Wednesday, October 13, 1999 Associated Press Usually closed CIA welcomes Hollywood By Robert Burns, AP Military Writer

If you think about it, the CIA and Hollywood have a few things in common. Agents are actors. Spies follow scripts at times. Fiction is sometimes dressed up as fact.

So maybe it should come as no surprise that the usually publicity-shy Central Intelligence Agency opened its doors to allow Showtime and Paramount Network Television to film scenes for their new movie, "In the Company of Spies," in the agency's lobby and elsewhere on the closed compound.

The film, scheduled to air on Showtime on Oct. 24, depicts a retired CIA operative returned to duty to save a captured agency officer held by the North Koreans.

Sixty off-duty CIA officials participated as extras.

To mark the most extensive CIA cooperation with movie makers ever, the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, invited the film's stars - Tom Berenger, Ron Silver, Alice Krige, Clancy Brown and Arye Gross - as well as director Tim Matheson and Washington political luminaries to a private screening and reception Wednesday evening at CIA headquarters.

There was nothing cloak-and-dagger about the evening affair. In the fading light of a warm autumn day, black limousines deposited stars on the steps of the white headquarters building.

Television camera lights glared and news photographers clicked away as several cast members stopped to chat with reporters.

Berenger, who plays the lead role, said the CIA deserves more credit than it is generally given. "If they do something well and right you never hear about it," he said.

Tenet told reporters he was initially skeptical about working with Hollywood producers but is glad he did.

"They were great to work with," he said. "They portrayed us in a very good light."

Even in an era of more openness by the CIA, the idea of Hollywood stars descending on the agency's wooded compound along the Potomac River was remarkable - especially for those who work there.

"It's a change of pace, an enjoyable, fun thing" for CIA employees who spend most of their careers behind cloaks of anonymity, said William Harlow, the agency's chief of public affairs. Only "overt" employees like him, whose names are publicly acknowledged by the agency, will attend, Harlow added.

The CIA agreed to cooperate on the movie in 1997 after reviewing the script, Harlow said. It apparently helped that one of the producers, Robert Cort, had been a CIA analyst in the 1970s. Berenger and other cast members were given a limited tour of CIA headquarters, including a look at the agency's operations center and counter-terrorism center, and met with Tenet. Scenes were filmed at the headquarters in 1998.

The CIA helped by providing advice on details. The result, Harlow said, is a film that is "closer to the truth about what we do than most of the things you see about us in Hollywood."

"The CIA's objectives were clear," said Roger Towne, the screenwriter who also was the film's executive producer. "They hoped to see a human face put on the agency and we had just the story to do it."

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