HIGH JINKS AROUND THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01365R000300210012-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 29, 2004
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: June 22, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2005/01/13 : CIA-RDP88-01365R000300210012-1
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BOSTON, MASS.
RECORD-AMERICAN
M - 438,372
ADVERTISER
S - 432,963
i I N 2 L 1972
Jin
By LONDON EXPRESS
Rumours are rampant in Washington that a British
film unit has been allowed to wander inside the super-
secret headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency.
It Is the first time in all Its bizarre history that
the agency has thrown open its doors to cameras, and
I gather the whole affair caused some angst at high
levels in the U.S. intelligence community.
Michael Winner, the normally witty and talkative
director who has been in Washington to shoot his new
film, "Scorpio," a spy thriller starring Burt Lancaster,
Paul Scofield and Alain Delon,. is shrinkingly reticent
oil the subject. Ile refuses comment of any kind.
Other sources say the film publicity will not mention
the extent of the CIA's hospitality, and the full story
of this extraordinary episode may not be known for
years.
.The CIA until now it has managed to preserve
a monastic privacy by tight security and a press office
which seems to have taken Trappist vows.
Not long ago the CIA wanted to talk Congress into
buying them extra land in Langley, Va., so as to make
the headquarters even harder for outsiders to approach.
.Some agents climbed to the top of a nearby hill and
took pictures of the director's seventh-floor office using
a telephoto lens.
Then they enlarged the original photograph many
times. In the final print the grainy and blurred head
of tic, CIA director could just be discerned, working
at his desk. They showed it to Congress which quickly
agreed to buy the land.
Now this fabulous Vatican of Western intelligence
has been breached by a young English film director.
"Scorpio" Is a taut. suspense drama in which Burt
Lancaster plays an American agent suspected of selling
C:. r f- - . tJ
out to the Russians and Alain Delon is a freelance
assassin blackmailed by the CIA into trying to murder
him. The script reeks of alienation as do many of
Winner's films, but it makes no severe moral judgments
about the sometimes ruthless methods of American es-
pionage.
"We only show the CIA killing nasty agents," Win-
ner said leaning hack in his director's chair and puffing
at a $3 cigar, "Young people in America think the CIA
should not exist, but that is naive."
The abundantly talented Winner, who manages to
look simultaneously debauched and cherubic, says he
found the CIA officials "terribly charming and cheerful
and gentlemanly at all times."
"Scorpio" has created the biggest movie sensation
In Washington since Otto Prerninger ordered senators
around during the shooting of "Advise and Consent"
nearly 10 years ago.
One congressman, James Wright of Texas, dressed
up as a priest and collected $25 for a, days work as
an extra when Winner filmed a sequence at Washington
airport. Huge mobs of onlookers assembled in Georr;e-
town to watch Burt. Lancaster shoot John Colicos with
a gun wrapped in a brown paper bag.
At a roller-skating rink, all sounds drowned by the
throb of a mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ, Winner (,,x-
plained that he keeps away from studios wherever
possible and takes )its cameras among real people in
authentic surroundings.
"Its like modern guerrilla warfare," he said, "I
go out into the streets and shoot. If I get into trouble
in one place, I can move somewhere else, And it saves
spending large sums of money on extras. If I need
another 10 people I just pull them out of the crowd.
Yesterday I pulled out four, found they came from
Hampstead and had.to put them back again,"
The London axpress
Approved For Release 2005/01/13 : CIA-RDP88-01365R000300210012-1