Top-Secret Productions

As Hollywood finds itself in the midst of framing a wartime relationship with the government in a post-Sept. 11 world , a cable television network is premiering a new documentary about a more discreet alliance--the long-running one between Tinseltown’s creative problem solvers and the Central Intelligence Agency.

“Into the Shadows: The CIA in Hollywood” premieres Tuesday at 7 p.m. on American Movie Classics, which, in its 17-year history, has never aired an investigative special. The project was undertaken by producer Charles Stuart, an Emmy-winning investigative journalist who has worked for “Frontline,” “60 Minutes II” and “ABC News” long before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. To examine the Hollywood-CIA connection, Stuart told AMC executives nearly two years ago he would need extensive time to nail down the details about recently declassified information linking the agency and the entertainment industry.

But he could not anticipate how the documentary might resonate now that President Bush has asked producers and media moguls to help in the war on terrorism. In the discussions that have followed Washington’s most recent call on Hollywood, some in the creative community have told The Times that they worry entertainment projects may be censored or influenced in what the administration describes as a patriotic effort to polish America’s image overseas.

What Stuart found in laying out several historical endeavors between makeup artists and the CIA was a cozy mutual admiration society that began with the agency’s inception more than 50 years ago. The artists, according to Stuart, were proud of their contributions to the agency’s missions. The CIA, meanwhile, stroked them by asking for guidance on a variety of disguise and special effects techniques.

“I dug back into the files and came up with all kinds of magnificent stuff,” Stuart said. “It was supposed to be a few hours long, but Sept. 11 happened, and AMC said we have something very special on our hands that is very, very timely.”

Network executives hungry for relevant programming moved up the air date of “Into the Shadows” five months and asked Stuart to boil it down to one hour, even as news nearly scooped the documentary when the White House made overtures to L.A.’s media titans by requesting two meetings to discuss ways in which to improve America’s image in movies, television and radio.

Taking that into account, AMC will air a 30-minute “roundup” after the documentary of current creative efforts to support the war against terrorism, including a visit to the virtual reality lab at the USC film school, which is being used in military training. It will also include interviews with directors and Jonathan Hensleigh, who co-wrote “Armageddon” (1998).

“He is beside himself that his movie has basically happened in reality,” Stuart said, referring to the film, which dealt with a potentially devastating world event.

The round-table epilogue will also cover the second White House meeting, this one between studio and network titans and President Bush’s senior political advisor, Karl Rove, who asked for the image makers’ help in distributing projects that reaffirm “American values.” That conversation was met with trepidation by some creative types who feared they might be pressured by the studio gatekeepers to churn out jingoistic projects. A third meeting is planned at the White House later this week.

“They’re wrestling with the question, how do you balance patriotism with commercialism?” Stuart said. “What are the new sensitivities, if there are any?”

For AMC viewers, the hourlong documentary is the first in a long line of original documentaries and investigative specials that will air at the beginning of each month.

“Into the Shadows” examines the unusual circle of trust around Tony Mendez, the CIA’s former head of disguise in the 1970s; John Chambers, the Academy Award-winning makeup artist from “Planet of the Apes”; and Chambers’ friend and colleague, Bob Sidell. (Eventually Sidell asked his wife, Andrea, to help, although she couldn’t tell her children or her parents about the cover story they were helping to construct).

Their collaboration was born out of an event in Tehran in 1979 when six Americans managed to escape a mob of Iranian students who stormed the U.S. Embassy. The diplomats knew they were marked for death simply for being Americans, and they sought secret refuge in the Canadian embassy. Notified by Canadian officials that the six Americans were alive and well but in real danger, the CIA had to figure out a way to spirit them out of the country even as it managed the nearby hostage crisis.

Basic facts about the operation were declassified in 1997, when the CIA urged Mendez to go public with some details about the rescue as a way to improve publicity for the agency during a public relations campaign for its 50th anniversary. But “Into the Shadows” offers more specifics than other news accounts published at that time, including testimony from the Sidells, who until now had never divulged their role in the mission, even though they were not bound by a CIA secrecy contract.

“When [the CIA] first asked me to [go public with the story], I said, ‘You gotta be kidding. That’s one of our best-kept secrets, and I don’t want the Iranians coming up to my driveway,”’ said Mendez, who lives on a 40-acre farm in Maryland. Portions of that experience were detailed in Mendez’s 1999 book and in press reports last year. “The deputy director of operations, Jack Downing, said, ‘Nah, go ahead. They’ll never find your driveway.”’

Mendez and Chambers assigned fake Canadian identities to the six diplomats, transforming them through documents into members of a small film crew scouting desert locations for a science-fiction film. To ensure the diplomats’ cover wasn’t blown, Mendez and Chambers backed up the forged documents with what Mendez calls “the legend.” That’s where the Sidells came in. They opened a bogus production company on Sunset Boulevard, took an ad out in the trade publication Variety about the fake production and answered phone calls about jobs on the set.

“It has to be a very layered disguise for espionage to work,” said Jessica Falcon, AMC’s executive producer of documentaries. “It had to be real and it had to be airtight--that’s their philosophy. If anything happened to those six, they feared a ripple effect with the other hostages. They couldn’t be too careful.... We all work in the media business, and no one had ever heard of this story. [Stuart] had new information.”

“Into the Shadows” proves that the CIA looks at Hollywood film and television projects as a series of auditions for talented illusionists. Chambers’ introduction to espionage was the result of his work on the 1963 film “The List of Adrian Messenger.” He so effectively disguised stars such as Tony Curtis and Robert Mitchum that the audience didn’t know who they were until they pulled off their masks at the end of the movie.

“We saw that, and our chief of disguise went to the head of the Domestic Contacts Division, and said, ‘Let’s get this guy,”’ Mendez said. Chambers advised the CIA on disguises for 15 years. He was bound by a secrecy agreement, but on camera, shortly before his death last August, he allowed Stuart’s film crew to get a shot of his medal of merit from the CIA. It sits next to his Oscar, and he said he valued both of them equally.

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“Into the Shadows: The CIA in Hollywood” airs Tuesday on AMC at 7 p.m., followed at 8 by the half-hour epilogue.