You're right about the Pierce Brosnan film, but the point remains the same - if you start killing the killers, and then killing the killers who killed the killers, ad infinitum, you're going to run out of loyal supporters in short order.

I've never worked with the CIA but I did spend 7 years in Canadian military intelligence. The people I worked with may not have been the brightest bulbs but they weren't particularly stupid either, and they certainly weren't a bunch of sociopaths; they were pretty much a cross-section of regular people.

Because organisations like the CIA and NSA are subject to such secrecy requirements, there's a lot of natural curiosity about them. Hollywood and the conspiracy crowd are only too happy to fill the void on this, and the requirements of national security prevent these organisations from setting the record straight, so there's a lot of misinformation being spread about what they do.

(Having said that, the Maher Arar inquiry in Canada is exposing a lot of questionable practices, such as the US and Canadian Intelligence authorities' reliance on information that has been extracted under torture by "friendly" regimes.)

As far as some of your other examples go, I'm not sure how much evidence there is to support them. "Ancient Egypt" ceased to exist in the days of Augustus Caesar, and I find it hard to believe that anyone kept detailed records of something that was so hush-hush that people were murdered simply to prevent them talking about it. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

And "Three Days of the Condor" was a movie, not a documentary <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />