The 1990s saw the birth of the Tom Clancy film franchise, with Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck portraying intrepid CIA agent Jack Ryan. Since 9/11, the CIA has worked directly on programs like “24” and “Homeland.” Jennifer Garner, who played agent Sydney Bristow in the TV show “Alias,” even did a CIA recruitment commercial. The moviemakers behind “Zero Dark Thirty,” a film about hunting down Osama bin Laden, worked closely with the agency.
Indeed since 9/11, as author Nicholas Schou laid out in his article, “How the CIA Hoodwinked Hollywood,” the agency has been working overtime with moviemakers to bolster its image. Langley regularly grants special access and favors to movie people at its headquarters — access often denied to journalists.
So while it’s not so surprising that a CIA agent is a hero on the screen, what does it mean in this particular movie?
“The Black Panther” tells the tale of T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), the new king of Wakanda, an independent country that possesses the most potent mineral on Earth. T’Challa is confronted by Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordon), a black revolutionary whose violent creed puts not only Wakanda, but the whole world at risk. T’Challa and his people must team up with Agent Ross to save the day.
The CIA’s long history of involvement in the affairs of African nations presents a contrasting backdrop, however. Take what happened in the Congo in the early 1960s, when independence was stirring on the African continent, a region long battered and looted by colonialists and profiteers.
Patrice Lumumba, a young intellectual and Pan-African nationalist, was elected the first prime minister of the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1960. He was determined to make the mineral-rich country an African success. But Lumumba got on the wrong side of Washington by being friendlier to the Soviets than was thought acceptable to U.S. interests. Declassified documents reveal that the CIA engaged in covert actions in the country, including plans to replace Lumumba with a more pro-Western leader. The agency even allegedly cooked up a scheme to poison his toothpaste. Then in 1961, Lumumba was captured by a secessionist group and brutally murdered.
In 2002, the former colonial power Belgium admitted involvement in the killing. But there has never been a full explanation of the U.S. role.