well, Charlie Wilson and I had dinner. It sounds like I have dinner a lot. Charlie Wilson and I had dinner in Sparks Restaurant, New York. And the reason Charlie wanted it, because he's a romanticist. The head of the mafia, Paul Castellana, was assassinated on the steps. So he thought that was just the right kind of place for a spymaster and a congressman from Texas, who in many ways, you know, he was a very smart guy. He was a graduate of Annapolis, but he had... He had bazazz that I haven't seen in very few people. But during dinner, he reached across in that friendly gesture and put his hand on my arm and said, Jack, I know you didn't like the book. You're going to hate the movie. And then we all started laughing because he knew what I meant. He was one of the great marketers. If you could have a war named after you, and it's a positive war, you know what the bad war is named after you. I mean, it's a phenomenal marketing feat. But he knew what I knew.
And that is, in many ways, it was organized as a government program with many, many government people doing very specific jobs and it came together. Now, he was very important in his relationship with Congress and frankly with a couple of heads of state. So he had a role for sure, but it wasn't running the war itself. That's not how wars are run. That's not how the Afghan war. So he knew I took umbrage at that. But in good humor, he and I got along quite well, traveled out to Pakistan and I think I found him a great partner in this, but it wasn't his war.
Julia
That's interesting actually that I haven't thought about it. How in so many spy movies, even if there's a team, often the team aspect of it is sort of minimized or takes second rate to just propping up one superhero. And how in real life that kind of teamwork and that kind of tedious effort to make a whole isn't very glamorous and isn't very dramatic. But perhaps it should be. I mean, maybe there's an opportunity to glamorize.
Have you seen any movies or can you think of any examples of TV shows that show that process well of when intelligence operatives and analysts kind of collaborate for a greater outcome?
Jack
Well, let me add a footnote to the Charlie -Wilson's war. It's not that I hang out with actors. I happened to be in the St. Regis Hotel, which is a story about that in my career training program, operational one. And there was Seymour Hoffman, minding his own business, sitting at lunch with a couple of people. And I don't do it. I usually don't walk over, and I'm very careful not to show attention to them, because I think they're just troubled by everyone coming up and making a fuss over it. But I couldn't resist. I went over and said, Mr. Hoffman, you're a great actor. No question about it. My wife was a big fan of yours. I just wanted you to know the role you played just had nothing to do with the reality of it. So he looked at me, well, here's another crazy New Yorker. And he said, well, thank you for your service. And I was very class. He came back and said, God, I hope he leaves in a hurry. But I couldn't resist that point. So coming back to...
Julia
New York encounters.
Jack
Well, coming back to movies, I mean, you go back to the fact that they actually showed it during my training. You won't even remember this movie. The Guns of Navarone. And the reason they showed the Guns of Navarone was we were taking the demolition training, blowing up things. So they blow up this big gun in the Guns of Navarone. But what you saw was a ragtag group of people that were put together as a team and what they could get accomplished as a team. And I think even though that wasn't the intent of showing me the movie. Oh, by the way, I almost flunked that course. You'll have to ask me why someday. But.
Julia
Oh no, I'm gonna ask you why right now. We can't let that slip!
Jack
Okay, but fair enough, fair enough. So when we went, first of all, they take you to a special place we needed demolition training and you're treated better. People in the military realize when you're working with explosives, they make sure you get really good meals, better accommodations. And there's a reason for this, right? So I know it's going to sound like I'm exaggerating. And even at the moment, I thought, is this a Hollywood actor? The first speaker came out. And he was bald and he had a V -shaped scar in the middle of his head. And to this day, I swear he was missing two fingers. So he starts out and he says, gentlemen, at this point it was only gentlemen, today there's 50 -50, but men and women, but he said, working with explosives is dangerous. No kidding. Okay, we got that point. So when we got around the blowing things up, unlike James Bond, I cut an extra six inches on my detonating cord.
So I made sure that I got 15 feet away further away than anyone else in the explosion. So when the items, when there were actually telephone poles were being blown up, it would go one, two, three, five, six, seven, and then mine would explode. They just didn't have the sense of humor that I had. So it said in my file, I passed, I got a passing grade, I must have done some of the others a little better. It said, you know: You pass the course, but whatever you do, do not let them near explosives. So the irony was when I took over the Afghan task force, I was responsible for more explosives than anybody in the history of the agency. Now, the truth of the matter is I wasn't actually running around placing them, but I mean, I was involved with more ordinance than anybody, which is our biggest program. So, you know, when you look at movies, real life can be a tad different.
