Some choose Hollywood over fact
Hollywood can’t seem to resist embellishing history if not just turning it into fiction. One day my youngest son engaged me in a conversation about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It was filled with the usual speculation about more than one shooter and so forth. But suddenly, he seemed to be espousing as fact, theories long held by conspiracy addicts that have been thoroughly discredited. His arguments seemed grounded more in Hollywood than in history. They were.
When I asked him where he got his information, he confessed that it had come from a new movie at the time, a controversial film by the master of distortion, Oliver Stone. It was called “JFK” and it was based on New Orleans District Attorney James Garrison’s shabby attempts to pin the job on a conspiracy led by Clay Shaw – a case that helped feed the feverish allegations of outlandish conspiracy in high places.
The case was a shambles within a few days after it was filed and it took a jury only one hour to acquit Shaw when it finally got the chance. Although his movie was suspenseful and well directed, it was completely over the top and damaged his reputation. Sadly, it is probable that any number of other youngsters at the time forever based their knowledge of the president’s death on such trashy distortions.
All this came to mind the other day with the release of another movie, “Fair Game,” about the outing of CIA covert operator Valerie Plame during the reign of George W. Bush.
The movie attempts to substantiate contentions by Plame and her husband, Joseph Wilson, that the leak of her name to the press shortened her career and damaged U.S. intelligence.
Those charges gained some currency when the Justice Department brought U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in from Chicago to determine if the leak violated a federal law making it a crime to uncloak U.S. spies. Fitzgerald quickly determined there was no violation but inexplicably decided to try to nail the leaker whom he suspected was in the White House.
Ultimately this very expensive nonsense about a common practice in Washington – the leaking of information for political gain – led to the jailing of a reporter who had the information but didn’t write it; the threat to another journalist who was forced to reveal his source, and the conviction of an aide to then Vice President Richard Cheney for “obstructing justice” in the investigation of a non-crime.
The syndicated columnist who revealed Plame’s identity, the late Robert Novak, was never charged with anything nor was the original source of the leak. Go figure.
While there is little new here, you can bet that movie goers willing to fork over $10 or so for a couple hours of distorted escapism will come away believing only one side of the picture. For a clearer view, they should have first read a recent letter to the editor of this city’s leading newspaper.
It was written by R. E. Pound of Reston, Va., who the paper identified as having served in the CIA from 1976-2009.
“In 1978, my CIA affiliation was exposed by Philip Agee in his book ‘Dirty Works II.’ I’m nothing special: more than a few colleagues have been exposed at one time or another. I went on to serve nearly 34 years,” Mr. Pound wrote.
He said that “as luck would have it” he was charged with looking into possible damage in one location caused by Plame’s outing. “There was none.”
“So enough with the overwrought claims of injury that “Fair Game” suggests,” Pound continued. “Those claims devalue the resolve of the officers who have overcome truly dangerous exposure and they cheapen the risk from laying bare their very real achievements. It was wrong to expose Plame. It was ludicrous for her to claim that the exposure forced an end to her career in intelligence.”
He then quoted poet E. H. Housman’s, “‘Tis sure much finer fellows have fared much worse.” This devastating and authentic rebuttal sheds new light on this overblown case probably too late to change a perspective now indelible imprinted for the ages by a Hollywood that is always more interested in drama than the facts.
E-mail Dan K. Thomasson, former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service, at thomassondan@aol.com.