CIA Evil, FBI Good: Difference between revisions

There is some overlap however, with the abuses of the longtime FBI head, J.Edgar Hoover, being exposed. The reports of him blackmailing politicians, persecuting political dissidents like [[Martin Luther King Jr]], falsely claiming Ma Barker was a crime boss to excuse killing her in the crossfire of a shootout with the Barker Gang, ruining the lives of competent agents like Melvin Purvis so he could claim all the credit of their work for himself, as well as allegations such as being blackmailed by the mob for being a transvestite have done much to blacken the name of the FBI under his tenure. Now, the image of the FBI is about stressing how they have moved beyond the legacy of that hypocritical bully.

 

 

{{examples}}

 

* ''[[Once Upon a Time In Mexico]]'' has a corrupt CIA operative involved in the attempted assassination of the president of Mexico. On the other hand, ''Once Upon a Time...'' operates on a general (although not entirely) "Gringos = Evil" principle, and the FBI hardly has jurisdiction in Mexico.

* In ''Air America'', the CIA uses the title airline to smuggle drugs.

* The newest ''[[James Bond (film)|James Bond]]'' movies emphasize the moral grayness of the CIA, though Felix Leiter remains a fairly decent guy.

* [[The Bourne Series|Jason Bourne]].

** It's more that the trope was played with, rather than subverted. {{spoiler|The CIA agent was working with an Army general and a mercenary to steal plates that could be used to print American currency, so all three are bad guys. The general and the mercenary betrayed him, so the CIA agent used the A-Team to hunt them down. He only seemed like a good guy at first because each member of this conspiracy was pretending to dislike the other two.}}

* [[Hunt for Red October]]: Aversion. CIA agents are shown as faithful public servants. In the book they at times have a [[Darker and Edgier]] streak though.

 

* ''Sisterhood'' series by [[Fern Michaels]]: Played as straight as an arrow! The Vigilantes have to fight Henry "Hank" Jellicoe, a CIA agent gone rogue. At one point between a conversation between a former FBI director and a former CIA director, the ex-CIA director says that he has no redeeming qualities at all, while the ex-FBI director can say that he's been kind to children and puppies. The CIA is definitely much worse than the FBI in this series!

* The "Mitch Rapp" series by [[Vince Flynn]] plays with this concept quite interestingly. The CIA protagonists are all patriotic, skilled and dedicated people who do terrible and completely illegal things to the enemies of the West (mostly but not exclusively Islamic terrorists). The FBI are equally patriotic, skilled and dedicated people who interfere, obstruct and generally try to prevent the actions of the CIA people, because they believe in the rule of law over expediency. Both are portrayed as correct in their view, though the author clearly and frequently makes the point that by the time the FBI follows all of their rules, the bad guys will have escaped and done other bad things. The *actions* of the CIA people are evil, but they both share the good motivations of protecting America from truly evil people, though their methods are diametrically opposed to each other.

 

* ''[[Covert Affairs]]'', at least from the pilot, is an aversion. The CIA are shown as normal and reasonably likable people with normal lives bantering at the office in a normal fashion.

** Of course, due to their mode of operation, to other people such as the FBI, they can seem this way. At the same time, the FBI -still- comes off as good-er than the CIA for being less shadowy.

* ''[[Leverage]]'': At least one agent in the CIA is using its connections to a top-secret college club to {{spoiler|test new torture techniques on homeless veterans. The team avenges the man who died of a heart attack and ruins the cocky student running the experiment, but at the cost of making themselves known to the CIA}}.

 

 

* In ''[[Battlefield: Bad Company|Battlefield: Bad Company 2]]'', the CIA Agent that [[The Squad]] is sent to support turns traitor and tries to get you killed.

* Naked Snake of ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]'' is a CIA agent, but is also a good guy... [[Start of Darkness|At first.]]

