John McAdams Part 2

[Magda Hassan]

I'm actually glad you brought that point up Tracy about the CIA losing its stigma.

That is a major them of my new book Reclaiming Parkland.


Its how this was done in the film world, through people like Tom Hanks. But also through the conscious and determined work of the Agency's man on the ground, their liaison to Movieland Chase Brandon. This man, who no one knows about, did more to rehab the Agency's image in culture after Stone's movie than anyone I know.

At the end of the book I do a lamentation over what our film and TV culture has become because of this.

I use Susan Sontag to do it. She stopped writing about films in 1995 after her famous article, "The Decay of Cinema" appeared in the NY Times.

IMO, she looks like she was right.

I really go after Hanks and Spielberg and our good old buddy at the MPAA who went there at LBJ's urging from the White House. After he urged his boss to help John Wayne on his pro-Vietnam War movie The Green Berets.

Yes, Brandon, he's not well known about by many and he has done a good job for the agency. He's moved on to Roswell and UFOs now.....

Ironic too that Tommy Lee Jone who played Clay Bertrand in JFK is his cousin...and a Man in Black Agent K.