Julia
Well, in the movies, it seems like one person sometimes gets a role where they have to be a sort of a superhero. They have to be capable in many different aspects of the spy world, both the technical aspects, what you're talking about, logistics, detonating things, while also dealing with human sources. So are there examples, maybe James Bond, maybe someone that you like better of someone who displays on screen really good trade craft and either recruiting a source or what that process looks like, or is the process too long in real life to replicate on screen? What's your take on that?
Jack
Well.
Jack
Well, you're hitting a receptive chord here. I'm finally drawing into a point that I would like to make that I think is critical and a part of the movies that I like. There's a difference between a spy and a spymaster. The spy is the foreigner who works in the Kremlin or works in the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The spymaster are people like me that run those assets.
So in the movies, you tend to actually see more of what you would expect from an agent and not a spymaster. The movies that intrigue me are more of the psychological drama of spymasters and how they look at operations and the chess game that's played. And you would say, well, it sounds like a contemplative headquarters position, but it's done in the field as well. It's how you look a an agent and how you run operations to protect them from harm's way, how you collect that information and how you watch over your counterintelligence shoulder. Now there are really good movies that go into this, but they're usually tied to the mole part of a movie where there's a penetration inside the firm. So there's the action person, James Bond, and we certainly haven't, I should say this too, there's a whole world of special forces inside the state, paramilitary people, that are in the front lines of battles around the world and are doing things like James Bond without the glamour. They're certainly not in tuxedos and drinking martinis. But if you look at Iraq or Afghanistan, there are CIA personnel in harm's way doing dangerous things. So, but you would not categorize them as spies. They're action people. They're career -part.
Julia
So the movies, the movies pack all of these different roles that would normally be, you know, belonging to 10, 20 teams of people and they put it into one person. Is that, is that what you're saying often?
Jack
But I've come to terms with that. I mean, I recognize that Hollywood, for example, how do you get terror? And mean, the movies are, you know, Alfred Hitchcock, the people that specialize in shadows and this and the other. How do you get emotions in the movies? Argo, right? Argo is the one where CIA people are able to get out of Iran after the, after the take over the embassy and how that was managed. I doubt there was, I seriously doubt, I know there weren't cars, jeeps running down the airplane field about to shoot the plane. No, but they were scared to death when they walked by that exit point where they had to show their password. So you have to have this exhilarating drama because you're not capable to show someone's stomach turning over and the cold sweat and fear that's there. So I think movies, you have to cut them some slack on this. And so I don't, as long as they show the right thing, which is this was a very risky, dangerous, fear -fraught moment. And so, you know, they do put things together, but a much more flexible today than I was when I was first looking at movies and first beginning, when I was beginning my career.
Julia
I understand, and it's evolving because there are positive aspects of portraying spies in this way, which we'll talk about. But there was one movie, Jack, and I think you and I have different opinions on it. It was called The Lives of Others. And what the aspect of the movie, which was in East Germany during the Soviet era, it involves sort of a government effort to listen in and to...
Jack
It wouldn’t be the first time.
Julia
this sort of domestic surveillance and how the individual working for the government becomes empathetic and relates to his subjects in a very sort of human way that we don't often see portrayed in films. It's not exactly going native or becoming really close with your subject or switching teams, but is that common in the agency?
Jack
Now you're talking about the spy who came in from the cold, right?
Julia
No, but we could we could talk about that as well. I'm just talking about
Jack
Because that's what happened. I mean, that's the fundamental line in the story where this hard -seasoned operator, spymaster, identifies with his agent. And then the agent is basically, I don't want to ruin the movie for people, but has a bad ending. But it's that whole point about empathizing with your asset. And I can't tell. This is true in the Armed Forces as well.
Julia
same themes
Jack
When you have foreign teams working for you is the emotional attachment. Leaving Vietnam, leaving Afghanistan was brutally painful for the people that worked in intelligence business with people you left behind. So there's an emotional part to it. It was interesting that CIA as a matter of policy abroad moves people about every three years. The Russians actually stay in six, seven years in some places and they want them to get more identified and they blend in more. The longer you're at a place, the better you are. I mean, the more capability and skill you have. But I think we often thought we have to avoid what we call in the business client-itis. In other words, you suddenly feel like the country's right and America's wrong on some issue. And you begin to lose your balance in it or that this asset somehow is undervalued.
Julia
Mm -hmm.