* Inverted in ''[[Perfect Dark]]'' where the CIA agents are treated the same as other civilians and cannot be killed, while the FBI agents are armed and can be. In fact, it's the NSA that are depicted as villains, since they're part of [[The Conspiracy]] against the President.

 

* In the [http://nothotbutspicy.com/para/50fa3/ "Site Kilo-29"] story, the CIA has been secretly rounding up scores of homeless/insane people and trapping them underground in a gigantic bunker ostensibly to see what would happen to shell-shocked survivors of a nuclear war. {{spoiler|Years later, they've become a horde of cannibals, and now a demonic vampire-Terminator-''thing'' from Germany has found a way in. Additionally, the CIA agents with the team brag about how they raped and murdered innocent farmers during the Cold War, as do another CIA death squad sent to kill the surviving soldiers, and it's implied ''another'' CIA squad was sent to intimidate "Sgt. Ant's" family (not to mention a mysterious "car accident" Ant keeps trying to forget...).}}

 

* [[wikipedia:Central Intelligence Agency#Questionable.2Fcontroversial tactics|There has been some controversy]].

 

* In ''[[Dog Day Afternoon]]'' the FBI agents expertly handle the situation by capturing one bank robber, killing the other and rescuing the hostages unharmed.

* In ''[[The Silence of the Lambs]]'', FBI agent trainee Clarice Starling kills Buffalo Bill and rescues the Senator's daughter.

* Averted in ''[[Die Hard]]'', where the two FBI agents are [[jerkass]]es who care nothing for the lives of the hostages and are only concerned with killing the terrorists.

 

* ''The FBI Story'' by Don Whitehead.

* The organization of [[John Ringo]]'s ''[[Special Circumstances]]'' series, created to handle paranormal related crimes, is a department of the FBI, and are [[Black and White Morality|very clearly "good"]].

* ''Sisterhood'' series by [[Fern Michaels]]: Played with. The book ''Hide And Seek'' has FBI director Josh Carpenter (a good guy) die and get temporarily replaced by Mitch Riley, a total [[Jerkass]] who wants to be the next [[J Edgar Hoover]]. Fortunately, he gets taken down and is replaced by a good guy named Elias Cummings. Elias ends being replaced by Bert Navarro, another good guy. Eventually, a man named Yantzy becomes FBI director, and he is apparently a [[Noble Bigot with a Badge]].

 

* ''[[Twin Peaks]]'', with Special Agent Dale Cooper.

* ''[[The X-Files]]'', but only on the agent level. Further up the chain gets a little kinky when the Cigarette Smoking Man gets involved.

* Fornell of ''[[NCIS]]'' may come across as gruff sometimes, and has worked at cross purposes to the main characters, but always does things for the right reasons, and has been proven to be a valuable ally to the team.

* A pair of FBI agents are [[Those Two Guys]] in ''[[Leverage]]''; they think Parker and Hardison are also FBI agents and the team is nice enough to give them credit for a few of their jobs.

 

* The Vanguard Serial Crimes Unit, or VASCU, is one of the Conspiracies in ''[[Hunter: The Vigil]]'', part of the FBI. Unlike most Hunter organizations they actually get a fair amount of respect, since they use [[Psychic Powers]] to hunt [[Serial Killer]]s. Of the other governmental forces, Task Force VALKYRIE is rather inconsistent about certain monsters, especially vampires {{spoiler|since that's where the vast majority of their funds come from}}, and Division Six is run entirely for the benefit of the Seers to the Throne from ''[[Mage: The Awakening]]''.

 

* FBI Agent Norman Jayden from ''[[Heavy Rain]]'' is pretty much the only [[By-The-Book Cop]] in the entire story.

* FBI Agent Francis York Morgan from ''[[Deadly Premonition]]'' is severely schizophrenic and has an appalling grip on reality, but he's also a charming eccentric with savant-level talent for criminal profiling and an unerring sense of justice. The FBI itself seems to pay him extremely well for even the most banal activities and keeps quite a loose leash on him despite his frequently outlandish behaviour, [[Unreliable Narrator|but we might have York's perspective to blame for that.]]

