"In the Room with Peter Bergen" transcript: Episode 78

In this episode: The FBI’s Love Affair with Hollywood

November 26, 2024

"In the Room with Peter Bergen" transcript: Episode 78

Episode 78: The FBI’s Love Affair with Hollywood

The FBI has had a cozy relationship with Hollywood since the days of the Bureau’s first director, J. Edgar Hoover, working behind the scenes with filmmakers to burnish its image. We explore how the collaboration actually works, how extensive it is, and whether moviegoers are getting spoon-fed a sugar-coated version of the truth.

Please note: Our show is produced for the ear and made to be heard. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the audio before quoting in print.

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In the hit 1991 psycho-thriller, The Silence of the Lambs, an FBI agent-in-training named Clarice Starling pays a visit to an inmate at a hospital for the criminally insane: Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

ARCHIVAL Hannibal Lecter: Morning.

ARCHIVAL Clarice Starling: Dr. Lecter, my name is Clarice Starling. May I speak with you?

ARCHIVAL Hannibal Lecter: You're one of Jack Crawford's, aren't you?

Starling, played by Jodie Foster, sits across from Lecter in a checkered suit and a crisp bob. She’ s there to probe Lecter, a cannibalistic serial killer, about the inner workings of his mind.

ARCHIVAL Clarice Starling: I'm here to learn from you. Perhaps you'd care to lend us your view on this questionnaire, sir?

ARCHIVAL Hannibal Lecter: Oh, no, no, no, no. You were doing fine.

She's apprehensive, but confident, using her wit and sharp perception to dodge Lecter’s attempted manipulations. Eventually, she picks up clues that lead her straight to the killer she’s been hunting.

ARCHIVAL Clarice Starling: Freeze! Put your hands over your head, and turn around. Spread your legs. Put your hands in the back. Thumbs up. Freeze!

Starling’s character is considered one of the greatest female film heroes of all time. And the film generated tons of interest from women who wanted to become FBI agents.

Anne Beagan: The feeling is at headquarters, if the internet had been around then, that the amount of interest that flooded in the direction of the FBI from women would have crashed the site.

And that was no coincidence.

Jason Leopold: That movie was absolutely a recruitment tool. That movie was the way in which the FBI could attract and recruit women.

The Silence of the Lambs is beloved, often hailed as a genre-defining masterpiece.But what you might not know about the movie, is that the FBI had a hand in making it. The FBI reviewed drafts of the screenplay and corrected details in scenes -- some members of the FBI even played extras. And this was actually nothing out of the ordinary.

The FBI has had a close working relationship with Hollywood since its earliest days in the 1930s. From consulting on films to setting up interviews between filmmakers and FBI agents, connecting actors with the people they're portraying, even pitching stories to directors. They have an oﬃce dedicated to fielding requests for assistance from filmmakers and actors – a service they provide for free.

Of course, the FBI makes itself available to other kinds of media, too – like the show you’re listening to. I’ve talked to agents at the Bureau to research stories, and I’ve done it throughout my career. But when it comes to film and TV , the opportunity to reach the American public is different. Your average American will watch over 5,000 movies in their lifetime. And in 2023, Americans streamed 21 million years' worth of video content. The influence of Hollywood on the American public is undeniable, and the Bureau wants to be part of shaping the message.

Anne Beagan: I wanted them to get it right. If the party line is no comment or not to talk about it, there's going to be a void that's created there and the void is going to be filled by someone else. And I thought, I got, we got to take control of this.

But when the FBI has a big role in shaping the story, is the public getting spoon-fed a sugar-coated version of the truth?

Jason Leopold: I think what is important in all of this is how it impacts the public. If they knew that the FBI or any other government agency was so heavily involved in a production, would that leave them feeling differently about what they just watched?

And how might the enduring pop culture narrative of the hero FBI agent keep us from seeing some of the darker parts of the Bureau’s past and its present?

Sam Pollard: Anyone who challenged the notion of the status quo of America was considered an enemy of the state.

I'm Peter Bergen, and this is In the Room.

[THEME MUSIC POST]

The FBI’s involvement with film and TV spans different genres and target audiences, from documentaries to action movies, even a straight-to-DVD film called So Undercover starring Miley Cyrus.

ARCHIVAL Molly Morris: What’d you do, rob a nine year old?

