Intel entertainment
Spy for a Day

JENNIFER BARCLAY, a British spy tracking a sex-trafficking ring, walks briskly near the National Gallery in London. Feeling a sudden twinge of paranoia, she slips into an alley and glances over her shoulder. Continuing east, she camouflages herself among a cluster of commuters as she heads toward Covent Garden, pretending to check her phone. Her backpack contains an encrypted laptop, a burner phone, bugging equipment, eyeglasses that record video and business cards bearing her name and the insignia of an NGO (a front). She’s also carrying a photograph of a man known as Fairisle, a member of an international criminal gang called Nightshade whom she’s been instructed to recruit.

Intel entertainment

Inside the CIA's Troubling Collaboration With Hollywood

“All art is propaganda … sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately,” Upton Sinclair once wrote. While that’s undoubtedly true, some pieces of art are more deliberately propaganda than others, as documentsrecently obtained by Vice News’ Jason Leopold reveal.

According to a 2012 audit report on the CIA’s engagement with the entertainment industry obtained by Leopold as part of a Freedom of Information request, the CIA has had its hand in at least 22 entertainment projects between 2006 and 2011, which run the gamut from books and movies to reality television. It’s all part of the CIA’s effort to work with entertainment professionals “to debunk myths about CIA and intelligence work, present a balanced and accurate image of the CIA and lend authenticity to entertainment industry projects,” according to the report.