 

== Inversions ==

* ''[[Green Zone]]'' has the CIA being ''good'', trying to fight against the Department of Defense's conspiracy to kill a former Saddam regime colonel.

* ''[[The President's Analyst]]'' from 1967 inverts this trope - the renamed Central Enquiries Agency is a diverse bunch of good-natured college-educated types sympathetic to the hero, while the Federal Board of Regulation are all humorless little men in black who never question orders from their grim, opinion-driven little chief to kill the hero {{spoiler|although the former won't hesitate, as a last resort, to kill him either}}.

* ''[[Burn Notice]]'': Inverted due to Michael being ex-CIA (maybe), whereas the FBI are depicted as annoying bureaucratic buffoons (at best) and as corrupt sell-outs at worst.

 

* ''[[Detective Conan]]'', in which the CIA is portrayed as a [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] organization who isn't above {{spoiler|planting [[The Mole]] into the Black Organization}}. This results in {{spoiler|[[Shoot Your Mate|one CIA agent having to kill her father, another CIA agent]], and the apparent murder of an FBI agent to keep the cover safe}}.

* In ''[[The Siege (film)|The Siege]]'', Denzel Washington plays an FBI Agent trying to catch the terrorists the right way, while Annette Bening plays the CIA Agent who ''trained'' the terrorists, and is willing to cut any corner to stop them, feeling remorse for what she's done. (Both are still on the side of the angels, compared to Bruce Willis's army general.)

* In ''[[Shooter]]'', the CIA frames Mark Wahlberg for an assassination and tries to "suicide" an FBI Agent that gets too close.

* A variation in ''[[In the Line of Fire]]'' is CIA Bad, Secret Service Good. The would-be presidential assassin {{spoiler|was trained to kill by the CIA}}, while the movie's heroes, headed up by [[Clint Eastwood]], are the Secret Service.

** The Secret Service and the FBI have a rivalry in [[Real Life]], as the USSS is tasked with protecting foreign dignitaries in the US that the FBI really wants to spy on.

* In the ''[[Tom Clancy|Ryanverse]]'' the CIA was initially a rather shady bunch while the FBI has always been made up entirely of straight-shooting angels who recite the constitution to their kids before going to bed. However, by the time Ryan himself takes the helm of the CIA the agency has gotten a lift in both ethics and image. Most prominent example would be ''Clear and Present Danger'' where the FBI is enlisted by the heroes to thwart the [[Government Conspiracy|unlawful CIA scheme]] that's going downhill fast.

** Of course, the scheme wasn't unlawful from the CIA's perspective. They had presidential orders to do it, signed by the National Security Adviser. The crime came from the fact that the president and the NSA did not tell Congress that they had given said order to the CIA. As Ryan phrased it, the murders only became murders retroactively when something extraneous to the murder itself did not occur. He considered this to be seriously screwed up (and was probably justified in that belief).

** Not to mention that Bob Ritter does have his [[Blood Knight]] moments...

* In season four of ''[[Sons of Anarchy]]'' a federal taskforce with agents from the FBI, ATF and Department of Justice finally has enough evidence to take down an international criminal conspiracy involving the Sons, a splinter faction of the IRA and high ranking members of a Mexican drug cartel. In the very last moment the CIA {{spoiler|reveals that it is sponsoring the cartel as a means of stabilizing the political situation in Mexico}} and the entire matter is dropped to the great outrage of the law enforcement agents involved. To make matters worse, an undercover FBI agent was murdered gathering the evidence.

* Inverted in ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'', where the good guys all work for the CIA, while the FBI is involved in the [[Ancient Conspiracy]].

* ''[[Person of Interest]]'': One of the characters is ex-CIA who conducted illegal operations on American soil. His superior Mark Snow is still in New York, smuggling drugs and trying to hunt them down. FBI recently came into picture, trying to bring them down.