Jack
You lose your focus. And the key thing in CIA and intelligence business is you need to have clear focus on...objectivity, whether it's the reporting or the situation you're in, you can't afford, and it's very hard for human beings and have the same passions and desires as everyone else, but you have to discipline it. And then one way to ease it is, you know, before you get too identified with the country, move you on to the next post thing. And you could argue both sides of that, but I think it's probably on balance, a useful thing to do.
Julia
That does sound like a tough balance because you want to have someone that knows what they're doing, but you don't want them to have blinders or have emotion overtake their view on the real reality on the ground. But I appreciate it when movies kind of portray that more human aspect of working with other humans because that becomes your team too, right? When you're a spymaster, your assets, they are part of your team.
Jack
What are the cases?
Jack
I can tell you one case where it was around the edges of, and that was the Falklands War or Malvinas for those in Latin America. And that is there were many of our people that so identified with the Latin American interest in it that they lost their objective and did not realize that Great Britain was going to come and was going to go to war against them. That somehow they didn't think that that was going to happen, that America would side with Argentina and it's like you missed all of history of the United States and World War I and II. And these are all very smart people, but because they were so close to their subject matter, they missed what was really gonna happen. And I think there was a lot of disappointment as a result of that. So objectivity is something that you have to strive at and it's hard.
Julia
That's something that you often Jack, connect with human sources and having the ability to talk to a lot of people on the ground and not relying solely on technology or on SIGINT and signals intelligence and other things like that. How does Hollywood, what's Hollywood's portrayal of sort of spy tech? I mean, is that realistic? Does Hollywood copy things it sees or what's the dynamic with that?
Jack
You're going get annoyed with me, so I'm going to divide it into two parts. So the first part is I do think human intelligence is coming back. And I think when we look at some of the things that happened in Israel with Hamas, it's not that AI and technology is not really useful, but it has limitations and you have to realize that. And the only antidote for those limitations, is to have human sources and primary sources. And I've been pounding that drum for a long time. My sense of the private sector, I noticed that the private sector is getting much more interested in it and our government seems to be back because, and I think the Israelis will be back into it. So the second part is technology. And I like the Jason Bourne movies, particularly when you can see one and two. Because number one, it's great action, right? It's again, we can tear it apart and criticize the action. But the technology is great. Although I was sitting there saying, well, we have the pieces, but they're not integrated. When you get to Jason Bourne two, you find out that by then you actually have it. So Hollywood, you know, we can go back to Maxwell's Smart, you'll have to go look up the book, the Maxwell book. Okay, but you know, you'll have to look at James Bond. But over the years, if you start to look at what looked like, the phone that, talking to the phone, I mean, the miniaturization. I would give Hollywood high marks. This is the one area particularly of somewhat visionary in how you would apply. Now, I knew somebody that was head of technology in our agency, in the technical support area, not satellites, but spy gear. And when Casey was the director of CIA, he'd see something on TV and call down and why don't I have a watch like that? And because we're very responsive, so I want to go out and try and figure out how to turn the Timex into a telephone.
Julia
Oh, that's brilliant. Excellent. So it's a two -way street when it comes to technology, Hollywood and this.
Julia
Three ways the spy world influences them and then Hollywood influences operations. So ultimately, and I guess we'll just wrap it up here because there's so much to discuss with different movies, but has Hollywood helped the image overall of spies or has it hurt them?
Jack
I think it has been a great asset to the people in the spy business, as I said, for recruiting and for... It's fascinating how much respect CIA personnel get, people get in a foreign environment. The issue I have is that we have had presidential leaders who have agreed to undertake covert action programs that they...were basing it on the assumption that CIA can get it done if they say they can get it done or if someone asks them to get it done. And that is a mistake in the flow that's generated inadvertently. It's not a deliberate thing by Hollywood. And that is not really looking down at the realities and questioning those capabilities. As I said, the Bay of Pigs is a classic example where Jack Kennedy was personally knew Ian Fleming, I mean, knew him, and that was his favorite reading material. And he just overestimated. First of all, Eisenhower gave him the folder and he thought it Four Star General, commander of World War II, this has to be a reasonable program. And then the CIA people were ready to go. So he, and he was relatively new, it was new in a policy place surrounded by great advisors. And...I think this is the type of thing, to me it sticks in my head as a classic example, where the glamorization, which is so useful to people like me, is not very useful at the policy level. You have to be much more critically focused on capabilities.
Julia
I hope that next week we can discuss a topic that often comes up in the movies when they're covering spies or clandestine operations, and that is betrayal, the issue of betrayal. So I hope that you all can join us as we dive into that topic using some of Jack's firsthand experiences and maybe referencing some movies along the way.