As Argo and Zero Dark Thirty ready for their close-ups at tonight’s Academy Awards, Tom Hayden has an interesting piece at the Los Anegles Review of Books about the link between Hollywood and the CIA, the latter of which eagerly dispatches liaisons, lobbyists and collaborators to Tinseltown. An excerpt:

“Hollywood is full of very smart people, who by their nature are resistant to anyone trying to control them, whether it be CAA or CIA. They won’t yield easily on creative control of their scripts and productions. Some may embrace the CIA ideologically, but most see the Agency as an interest group to be negotiated with, to hang out with, to tour, to bring in to get the feel of the place, shoot an interior, size up the personality of an agent, hear a story or two. A collaboration results between masters of illusion on both sides. Odd, that they wouldn’t consider that the CIA is a particular kind of interest group whose main mission is deception.

But the two sides are not equivalent, and the audience needs to know the difference. Hollywood and government policymakers consider labeling the sources of their product to make the audience beware what’s being sold. We have labels for tobacco products and all kinds of across-the-counter brands. Why not require a label stating, ‘The Central Intelligence Agency provided input and resources to this film. The CIA [or Pentagon] required certain alterations in the script. The final product was controlled by the film’s producers.’

Impractical or unreasonable? If you expect disclosure of the names of screenwriters or sources of a movie script, if ‘based on a true story’ is inserted in many a film, or for that matter, we disclose where the ingredients of food were grown, why not disclosure of any CIA role in contributing to a film?”