An excerpt from "Spytainment: The Real Influence of Fake Spies" (pp. 599-600):

For avid fans of the now-departed television show 24, a visit to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters will be disappointing. The visitors’ center looks nothing like the ultra high-tech rooms of CTU, Jack Bauer’s fictitious counterterrorist agency.

Instead, the entry to America’s best-known intelligence outfit has more of a shabby, post office feel. There are soda vending machines and an old pay phone against the back wall, with customer service–like teller windows in front. Once cleared by security, visitors can walk ten minutes down a winding road or take a rambling shuttle bus to the old Headquarters building. The lobby has no retina scans or fancy fingerprint devices, just a few turnstiles and a kind, elderly security guard who takes cell phones and hands out claim checks. Even the suite of executive offices where the CIA director sits seems strangely ordinary. The only clue that this is not a typical government building is the desks. They are all bare. Not a visible paper in sight. Documents are either locked away or burned at the end of each day.

Most people know deep down that real spying is different than what is portrayed on television and in the movies. But how different? And how much does it matter?

Today, the facts and fiction of the spy business are blurring, with important consequences for intelligence policy. In the past two decades, the Spytainment industry has skyrocketed. Government over-classification has continued to keep vital and timely public information about U.S. intelligence agencies out of the public domain. And Political Science professors have been busy researching and teaching about seemingly everything except intelligence. The results are serious. As the nonpartisan, expert Intelligence Science Board concluded in a 2006 report, spy-themed entertainment has become adult education. American citizens are steeped in misperceptions about what intelligence agencies actually do, and misplaced expectations about how well they can do it. Perhaps even more disturbing, evidence suggests that policymakers—from cadets at West Point to senators on the Intelligence Committee to Supreme Court Justices—are referencing fake spies to formulate and implement real intelligence policies.

First paragraph of the article:

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there has been considerable debate with respect to the utility and the consequences of the global campaign against terrorist financing. While some analysts have downplayed the potential efficacy of trying to dry up terrorist funds as a method of curbing further operations, in the aftermath of September 11, the Bush administration stepped up action on the second front of the war on terrorism. The USA PATRIOT Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act ("IEEPA") provided federal officials with new legislative powers to freeze assets of entities and individuals identified as financing terrorist organizations. Launched on October 25, 2001 Operation Green Quest froze more than ten billion dollars in global assets in the United States linked to alleged terrorist organizations and individuals. In addition, according to the Department of the Treasury's Terrorist Assets Report, of the $1.6 billion in assets of state sponsors of terrorism located in the United States, $1.5 billion were frozen by US economic sanctions. At the time about 142 nations came on board and blocked seventy million dollars worth of assets within their borders, and most continue to express open support for the American led effort aimed at "starving the terrorists of funding."

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