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Abstract: This article examines the production, content, and public reception of Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012) and Argo (Ben Affl eck, 2012). The two Oscar-winning films are set within the context of the Central Intelligence Agency's efforts over the past two decades to engage more creatively with America's entertainment industry. While Zero Dark Thirty and Argo are just two of the CIA's most recent collaborations with Hollywood, it can be argued that, together, they represent the organization's greatest achievements so far in refashioning the image of US intelligence on the silver screen.

Two forty-million-dollar movies celebrating the real-life efforts of the Central Intelligence Agency competed for Oscars in early 2013. Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012) focused on the agency's dogged, ten-year hunt for the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden. Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012) dramatized the CIA's "exfiltration" of six American embassy officials during the 1979- 1981 Iranian hostage crisis. While Argo eventually captured the headlines on Oscar night by winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, the fact that two of the year's most prestigious movies championed US intelligence suggests that Hollywood views the CIA more positively now than it has at any other stage in the agency's recent history. More intriguing, the production history of these films indicates that what some might see as Hollywood's volte-face on the CIA can be related to the agency's recent efforts to engage more creatively with America's entertainment industry.

There is a long and rich history of American and other filmmakers scapegoating the CIA for US foreign policy misdemeanors. Since the agency's birth in the early years of the Cold War, and especially following revelations of CIA malfeasance during the Watergate era, Hollywood has usually cast the CIA in one of five basic ways. The first depicts the agency as obsessed with assassination (Three Days of the Condor [Sydney Pollack, 1975] and Syriana [Stephen Gaghan, 2005J), and the second constructs CIA officers as rogue operatives acting without political oversight (The Amateur [Charles Jarrott, 1981] and Clear and Present Danger [Phillip Noyce, 1994]). The third category of films portray the agency as abusing its own officers and assets (Body of Lies [Ridley Scott, 2008] and Spy Game [Tony Scott, 2001]), and the fourth and fifth...

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