And you'll never see this message again. All rights reserved. It’s impossible to know, of course, whether there is any real-life connection between the two characters. Back in September, the Daily Mail wondered whether a female CIA operative referred to as “Jen” in No Easy Day, the book about the Bin Laden hunt by one of the Navy SEALs who carried it out, was the inspiration for the character played by Danes on her hit Showtime series. You can cancel anytime. Keep discussions on topic, avoid personal attacks and threats of any kind. Join Slate Plus to continue reading, and you’ll get unlimited access to all our work—and support Slate’s independent journalism. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Though it was only 17 years ago that the agency paid $1 million “to more than 400 women in a class-action suit involving sex discrimination,” women have in the last two decades assumed an increasingly prominent place there. But now having seen the movie—which opens in New York and L.A. on December 19, with a wider release in January—the comparison seems more than just inevitable. . Carrie is, of course, only “loosely modeled” on an actual CIA officer, so it’s entirely possible that the writers of Homeland did not take these traits from their real-life inspiration, but rather added them to the character in order to propel the narrative of their series. (Carrie’s bipolar diagnosis is, so far as I can tell, added for just that reason.) the inspiration for the character played by Danes, an actual CIA officer whom she has met at Langley, a class-action suit involving sex discrimination, hired women analysts almost exclusively in the 1990s, changed or eroded to protect her identity. ( Log Out /  "Zero Dark Thirty" is military slang for an unspecified time in the early hours of the morning before dawn. Zero Dark Thirty, which opens nationwide January 11th, is a white-knuckle look at the decade-long hunt for bin Laden, which virtually ignores party … Alfreda Frances Bikowsky (born 1965) is a career Central Intelligence Agency officer who has headed the Bin Laden Issue Station and the Global Jihad unit. Welcome! Wednesday, 09 January 2013 05:39 PM. When Alec Station’s first chief, a man, left in 1999, “all of his 14 targeters were women.”  (A targeter is “an analyst who pores over grainy drone footage and sorts through phone intercepts and other fragments of intelligence to find the exact location of terrorists, drug traffickers, or arms dealers.”) So the producers of Homeland likely could have had any number of women in mind when they were dreaming up their hero. And if there is any deeper connection between Carrie and Maya, we are not likely to know about it any time soon. Both women are around the same age, in their late 20s or early 30s. Once it was clear that Zero Dark Thirty—the riveting new movie from Kathryn Bigelow about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden—would focus on a young female CIA analyst played by Jessica Chastain, comparisons between her and Carrie Mathison from Homeland were sure to follow. ( Log Out /  Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. The relevance of this term to the film is that the raid on Osama bin Laden's quarters was executed between midnight and 2 AM on May 2nd, 2011. It’s important to note that high-ranking female CIA officers are no longer an anomaly. The highly anticipated film 'Zero Dark Thirty' hits theaters Friday after limited release, but the internet is already abuzz over a line that has people scratching their heads. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. I'm a freelance journalist based out of South Florida. (Both names, of course, are pseudonyms.). But the juxtaposition is striking. Indeed, when it comes to hunting al-Qaida, they have at times been the norm: The “CIA’s first unit devoted to tracking al Qaeda, known as Alec Station, hired women analysts almost exclusively in the 1990s,” according to a fascinating piece from the Daily Beast published in September. American. Bikowsky's identity is not publicly acknowledged by the Agency but was deduced by independent investigative journalists in 2011. Obama Blasts Trump's Tweets, Track Record in First Appearance for Biden... Facebook's Zuckerberg, Twitter's Dorsey Face Senate Subpoenas Over NY Post... Amid Clashes on COVID, Healthcare and Hunter Biden, Debate Gets Increasingly Testy, GOP Pollster Warns: If Trump Wins, 'End of Public Polling' in Politics, Obama Blasts Trump's Tweets, Track Record in First Appearance for Biden, Facebook's Zuckerberg, Twitter's Dorsey Face Senate Subpoenas Over NY Post Story. Even if there is no such connection, though, it seems remarkable that the most thoroughgoing depictions of the “war on terror” in both television and film are told through the eyes of characters with so much in common. Photo by Jonathan Olley/Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.; Photo by Showtime. Change ). . The CIA has programs for high school students, internships, etc. Still, the similarities between Carrie and Maya go beyond gender. Jessica Chastain’s character Maya, based on a real CIA operative involved in taking down Osama bin Laden, tells a fellow agent that she was recruited out of high school, and that she can’t really discuss it.

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