Adaptations of Real Events
The film Charlie Wilson's War, released in December 2007, gives a popular account of the efforts of U.S. Congressman Charles Wilson to secure funding for the CIA's Operation Cyclone, giving covert assistance to Afghan rebels during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. This film positively portrays the CIA, while finishing with a muted scolding of Congress for funding the war but not funding subsequent peacetime reconstruction. This lack of funding for reconstruction, or what are called Operations Other Than War (OOTWA) in military parlance and counter-insurgency doctrine, are mooted as an antecedent to the present War on Terrorism. According to Declan Walsh, writing in The Guardian, the support of the mujahideen by the U.S. and Pakistan backfired on the U.S. in the form of the 9/11 attacks, and is now backfiring on Pakistan. The film has its critics.
The Good Shepherd, directed by Robert De Niro and released in 2006, narrates the CIA's tumultuous early history as viewed through the prism of one man's life. While the lead character is a composite of several real people, the most important is the long-term chief of the CIA Counterintelligence Staff, James Jesus Angleton. Angleton is also the basis of William F. Buckley, Jr.'s novel Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton The same story is told in the 2007 TNT miniseries The Company.
Read more about this topic: CIA In Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words real and/or events:
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