Cleanup instructions
For starters, any moral contrast which lacks either organization or a fictional counterpart should be moved to Good Policing, Evil Policing. Any lack of moral contrast should be moved to Jurisdiction Friction or Interservice Rivalry as needed.
Any examples of the CIA being portrayed as corrupt without the FBI for comparison, can be moved to Sinister Spy Agency if need be.
Any examples of the FBI being portrayed in a positive light without CIA for comparison can be moved to By-the-Book Cop.
Any examples of the FBI portrayed as corrupt without the CIA can be moved to Dirty Cop which has "Filthy Feds" as a redirect, and has a line about portrayals of FBI corruption.
Positive CIA portrayals which exclude the FBI comparison, can possibly go to Covert Group.
Any examples of CIA or FBI personnel struggling with unethical actions can go to Dirty Business.
The rest of the sandbox categories are self explanatory, though. CIA Evil, FBI Good goes to one folder set, FBI Evil, CIA Good goes to another folder set, and other moral contrasts go in the bottom row of folders.
Any moral contrast between the CIA and FBI or their fictional counterparts specifically is kept, and added to Sandbox.CIA Evil FBI Good under one of the three sections. I suppose we can be flexible and include historical counterpart comparisons as well, but if it is a contrast between any other organizations, or if it just includes one organization/fictional/historical counterpart and an entirely different organization, it gets moved to Good Policing, Evil Policing.
OP
CIA Evil, FBI Good cannot decide whether it is supposed to be examples of evil CIA agents (a better title for which would be "Insidious Intelligence" or "Sinister Spy"), noble FBI agents (PSOC), both contrasted, or vice versa alone or in contrast (evil FBI would go to "Filthy Feds", while noble CIA agents are PSOC). Possibly needs to be expanded to apply to any law enforcement agency being compared to another in terms of morality ("Black and White Law Enforcement".)
Sandbox.CIA Evil FBI Good Wick Checks found that from 50/299 wicks:
Quick Results:
- Evil CIA, Good FBI: 8/50, or 16%
- Morality Swapped: 4/50, or 8%
- Only one side mentioned: 21/50, or 42%
- ZCE/Misc: 17/50, or 34%
- Literature.The Generals President: The CIA is not portrayed in a particular positive light in the book, with guards outside its headquarters gassing and attacking non-violent protesters. It's Director, Carlton Blackburn, is later revealed to be a member of the Holist Council and carrying out illegal psychotropic drug experiments on people. In contrast, the FBI is shown to be valiant, loyal and friendly, with President Haugen relying on FBI Director Peter Dirksma to gather intel on the treacherous Blackburn and later arrest him.
- Series.Narcos: The protagonists are DEA agents rather than FBI agents, but the dynamic is identical. The CIA is tangled up in the cartels and often refuses to cooperate taking them down. Escobar even has an ex-CIA man on his payroll. Season two introduces a truly shady CIA figure in the form of Bill. This is made unquestionably clear in Season 3, when Bill warns Peña that he is wasting his time going after the Cali Cartel. By the end of the season, it is revealed that the CIA knew the Cali Cartel bought off the Colombian President and still decided to back him because of him also being a puppet leader for the US Government. Bill outright tells Peña that the war on drugs is already lost and the US Government's role in South America goes far beyond stopping drug trafficking. Peña finds out Bill is right when his superior admits this to be true, causing Peña to quit the DEA. Furthermore, in Mexico Bill is shown to have cut a deal with Felix Gallardo's Guadalajara Cartel to transport weapons into Nicaragua in return for pulling strings with the State Department to scuttle the DEA investigation into Felix.
- Film.The Long Kiss Goodnight: One of the main antagonists is a corrupt CIA officer. And in one scene, Mitch tries to bluff Timothy by telling him that his "friends in the FBI" are on their way (but Timothy is unimpressed).
- Literature.The Century Trilogy: The CIA (for whom Cam Dewar is working) doesn't get away very well in this book. The FBI too at first, but after the dead of J. Edgar Hoover, they start taking their job seriously and investigate against Richard Nixon.
- Roleplay.Discord Plays Stellaris: The CIA is played by the DI, a diabolical organization dedicated to spying on citizens of the Republic , and the FBI is played by the RDI, a department tasked with investigating corruption and protecting the civil liberties of citizens. This ultimately results in a takedown of the DI by the RDI, and the arrest of president Poi and his cabinet.
- VisualNovel.My Sweet Bodyguard: In Katsuragi's sequel, FBI agent Kate is a heroic ally of the main characters, while the assistant director of the CIA turns out to be involved in terrorist activities around the world.
- TabletopGame.Cthulhu Tech: The OIS gets a far worse rap than the FSB in the books; while it's portrayed on the whole as Necessarily Evil, the moment a criminal goes into OIS hands, all concepts of human rights go out the window. The FSB, by contrast, have an organizational culture of integrity, their largest division is Internal Affairs to keep the cults out, and generally play their cases by the book. At least I think they're the correct equivalents.
