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n1 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Tom Secker at SpyCulture.com [spyculture.com] reports:

In the wake of the scandal over the CIA giving classified information to the makers of Zero Dark Thirty the Agency’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) carried out an audit into their involvement in the entertainment industry. The report heavily criticises the CIA’s entertainment liaison office (ELO) for terrible record keeping and a very casual culture. What emerges from this report is that the ELO care more about being secretive concerning their own activities than they care about protecting the secrets of other departments within the CIA.

[...] The OIG looked at 8 productions out of these 22, though details of the 8 are redacted, save to say there were 2 of each type of project (books, films etc.). They found that in 3 cases the ELO had no records whatsoever of their involvement and engagement in the project. The other 5 provided ‘only limited’ records. Apparently the OPA has now implemented a new database system that will make it easy to search for records of recent projects they have supported. And also means that their FOIA office will have to stop pulling this ‘what, who, me?’ bullshit with requesters like myself.

When it came to whether the OPA/ELO were behaving in keeping with their own regulations the OIG found that:

We were unable to determine whether entertainment industry requests for support were handled in a consistent and fair manner. OPA does not maintain records of entertainment industry requests for briefings, interviews, and visits that are denied by CIA. As such, it was not possible to assess decisions to deny CIA support for compliance with AR[redacted]. Regarding those entertainment industry requests that were supported by CIA, there was not sufficient documentation to assess the decision and the nature and extent of the support for compliance with AR[redacted].

[...] This is demonstrated aptly by the question of how Mark Boal ended up at a high-level ceremony mixing with senior CIA officers and members of SEAL Team Six. The OIG’s report into that specific issue concluded that they couldn’t establish who invited Boal, or whether Leon Panetta knew he would be there and thus was guilty of allowing a Hollywood screenwriter to access classified information. The OIG cannot answer these basic questions, let alone the more interesting question of why the OPA/ELO wanted Boal to be there and whether this was some kind of initiation or reward for rewriting his film to suit their agenda. The excuse given was that he was there to ‘absorb the emotion of the event’, which could mean anything.

The article has much more detail, and all the source documents available to download [spyculture.com].

Original Submission