ARCHIVAL Armon Ranford: No, no, you're actually gonna use this phone, okay? It's got a built-in Kappa app with information on all your sorority sisters.

ARCHIVAL Molly Morris: Kappa app?

ARCHIVAL Armon Ranford: That’s right.

This part of the Bureau’s behind-the-scenes public image work started with its very first Director: J. Edgar Hoover, who oversaw the FBI from 1924 to 1972. Hoover had a particular fascination with the film industry and he knew how powerful it could be in shaping public opinion – especially as he was expanding the powers of the FBI to surveil and police the public.

Hoover understood that in order to get the American people on his side, he’d need them to see his agents as the heroes of public safety, ready to protect law-abiding citizens from gangsters and outlaws. And what better way to paint that picture than through the movies.

ARCHIVAL Voiceover: Nothing is more essential to the success of the Bureau's operations against all criminals than the support of responsible and alert Americans.

So from the mid-30s through the 1950s, Hoover directed a group of FBI agents to court filmmakers and build friendly relationships with them as part of a concerted public relations campaign. And it worked.

Having a close, inner-circle of people in the movie industry led to the Bureau’s direct cooperation and even supervision on films that present FBI agents as the everyday American's champion, stopping enemies of all kinds, from petty criminals, to Nazi spies.

ARCHIVAL Voiceover: The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the G-Men. This is a bureau of scientific crime detection. New, modern, up to the minute, in action day and night. J. Edgar Hoover himself appeared in a cameo in the 1959 film The FBI Story.

ARCHIVAL J. Edgar Hoover: This bureau will be dedicated, not merely to justice, but to the love of justice. I warn you now, it will take all your vigilance, patience, and loyalty. You may not die rich men, but you will die men dedicated to fidelity, bravery, and integrity. Thank you.

But while the FBI was cozying up to some people in Hollywood who made them look like heroes, they were actively targeting and surveilling others in Hollywood. This was particularly true during the Cold War when the FBI was aggressively targeting left-wing producers, actors, writers, and directors. Suspected communists, including many film industry professionals, were brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee and grilled about their politics.

ARCHIVAL HUAC member: Are you a member of the Communist Party or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

ARCHIVAL John Howard Lawson: It's unfortunate and tragic that I have to teach this committee the basic principles of America.

ARCHIVAL HUAC member: That's not the question. That's not the question.

The Hollywood Ten, a group of industry professionals who refused to answer questions lobbed at them in these hearings, were subsequently voted in contempt of Congress, and blacklisted from continuing to make films. Many of their colleagues were shunned and lost their careers as well.

ARCHIVAL HUAC member: You refuse to answer that question, is that correct?

ARCHIVAL John Howard Lawson: I have told you that I will refer my beliefs, my aﬃliations and everything else to the American public and they will know where I stand as they do from what I have written.

But J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI didn’t enjoy this kind of overarching power indefinitely. Public trust in the FBI started to decline in the '60s, when popular opinion soured on the FBI's surveillance and targeting of anti-war and civil rights activists. But that doesn't mean Hoover hasn't left a legacy at the FBI. To this day, the FBI has never stopped trying to burnish its image behind the scenes.

[MUSIC]

Peter Bergen: You've mentioned you have a binder full of story ideas. Uh, would you mind sharing any of them, or are they all in development?

Anne Beagan: I know it’s just audio, but you can, you can see it, right?

Peter Bergen: That is a binder. Wow!

Anne Beagan: That's my, I call it my baby. She lives in a safe under lock and key. There's incredible manhunt stories, uh, there's incredible conman story in here, um, hostage taking, uh, a thriller-y spy story, you know, you name it.

Anne Beagan is a TV and film producer in Hollywood who gravitates toward projects with FBI agents. That’s because she used to be one.

Anne Beagan: My previous job was as a special agent for the FBI where I worked for 23 years.

Beagan dreamed of becoming an FBI agent since she was a teenager. She even has a tattoo of the year she started at the Bureau in Roman Numerals on her forearm. It wasn’t the fictional Clarice Starling from Silence of the Lambs that got her interested — the movie hadn’t come out yet. It was a real-life version.

Anne Beagan: I was inspired to join the FBI, by a female agent who was a guest speaker in a class I was taking when I was a freshman in high school in a little town in Springfield, Vermont. And she walked in wearing a red Chanel skirt suit, she had a patent leather belt, she had her gun on and her cuffs. She was Superwoman to me. It was as if the rest of the kids in the class just burst into flames and it was just me and her sitting there.

