CIA Propaganda Shows

I recently watched season 3 of the Amazon Studio show, “Jack Ryan”, as well as season 1 of the Netflix show, “The Recruit”, which are both regarding the CIA. In watching both, which of which are entertaining, I thought about how each was similar yet different. Spoilers abound, so if you do not want to be spoiled about either of these shows, please be advised that I will spoil things about both.

Amazon and the CIA have a close relationship. Amazon provides cloud services for the CIA has for some time. Prior to that Amazon oddly started building server farms in the DC area that never seemed to make sense at the time. Amazon, along with other tech companies, appears have been assisted at birth by the CIA and CIA aligned financial networks and individuals and there are some indications that Bezos may have some personal and family connections to the CIA. This article does not go down that rabbit hole and merely has as a premise that there is some connection.

Bezos also owns the Washington Post, which some, such as CTH, allege to be the media mouthpiece for the CIA. In any event, there seems to be a lot of connections between Amazon, Bezos, and the CIA, so having Amazon spend a lot of money on a CIA friendly show is no shocker.

The character of Jack Ryan first appeared in the writing of Tom Clancy, whose book, “The Hunt for Red October” was first published by the Naval Academy after circulating in Annapolis as a manuscript. Clancy was in the insurance business at the time, not military intelligence, but was also a big fan of military simulation war games, and allegedly used these to aid in the creation of this book, and his immediate follow-up, “Red Storm Rising”.

The back story of Jack Ryan was that he had been a Marine officer injured in a helicopter landing, who was medically discharged. He then made a lot of money on Wall Street and then became a professor, which eventually led him into military intelligence and the CIA. Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck played in the original movies, and Chris Pine in an attempted reboot almost a decade ago.

In the books, Ryan was an analyst that was reluctantly drawn into operations for various reasons. He ended up as president of the United States in the book series, IIRC, after having all sorts of adventures, some dealing with internal bureaucracy.

The Amazon series calls this much younger Ryan an analyst as well, but he is on operations almost nonstop. He is also often acting against authority, following his gut in a very unanalytical fashion. A lot of fans liked the first season better than the second season. The actor portraying current Ryan, John Krasinski, has stated that the CIA has been very helpful in creating the series and consulting on the series.

The series seems like pure CIA puff-piece propaganda. The CIA is heroic and good, even though there are minor bureaucratic conflicts. The factual points are often “off”, and the general themes are promoting establishment narratives.

This season begins with “analyst” Ryan covertly accessing a Russian embassy social event in Rome to interact with a Russian government official, who provides information regarding an alleged nuclear bomb program in Russia. A Russian cargo ship allegedly has nuclear material. There is no other information or evidence, but Ryan just says his gut tells him this Russian official, who the show notes was trained as sexual spy, is telling the truth.

Ryan then convinces his superiors to allow him to go with an ops team and board the Russian cargo ship in the Black Sea covertly and confirm the existence of the nuclear material.

Ryan then travels to a US destroyer on the Black Sea, and then departs on a zodiac with the ops team. They board the ship covertly, find a Russian nuclear scientist instead of nuclear material, and enter into a gunfight trying to leave the vessel. They then travel to Greece from the Black Sea on the zodiac, no matter that Greece is not located on the Black Sea, and this would be a journey of hundreds of miles on the zodiac, through Turkey by Istanbul, to meet up with a CIA team in Greece.

It gets worse from there. Ryan ends up on the run, wanted by the Russians, the CIA, the FBI, and Interpol. Greece is largely controlled by the Russians.

Czechia is also a big part of the show, with the father of the president of Czechia as a secret former Soviet soldier who is the head of a secret cabal in Russia trying to get Russia and NATO to go to the war. The show oddly has Czechia as a non-NATO country and the issue of joining NATO is a big issue in the show, never mind that Czechia has been a NATO country since the 90s.

There is a lot of other mixed-up geography throughout the show. And the show has Patriot missiles as offensive weapons. And other stupid things.

The show, while somewhat entertaining and showing various European cities, just is off. It is CIA saves the world and analyst Ryan as a superhero who goes by his gut and breaks all the rules to win. The message of the show seems to be “trust the good and hardworking people of the CIA to fight against threats”.

“The Recruit” is the story of a young man (age 24) named Owen who joins the CIA’s Office of General Counsel after law school. One of his first assignments is to check out the basis for a “graymail” letter, which is a letter threatening to expose the CIA from a former asset or agent. The sender claims she was a CIA asset and had information on CIA operations.

Owen is sabotaged by his coworkers and the show portrays the CIA as a cesspool of paranoia and a den of secrets and people avoiding information and knowledge and doing whatever they can to avoid a possible trip to the Senate to testify. Everyone just wants to know nothing, so that they can testify to that fact. No one tells the hero of the tale what to do and he just sets out trying to figure things out.

The story inspiring the show comes the experience of a former CIA employee, who was struck by the absurdity of the institution. Allegedly the creators of the show interacted with current CIA attorneys to aid in production of the show.

Analysts are not seen much in this show. Operatives as shown as corrupt and amoral. Assets are shown to be equally bad. The show also takes potshots at young professionals in DC who are mostly connected some way, including the main character’s ex-girlfriend, who interferes with overseas operations and creates unnecessary drama in DC. Lobbyists and politicians are not immune to criticism. The use of leverage as currency in DC is also a factor.

The former asset who sent the graymail is in jail for a brutal murder. She wants the CIA to get her out. Owen finds a way to get the case thrown out, even though she committed the crime, even if it were for a vigilante justice rather than for furthering a criminal enterprise. He subverts the judicial process in numerous ways and aids and abets the former asset in various criminal endeavors.

Multiple times characters mention that Owen does not act much like a lawyer and question why he became a lawyer. It appears the writers have a very narrow idea of what lawyers are like. I have known lots of lawyers who fly by the seat of their pants into danger like Owen. And given that someone once told me almost 20 years ago, “You have too much personality to be lawyer”, the writers are not the only ones to have the misconception about what lawyers are like.

Overall, the CIA is portrayed as easily used to further the goals of its personnel and focused on avoiding responsibility for its errors. Everyone in the show at the CIA wants deniability and avoidance of transparency. The CIA and DC in general are shown as being a complete cesspool and acting in violation of the spirit of the Constitution and its principles.

Of the two, “The Recruit”, while somewhat of a satire and taking things in obviously absurd directions at times, is likely closer to the reality than “Jack Ryan”. Both portray issues with the federal bureaucracy and the DC political system, not as a grand cabal, but as full of self-interested individuals working for their own goals, even if those do not benefit the country. Both are enjoyable enough.