MEET CHASE BRANDON. With a name like that you can imagine him as some smooth character roaring through city streets to liberate a kidnapped damsel from a dastardly gang of roughnecks. And while Brandon has yet to appear on screen, his life is the stuff of which film and TV series such as The Sum Of All Fears and Alias are made.
In Hollywood, Brandon is the overt face of a certain covert organisation known as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); the 'Company' man they go to when the script calls for spy-related scenarios. As the CIA's Film Liaison officer, Brandon is paid to put the record straight about the inner workings - without giving away any national secrets. 'We are a secret organisation,' admits Brandon from his home in Washington, DC. 'We have sources of information and methods of gathering information, technologies and identities that we have to safeguard to enable us to carry out our mission. But there are many other things that are not classified or have been talked about so much in the past that they are no longer secret.'
He likens his job to scraping peanut butter and jelly out of an empty jar. 'I've been trying to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with an empty jar. But, if you take a knife and scrape along the sides, you can get enough to spread on the bread,' he says. 'There's only so much I can tell and I have to spread it out without giving away any secrets. Sometimes that makes the job difficult.'
In his present post he advises writers and producers on shows such as The Agency and Alias. While it may not be easy given the constraints on classified information, it is certainly a far cry from the clandestine and covert operations in which he was involved in South America where he spent the better part of his 32-year CIA career.
His own entry into the CIA was not unlike Colin Farrell's in The Recruit, albeit much less dramatic. He had been singled out by a college professor who worked as a 'spotter' for the CIA. 'He knew I spoke a few languages and he knew a little about me and what I was like. And he felt that I was suitable enough to pass my name to a recruiter, much like the character played by Al Pacino in the film,' says Brandon, who speaks among others Spanish, Portuguese and Quechua Indian.
Brandon went on to serve for 25 years as an undercover operations officer - they don't call them agents - battling terrorism, counter-insurgency and drug trafficking. He was also a CIA training instructor in tactical paramilitary and espionage tradecraft.
These days, his daily operations include answering queries from Hollywood, looking through scripts and offering suggestions on possible - and more authentic - story lines. Occasionally, he gives filmmakers and actors a guided tour around the agency headquarters in Langley to give them a feel for the atmosphere there.