So, Beagan went home and wrote a letter to the FBI inquiring how she could join. And one day, she received a manila envelope with the instructions. A decade later, she was in.

Peter Bergen: And what was that like when you started at the FBI?

Anne Beagan: Oh, it was the greatest day of my life. Sunday, July 7th, 1996, everybody shows up and you meet your classmates, the people that you're going to be with for the next four months. You're going to be tested, you're going to be challenged, and you, you sit around that first night stenciling your last name on the back of your gym shirt.

In her early days as a Special Agent, Beagan worked on white-collar crime cases like insurance fraud, and then on crimes against children. And eventually transferred to terrorism cases. After 9/11, she became the liaison between the FBI and the oﬃce of New York City's then mayor, Rudy Giuliani.

Anne Beagan: I had the good fortune of not just working in the greatest city and the greatest field oﬃce in the FBI, but I lived in the city as well. And I used to read about this place called Elaine's on Page Six of the New York Post and it just seemed like a really interesting place to me. So I thought I've got to go check this place out.

Elaine's was a restaurant and bar in New York City's Upper East Side, where celebrities and film executives often met. It closed in 2011, but its legacy lives on in 5plenty of film and television scenes. Beagan became a regular there during her time as an FBI agent.

[BAR AMBIENCE]

Anne Beagan: I was very much a unicorn in that my profession didn't fit at all with the other people who went there. A lot of writers and directors and producers. But I got to be friends with a lot of them and they were interested in my career and it occurred to me that there was a real disconnect in what Hollywood and these storytellers thought about the Bureau, and what's really going on.

Anne Beagan: And I, and I thought, there's got to be another bridge here that I can connect. Um, very much as J. Edgar Hoover himself did, right? He understood the power of Hollywood in telling the stories of the FBI, the greatest law enforcement agency.

Peter Bergen: You used the word disconnect between what these actors and producers and writers you were meeting at Elaine's and what the FBI actually was. What do you think the disconnect was about?

Anne Beagan: Lack of information, right? Because I think with anything, if the party line is no comment or not to talk about it, there's going to be a void that's created there and the void is going to be filled by people guessing, making it up, over fictionalizing, which can be dangerous. And so I think that was the disconnect, that void was being filled by someone else. And I thought, I got, we got to take control of this.

So, beginning in 2009, Beagan says she just sort of assumed the role of Entertainment Industry Liaison. And that she initiated the position in the FBI’s New York oﬃce.

Anne Beagan: Well, I just gave myself that title and went out and got business cards. Because there hadn't been that job in the New York field oﬃce before. There have always been agents in the press oﬃce, but there hadn't been anyone that full-time worked in this space. And it wasn't just, by the way, on TVs and movies. It was documentaries, of course. But also books, magazine articles, really anything that would fall into the, what the Bureau refers to as longform media.

As the entertainment industry liaison, Beagan would do everything from connecting filmmakers with the people whose stories they were telling, to giving direct feedback on a script.

Anne Beagan: Script comes in. I'll give notes back then it's maybe setting up an interview with the real people involved with the writer. Once they get into casting, I found that talent was usually interested in meeting with real agents. What's it like to really, you know, play an agent, what really happened, what would happen. And also in many cases, contacting the agents or people involved in the case and convincing 6them if they weren't interested in participating and sort of explaining why. I'm certain that the fact that I was an agent helped.

And when it came time for filming, Beagan’ s work often involved joining filmmakers on set.

Anne Beagan: I would bring along the case agent or the bomb tech or the head of the SWAT team.

One of the films she worked on was the hit 2013 movie, The Wolf of Wall Street. It’s the story of a notorious financial fraudster, Jordan Belfort, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who’ s being pursued by the FBI.

ARCHIVAL Jordan Belfort: I don't know what you're talking about.

ARCHIVAL Patrick Denham: No, oh come on, you know what I'm talking about. No, say the same thing. I think what Jordan just did is he, if I'm not mistaken, you just tried to bribe a federal oﬃcer.

ARCHIVAL Jordan Belfort: No, technically I didn't bribe anybody.

ARCHIVAL Patrick Denham: No, no, that's not the conversation I heard, George.

