The CIA Helped Produce an Episode of 'Top Chef'

What do the movies Argo and Zero Dark Thirty have in common with the novel The Devil's Light by Richard North Patterson; Bravo's Top Chef Covert Cuisine; the USA Network cable series Covert Affairs; the History Channel documentary Air America: The CIA's Secret Airline; and the BBC documentary The Secret War on Terror?

They all received "support" from the CIA's Office of Public Affairs (OPA), the division that interacts with journalists and acts as the liaison with the entertainment industry.

But the exact nature and extent of what the OPA did while working on Patterson's book and the two documentaries is unknown because the CIA does not have a record of its meetings with Patterson and the documentarians. Furthermore, the CIA has only limited records about its work on the five other projects, according to a declassified December 31, 2012 CIA inspector general's audit of the agency's dealings with the entertainment industry obtained by VICE News in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.

The audit said "OPA and other CIA employees did not always comply with Agency regulations intended to prevent the release of classified information during their interactions with entertainment industry representatives."...

https://news.vice.com/article/cia-helped-produce-top-chef-covert-affairs