The 'Argo' effect: Film could stoke suspicions about Americans abroad (+video)
The Oscar-winning film 'Argo' tells of how CIA operatives posed as a film crew to free hostages in Iran in 1979. The film could reinforce impressions in some countries that Americans are government agents.
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The fallout from this suspicion spreads beyond Americans abroad. A Pakistani doctor who conducted a fake vaccination program on behalf of the US to help identify DNA in the final hunt for Osama bin Laden “is now in prison,” Mr. Earnest notes.
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In the cold war era, CIA agents would also pose as foreign correspondents, says Mark Tatge, a journalism professor at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind. “One reason reporters have been detained, tortured, and even killed is because of past misrepresentations on the part of the US government," he says in an e-mail. "An American in a foreign land is immediately suspect.”
The CIA says it is careful in its dealings with Hollywood. “Over the years, CIA has engaged with writers, documentary filmmakers, movie and TV producers, and others in the entertainment industry. Our goal is an informed and balanced portrayal of the men and women of the CIA, their vital mission, and the commitment to public service that defines them,” an agency spokesman said in an e-mail.
“The protection of national security equities is always paramount in any engagement with the entertainment industry," the e-mail adds.
What is interesting in all of this discussion about "Argo" is that the other Oscar-nominated CIA-related movie this year, "Zero Dark Thirty," “has nearly completely dropped from the headlines," says Dennis Mazzocco, a communication professor at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.
He notes that the US Senate on Tuesday dropped its plans to investigate the film’s ties to the intelligence community. This decision came after months of challenges from members of Congress about the film’s depictions of waterboarding.
Professor Mazzocco suggests that struggles between the government and Hollywood over film content may hint at a bigger danger. “We live in a time when we can finally begin to discuss the greatest threat to storytellers everywhere: fear of censorship and political retribution by authorities.” The film was subjected to an indirect form of censorship, he says. “This is the far greater danger to filmmakers.”
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