ARCHIVAL Jordan Belfort: According to the U. S. Criminal Code, there needs to be an exact dollar figure for the exchange of services. That would not hold up in a court of law.

ARCHIVAL Patrick Denham: That's not how I heard it.

Anne Beagan: That didn't happen in real life, but it's such a great scene and, and it shows, you know, the dangers of public corruption potentially.

Beagan also worked on some projects that hit much closer to home for her – like the 2018 drama series, ‘The Looming Tower, which depicts two of Beagan’s colleagues at the time, FBI agents Ali Soufan and John O'Neill. O’Neill was the head of the FBI’s National Security Division in New York in the early 2000s when he and Beagan worked together, and he helped advance her career.

In the television series, O’Neill’s character is at the center of tensions between the FBI and the CIA. Before 9/11, the two agencies had very different approaches to how best to contain Al-Qaeda.

ARCHIVAL John O’Neill: This is exactly what Al Qaeda wants us to do, overreact and slaughter innocent Muslims.

ARCHIVAL Martin Schmidt: Well, crush the head and the snake dies.

ARCHIVAL John O’Neill: What are you, a frickin’ gypsy reading a fortune? We're talking about national security.

Anne Beagan: The stakes were high. The stakes were high because I wanted them to get it right. To really understand what the dedication is, what the sacrifices are, enormous sacrifices. And I've lost colleagues who just, on 9/11, John O'Neill got out safely, called his family, called his friends, and then he went back in.

John O’Neill was serving as the head of security at the World Trade Center on 9/11. The series portrays his last phone call.

ARCHIVAL John O'Neill: [Message beep] Hey Baby, something’s going on down here, an explosion or something in Tower 1, there’s just a massive hole up near the top, I gotta go get people out.

He died that day, trying to get people out.

Anne Beagan: That is sacrifice. So, helping writers and producers even just tonally understand so that they can inject that into their writing mattered to me.

Peter Bergen: So you started promoting content and pitching stories more actively as you've got more entrenched in your job.

Anne Beagan: I did. Not only was I helping with productions coming to me, I was also proactively reaching out to things that were already in development or production. But then I also was coming up with original ideas. Which started with the, what was the 40th anniversary of female agents in the Bureau. And I thought there's got to be some great press that we should be doing on this. So, I pitched a writer at Newsweek magazine. I met him at a Christmas party and I pitched him an idea on, let's do a story on women in the FBI.

Anne Beagan: And I didn't know what it looked like and neither did he, so I brought him into the oﬃce and, uh, I put him at a table with me and 12 of my female colleagues and we just went around the horn and they talked about why they got in the Bureau and what they did and whatnot. And by the way, there was a common denominator, which surprised me, which was eight out of ten of them were inspired to join the FBI by a TV show or a movie. So it just validated what I was already doing, I’m like, ‘Wow, this, this is a real thing.’

[MUSIC]

Jason Leopold: What's very important about the FBI in terms of how it's working with Hollywood. I mean, it's a recruitment tool.

This is Jason Leopold, an investigative reporter with Bloomberg News.

Jason Leopold: And I specialize in prying loose documents from the federal government, from state and local governments, using the Freedom of Information Act and public records laws.

Leopold’s use of the Freedom of Information Act — known as FOIA — to extract documents from the US government has been so extensive, that an FBI agent once called him a "FOIA terrorist. ”

Jason Leopold: When you're dealing with issues of national security, everything is classified, and anything that anyone is telling you, you know, is, is, is a secret.

Leopold’s interest in the FBI’s involvement in Hollywood actually came from his work uncovering an especially egregious case of another national security agency manipulating Hollywood: The CIA. The CIA covertly cooperated with the makers of the hit film, Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. The film heavily implies that the CIA’ s "coercive interrogation program" – or what many would call torture – was justified, because it led to the discovery of bin Laden's hiding place in Pakistan.

ARCHIVAL Dan Fuller: I've been studying and following you for a very long time. I could have had you killed in Karachi, but I didn't. I let you live so that you and I could talk.

That’s highly debatable on the facts. The US Senate Intelligence Committee investigated and found that it was information supplied by foreign governments and voice “intercepts” by the U.S. National Security Agency that provided the most crucial leads that led to bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty — a film seen by many millions of Americans — was more than just presenting the CIA in a good light; it was whitewashing a dark chapter in the agency’s history.

