How the FBI secretly shapes movies and TV shows about Bureau
When the FBI’s first director, J. Edgar Hoover, saw that a new film from Paramount Pictures was going to be called “Federal Dick,” he was apoplectic.
He called the title of the 1935 movie, about four G-men, “particularly obnoxious… most humiliating and repugnant,” and demanded it was changed before it ever appeared on a marquee.
Hoover declared: “The agents of this Bureau are not Dicks.”
The 1935 film was never released, showing Hoover’s power to force Hollywood to give the Bureau script approval and other controls over any project with an FBI storyline.
Ever since, the nation’s premier law enforcement agency has had a love-hate relationship with Hollywood.
As Ron Kessler, author of “The FBI: Inside the World’s Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency,” says, “Under Hoover, the Bureau created this image of this invincible agency…They did this through the media, through radio shows, TV shows, movies that they controlled.”
These days, the FBI is more subtle, quietly working behind the scenes to offer advice to keep movies and TV on the straight and narrow.
Enter Anne Beagan.
For a decade Special Agent Beagan held the little-known title, “Entertainment Industry Liaison,” perpetuating Hoover’s tradition of making certain the Bureau was portrayed accurately, and looked good on screen.
“Hollywood’s mission is to tell stories that captivate, enthrall, seduce, entertain and educate,” Beagan told The Post. “FBI investigations naturally contain all of those elements. This creates a mutually beneficial relationship for both parties.
“My goal — and my responsibility — is to portray the Bureau and the people within it in both a compelling and authentic fashion.”
During her assignment, from 2010 until her retirement from the Bureau in 2020, she was the FBI’s main contact with Hollywood.
She worked with top film and TV directors and producers — among them Martin Scorsese, Law & Order creator Dick Wolf, and former CBS News president Susan Zirinsky — who have praised Beagan’s assistance in their various FBI-related projects.
Beagan discreetly consulted on films including “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “The Wizard of Lies,” and “Tower Heist.”
And she was involved in advising TV series such as “Madam Secretary,” “Billions,” “The Following,” and documentaries including CNN’s “Declassified.”
Beagan had the ability to offer guidance on everything from script content to costumes, props to scenery, and advice on weapons: she packed her own FBI-issue SIG-Sauer P228 pistol.
Her other favorite was a shotgun.
“There’s nothing that clears a room faster than a shotgun being racked,” she said.
And when she discovered an inaccurate depiction of the Bureau, it was her duty to correct it, and as with Hoover eight decades ago, Hollywood followed her suggestions and made changes that “reflect what’s accurate.”
The role was not without critics: a 2014 report from the late Republican senator Tom Coburn accused the Bureau of “working on movie plots rather than terror plots,” and wasting “millions of taxpayer dollars.”
The FBI blasted the report as “inaccurate,” but Coburn’s office hit back, “Every dollar we spend helping [producer] Jerry Bruckheimer get his facts right is a dollar we can’t spend stopping criminals and terrorists.”
Beagan views the controversy as baloney.
Today, however, the Bureau has an image problem, despite Beagan’s apple polishing.
According to a Rasmussen poll taken after the FBI’s raid of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in search of government documents last August, 46 percent of voters said they had lost trust in the Bureau.
And House Republicans accuse the Bureau’s leadership of being politicized in favor of Democrats, while 2024 presidential contender Ron DeSantis has vowed to fire its director Christopher Wray, accusing him of overseeing a two-tier system of justice.
But Beagan herself could never be accused of being politicized.
Her other important assignment in the Bureau was in the New York field office, the nation’s largest, as the Joint Terrorism Task Force’s special events coordinator.
Her job: making sure huge events like the New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square, were secure and safe for the public.
She was also on the ground on 9/11 when the FBI had to evacuate its Lower Manhattan headquarters and improvise a command post in its Chelsea parking garage.
Now she is using the expertise she gained as a special agent as a producer.
Her bi-coastal production company, Anne Beagan Productions, is currently churning out a hit FBI show and she has lucrative Hollywood deals in the works.
Among them is the story she witnessed herself on 9/11, which she made into the Paramount+ documentary: “26th Street Garage: The FBI’s Untold Story of 9/11.”
And she is the executive producer and co-creator of “FBI TRUE.“
Billed as “Real Agents, Untold Stories,” it is in production for its 4th season, streaming on Paramount+.
“If there’s a great case that we know about, we find the agents who worked it, and where I know of a great agent and a great character, I tell them to tell some great stories that they worked, and then we select one or more for the show,” Beagan told The Post.
“We have anywhere from one to three agents in every 30-minute episode, and we’re currently shooting 20 more episodes.”
Most episodes are filmed at the Arts and Crafts Beer Parlor, on West Eighth Street, in Greenwich Village.
“FBI TRUE’s” co-host is Beagan’s former FBI colleague, Kristy Kottis, retired supervisory special agent of the Bureau’s “direct response squad” in New York.
The single-largest FBI unit deals with all threats emanating from and into New York City.
“Anne worked in the terrorism branch as well as she was the FBI’s entertainment liaison person, a position she basically carved out, saw a need, and filled it,” says Kottis. “She was doing the job of basically promoting the Bureau to the world – something that we weren’t doing for ourselves, she was doing for the Bureau.
“Mr. Hoover always said, ‘We’re not gonna talk about cases, we’re going to talk about what the FBI does.’
“Long after Mr. Hoover died, Anne made sure that void was filled. Nobody dealt with the public or the media, or Hollywood better than Mr. Hoover – until Anne Beagan came along.
“She really knows how to tell the FBI story.”
Beagan attributes her biggest success as the entertainment industry liaison to controversial former FBI director James Comey.
On temporary assignment at the FBI’s Washington D.C. headquarters in 2014, she heard a talk by Comey, who had been appointed the previous year by President Obama.
“I wandered down to hear him speak and it was very inspiring,” she says. “I always knew the power of Hollywood, and that’s when I thought, ‘There’s no good network show about the FBI.’”
She called Dick Wolf, the Emmy-award-winning producer behind NBC’s Law & Order franchise, who had sought her advice in the past, and told him of her idea: a drama about the FBI’s New York office.
He was intrigued.
A pitch meeting with Comey was soon arranged.
The session lasted just 30 minutes and when it was over Comey had “green-lighted” the concept and was, as Beagan says, “fully invested in a series that accurately portrayed the FBI to show the American people who we are and what we do.”
The drama Beagan conceived, “FBI,” premiered on CBS on September 25, 2018, with Wolf as executive producer and Beagan credited as a special advisor.
“I never could have gotten ‘FBI’ off the ground without Comey’s support,” Beagan said. “He gave me permission to kind of go off-script and develop the show with Dick Wolf. If Comey didn’t support it, that never would have happened.”
Two years after the pitch meeting, Comey was fired by President Trump.
Like Beagan, the former director has gone Hollywood, too. His memoir, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership,” was turned into Showtime’s “The Comey Rule,” with Jeff Daniels playing Comey.
Beagan thinks of him as “a great writer and speaker,” and hopes that one day they might work together.
And she boasts of the framed note from Comey that she has hung proudly on the wall of her L.A. office.
It reads: “Thank you for what you do to show us to the world.”
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