Lance Charnes's Blog - Posts Tagged "intelligence"

How close to reality is Zero Dark Thirty? The Pacific Standard online magazine ran on 16 January an article written by Nada Bakos, a former CIA analyst and targeteer, in which she compares the hunting-bin-Laden movie to her own work in the Agency’s Counterterrorism Center, and then with the Zarqawi Operations team between 2004-2006...

Read the rest of the post at The Wombat Burrow.

I'm involved with the Criminal Element again. This time, I talk about the difference between the popular conception of what spies are and do, and the somewhat less colorful reality of intelligence work.

"Say 'intelligence' and whoever hears you will come up with the usual associations: James Bond, Jason Bourne, Napoleon Solo (if they’re old enough and American), John Drake (if they’re old enough and British). A gun, a tuxedo, explosions, bad guys in red jumpsuits.

"Needless to say, that ain’t how it is."

Read the full article here.

I'm enmeshed with the Criminal Element again:

Mounties aside, we in the U.S. don’t usually think of Canada as the sort of place that would spawn a great TV police show. (Insert polite-criminal joke here.) Yet it did: Da Vinci’s Inquest has been called by some the best crime series ever made.

So what did Chris Haddock, the creator and co-writer of Da Vinci’s Inquest and the subsequent Da Vinci’s City Hall (yes, a sequel), do for an encore? He made another show just like them...He called it Intelligence.

Read the rest of the post on Criminal Element.