Jason Leopold: I was just fascinated by how the filmmakers really just became so mesmerized by being invited into the CIA's inner circle, particularly after bin Laden was, was killed and how their initial film that they wanted to make became Zero Dark Thirty, and how the CIA immediately spotted, like, ‘this is an opportunity for us.’ And the FBI was just, uh, a perfect agency to look at because there are so many shows and movies that have the oﬃcial FBI seal or have FBI agents.

Jason Leopold: And as you could imagine, the FBI was not, you know, uh, said, ‘Thank you, Jason. Here you go. Here's everything.’ No, they rejected my request. They denied it. I appealed it. I went back again, appealed it, uh, and then finally I sued them.

The whole process took about two years from request to delivery. The documents that Leopold uncovered detail how the FBI’s campaign to influence the entertainment industry actually works.

Jason Leopold: I had no idea that the FBI had such a vibrant, uh, bustling entertainment division that was working on so many different projects. in some ways, I thought that there was one person sitting in a room with a bunch of boxes, just fielding these requests. They are far more involved and, and, and it's a much, much bigger operation.

Peter Bergen: When you got the FBI records about its relationship with Hollywood, what was the most surprising thing you learned from all that?

Jason Leopold: It was very surprising to learn how they were so transparent, dare I say, about revealing that working with Hollywood was a tool. This was, this is a way to improve their image. And then in addition to that, I have to be honest, I could not believe it, their successes. And their successes amounted to: here's what we got this filmmaker to change.

Peter Bergen: Well, give us an example.

Jason Leopold: The FBI's own records say that the FBI, you know, uh, provided input into, uh, one movie, uh, which was called The Company You Keep.

ARCHIVAL Ben Shepard: What's the actual charge against a law enforcement oﬃcer who fails to follow credible evidence about the whereabouts of a known fugitive?

ARCHIVAL Henry Osborne: I think there'd be a variety, actually.

Jason Leopold: And it was, uh, on a former member of the Weather Underground. It was directed by Robert Redford. But the FBI boasted that FBI provided input and changed approximately 30 scenes.

Much of the details of those changes were redacted. But Leopold was able to get a sense of the nature of those edits.

Jason Leopold: It's a lot of changes that amount to, ‘We would never do that. We would never, do, we would never shoot someone. We would never shove a journalist. We would never be violent in that way.’ Because again, that could cast the the Bureau in a bit of a more negative light. But do they not do that? Do we know?

When it comes to the film, The Company You Keep, making changes the FBI suggested led to some meaningful wins for the filmmakers.

Jason Leopold: Those changes, you know, then resulted in the FBI allowing the production to use the oﬃcial seal in, uh, sets and props. So that may be a minor detail. But that's, it's a very, very important detail. You cannot use the FBI, the CIA, or any government agency's seal, oﬃcial seal, unless you get their approval. And having that on a film, on a television series, makes it that much more authentic. So, that's a win for the filmmaker. But what do you give up in return? And I feel like what's really noteworthy here is seeing how the sausage is made.

Peter Bergen: You get access, uh, and in exchange, you give the FBI sympathetic treatment. Are there other things that the filmmakers want from this relationship and what are they prepared to exchange? I mean, is the FBI reviewing scripts in a way that, you know, allows them some kind of editorial imprint?

Jason Leopold: Well, um, yes. Filmmakers and the writers, they want two things. I think they absolutely, going into it, they want accuracy. They want, they want their work to accurately depict the, the FBI, uh and-

Peter Bergen: And that seems like an admirable goal.

Jason Leopold: Absolutely. I mean, we, we do that as journalists when we're trying to, you know, we put a story together and we reach out to someone who can hopefully, uh, tell us that, uh, you know, we're right, we're wrong, or, or give us a nod that we're in the right direction. Look, I want to make it clear here. As a journalist, I'm not trying to paint any of these filmmakers with a broad brush and say they're carrying water for, uh, the U.S. government or these agencies. And certainly in the case of the FBI records that I've seen, uh, these folks, these filmmakers, these writers, are very interested in telling a, an accurate story.

Jason Leopold: But it's also about access and having, um, access to, the, the Bureau headquarters, that's, that's first and foremost. Having access to, you know, to agents, maybe doing some ride-alongs. But really getting into that, you know, into that world, um, and, you know, the FBI, what do they get out of it? Well, they, they, in, in my opinion, I mean, I think that they arguably could get producer credit for some of these films that they've worked on.

The documents Leopold uncovered also reveal some pretty telling internal communication from the FBI’s public affairs unit, which instructs FBI personnel on the explicit goal of shaping public perception.

Jason Leopold: It's a slide deck, PowerPoint slide deck, and in terms of explaining, you know, the benefits to working with Hollywood, what the FBI gets out of it. There's even a number of films and, and, and a television series they've been working on and the Nielsen ratings, you know, in, in some cases. The FBI explains, you know, ‘Why is the media so important?’ Building the FBI brand, you know, if you go anywhere in the world and say, FBI, what do people think?

Jason Leopold: But this is my favorite line. ‘If we don't tell our story, then fools will gladly tell it for us.’ And it says, you know, most people form their opinion of the FBI from pop culture, not a two minute news story. And so, I think that says it all. They are interested in, in accuracy in some cases, but they are way more interested in building their brand.

[MUSIC]

It’s possible to see the FBI’s effort at branding through filmmakers as more or less innocuous. After all, what organization doesn’t want the public to think highly of them? And Leopold hasn’t uncovered a Zero Dark Thirty-level rewriting of history at the FBI. But it’s also important to remember that the FBI is a tax-payer funded organization, made possible by the American people — who may be served by a fuller picture.

Jason Leopold: My blurred line is when, when the FBI is trying to use film, uh, use a television show to sway public perception about a high profile event that maybe the Bureau has been involved in that would have cast or had cast the Bureau in a negative light. Essentially what I'm saying is changing history, changing the facts. To me, that rises to the level of propaganda. Don't we look at propaganda, when other countries are kind of doing that through their own mediums, we're harsh to criticize.

The real story of the FBI, of course, is not all good guys and heroes. In fact, the agency has a history of surveilling people and communities that challenge the status quo.

And the Bureau’s success in pushing the positive image it wants the public to see can obscure some of its more shameful activities, which don’t get the Hollywood treatment.

Sam Pollard: Well, you know, I grew up and I learned that America and that role of the FBI was much more complicated than what I saw in these Hollywood movies.

Sam Pollard is a documentary filmmaker.

ARCHIVAL Martin Luther King Jr.: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

One of the films that Pollard directed is called MLK/FBI, which explores the ways that the FBI surveilled and harassed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Here’ s a clip from the film.

ARCHIVAL Clarence Jones: After Dr. King gave his famous March on Washington speech Wednesday, August 28, 1963, the second person in the FBI sends a urgent memo in which he says it's clear that Martin Luther King, Jr. is the most dangerous Negro in America, and we have to use every resource at our disposal to destroy him.

Pollard has been a movie buff for as long as he can remember. And growing up, some of his favorite films were the ones with the FBI as the heroes.

Sam Pollard: There was Big Jim McClain, with John Wayne and James from 1952 or 1953.

ARCHIVAL Poke: Look, I told you not to mind my business. Now make it so as I don't have to tell you again.

[Punch sound effect, followed by the sound of shattering glass]

ARCHIVAL Jim McLain: Cost four bucks.

Sam Pollard: There was a film called Walk a Crooked Mile with Louis Hayward and Dennis O'Keefe.

ARCHIVAL Voiceover: The task of guarding projects like Lakeview is entrusted to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which explains why Special Agent Daniel F. O'Hara, remains in his oﬃce long after regular hours, night after night.

Sam Pollard: I thought these films were the cat's pajamas. I thought they were fantastic, you know. These were my heroes. Jimmy Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, Dennis O'Keefe, John Wayne. The FBI read all those scripts. And they basically gave those films the high sign, the “A-OK.” So I thought, ‘Wow, the FBI is a phenomenal organization that's doing the right thing.’

Peter Bergen: What have you learned since?

Sam Pollard: [LAUGHS] So, as I got older and I got into documentary filmmaking, and I was working on films about slavery and Jim Crow, I started to understand that, you know, America is not one way. We're not always the good guys. And that within the American system of justice, there's a lot of duplicity. J. Edgar Hoover believed, like many Americans believed, that there's a certain way you should look at American democracy, you know?

Sam Pollard: And for many, many years, American democracy meant that, you know, the general public, which was mostly, we were given was white people were in charge of this country. Anyone else who came along and said, ‘We want to challenge, you know, the ethical rules of segregation. We want to challenge the notion of, you know, capitalism,’ became a threat in the American mindset

And Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights activism was aimed right at the status quo of the American social system.

Sam Pollard: And here was a man whose whole agenda was nonviolent confrontation. He, he wasn't Malcolm X. He was about peaceful, nonviolent confrontation. To do away with American apartheid. I'm going to say it as simple as that. To do away with American apartheid. But, for many Americans, and particularly white Americans, like J. Edgar Hoover, that was a threat because, ‘Why, why do you want to change things, Dr. King? You know, isn’t it alright for us to sit in the, black people sit in the back of the bus to go into separate restaurants, to go into separate bathrooms? What's the problem? You know, you know, they've been fine all along. Now you're going to change things? You're dangerous.’

The FBI, under the guise of going after a 'dangerous' man, engaged in extensive wire-tapping of King, which even exposed King’s extramarital affairs. All this is detailed in Pollard’s documentary.

Sam Pollard: Well, the most interesting thing that was revealed in shaping this story about Dr. King and his relationship with the FBI was that J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI for many, many decades had put together a group of agents, and they created this thing called COINTELPRO, the counterintelligence unit.

Sam Pollard: And the job of this unit was to really disseminate agents to find out who in America were trying to destabilize what they thought American democracy was. And the FBI continued to do this with Malcolm X, with Angela Davis, with the Black Panther Party. Anyone who challenged the notion of the status quo of America was considered an enemy of the state.

Pollard and his production team did consult the FBI on the film, and to their surprise, the people they spoke to were pretty open with them.

Sam Pollard: The real feather in our cap was to get James Comey, the former FBI director and when initially— I thought it was sort of funny that he says that that period in the 60s was the darkest days of the FBI, which made me sort of chuckle, you know, Peter, because the FBI isn't, hands aren't even clean today, man, you know. No organization with that kind of power is.

I asked Anne Beagan what she thinks of the FBI's, let's say, checkered history – and how she thought about that when she was working as the FBI's liaison to Hollywood.

Peter Bergen: Are there dangers in the sort of the Bureau co-opting the entertainment industry? You know, obviously the FBI has had its problems in the past. Hoover himself was spying on Martin Luther King.

Anne Beagan: Yeah, the Bureau doesn't shy away from it. I think the Bureau is great at owning mistakes and learning from them, right? Because the Bureau is full of humans, and humans are fallible. I think leaning into mistakes and learning from them is paramount. But I'd see the importance overall in sharing with filmmakers who, by the way, are probably going to tell these stories regardless. So I think if it's going to happen, you might as well try and make it be better, more authentic, right?

Anne Beagan: But there's a, there's that void again. They're going to fill it. And so why not? Why not step into the void with them?

Jason Leopold: Ultimately, I think what is important in all of this is how it impacts the public and how it impacts the audience who's watching this. Does it, you know, does it change their, you know, their view of the Bureau if they knew that the FBI — and maybe they do, just in the back of their mind, ‘Well, is it accurate or is it propaganda?’

Sam Pollard has a very clear position on this.

Sam Pollard: If, if you have your, your main subject, you know, engaged in the shaping of your story, it becomes propaganda, you know? It’s not authentic. And, and as filmmakers, we have an ethical duty to be able to say we won't cross that line. And I love movies, man. I love documentaries. I love Hollywood films. But in some shape of form or fashion, they are all political, man. They're all political.

Sam Pollard: Sometimes the filmmakers don't realize how political they are. But if you go back, think about it this way, Peter, if you go back and you watch the World War II movies that were made in Hollywood about Japan and Germany, you know, and the Italians, and how heroic the Americans were, you know, on the sands of Iwo Jima at D-Day, you know, in the campaign in North Africa, it's propaganda, man. It’s propaganda. [LAUGHS]

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If you want to know more about the issues we discussed in this episode, we recommend G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage, which is available on Audible.

CREDITS

IN THE ROOM WITH PETER BERGEN is an Audible Original.

Produced by Audible Studios and FRESH PRODUCE MEDIA

This episode was produced by Ilana Levinson

With help from Nathan Ray.

Our executive producer is Alison Craiglow.

Katie McMurran is our technical director.

Our staff also includes

Alexandra Salomon

Erik German

Luke Cregan

Holly DeMuth