- Castle.Tropes A To D: Both agencies have appeared throughout the series. For the most part, while the FBI and NYPD have Jurisdiction Friction and Obstructive Bureaucrats, they're decent folk. Meanwhile, except for a few occasions, whenever the CIA gets involved, things are much shadier and sometimes outright antagonistic. The biggest example is in Season 8, when we find out that Senator Bracken had a partner in the CIA who was covering up his dirty money dealings and now appears to be the show's new Big Bad.
- Hitman.Tropes A To C: Inverted. Smith is an upstanding (if incompetent) CIA agent who has the best interests of his country at heart. The terror ringleader of Blood Money on the other hand, is a former Director of the FBI. This further complicated by Cayne's vast network of friends in the other agencies—including one Agent Martinez, a bag man for the CIA.
- Series.Alias: Averted, as it was a show about CIA agents. Virtually all FBI agents depicted were either misguided or actively malevolent, and a significant storyline in season two is the FBI putting Sydney through a tribunal for being a suspected terrorist. Also this is inverted, not averted
- Series.The Sandbaggers: Inverted. The CIA are generally portrayed as helpful, and in particular Burnside has a very close working relationship with the CIA's London section chief, Jeff Ross. The show has a Conspiracy Theorist view of American domestic politics that looks peculiar to American eyes, and the FBI is part of it. According to Ross (and apparently, this was really according to Mackintosh), the FBI was behind the Kennedy and King assassinations.
- DarthWiki.Unidentified: Inverted. Amongst the Divided States of America, the FBI is on the side of the Western States, who are undeniably evil. Meanwhile, the CIA is siding with the Northern States.
- Characters.Deer Avenger:
"You can take the nut out of the CIA, but you can't take the CIA out of the nut." - Bambo
- Characters.Peter Chimaera, in Digimon Trilogy folder: Averted, in that it is the FBI that's evil, while the CIA never appears. Instead, the Police are the good law enforcement instance.
- Film.Tower Heist: There's no evil CIA, but the FBI is shown in pretty decent light, being all hard-working people, and Reasonable Authority Figures, something unusual for films where the protagonists are committing a huge crime. Doesn't contrast CIA and FBI, People Sit on Chairs.
- Film.The Ninja Mission: Averted. The CIA are unquestionably the good guys, here.
- Literature.The Lost Symbol: Except that the FBI never shows up at all. And the CIA is revealed to be not that bad themselves.
- Manga.Jormungand:
- Well, evil-er. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Scarecrow, a thief and con-man who was recruited to lift profits from illicit transactions and other black funds for the Agency's coffers. Be warned though, he is a rather unpleasant sort. However, his subordinate, Schokolade, is far more sympathetic.
- However, taken to a whole new level with Hex, when it comes to hunting down terrorists.
- Monster.Film T To Z: "Sadistic J-CIA member Kato..."
- VideoGame.Horace: While the FBI are never featured in the game, the Man in Grey, a sadistic major villain, reveals himself to be a former CIA agent, and boasts of how he would torture and kill people.
- Literature.Eleven Twenty Two Sixty Three: Zigzagged on the FBI. After saving Kennedy, the FBI agent in charge is content to help Jake disappear and gives him a large amount of money to do so. However, in the Crapsack Future, it is revealed that Hoover actually ordered the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
- YMMV.Hanna: Marissa Wiegler is the CIA operative in charge of the agency's Galinka Project[...]
- Film.Analyze This: Downplayed. The FBI are trying to catch criminals, but they do engage in questionable conduct. See above.
- Film.Spectral: Downplayed with CIA Agent Madison. While she's undoubtedly one of the good guys, she makes clear throughout the film that she wishes to retrieve the technology the Moldavians are using for the Spectrals (initially believed to be man-portable cloaking technology, and then revealed to be people cut up until they are nothing but brains and nervous system driving a bunch of concentrate humanoid "drones" in great agony) without understanding what kind of inhumanity she's being asked to salvage by her superiors.
- Characters.Mash: : Although he keeps it a little fuzzy who he works for in his first appearance, the writers eventually settled on him being CIA.
- Fridge.The Longest Journey Saga: Why are elite state-sanctioned Azadi assassins called "Apostles", when there is nothing particularly Christian about their missions? Because "apostle" means simply "messenger" in Ancient Greek, and as such, can refer both to peaceful missionaries and to CIA-like overseas assassins.
- Film.The Objective: The soldiers inherently distrust Keynes as a CIA officer, assuming they're being sent in to clean up the Agency's own mess. It's clear by the end the CIA knew about the aliens and sacrificed Keynes as the Unit to learn more.
- WebVideo.Buzzfeed Unsolved: Many of Ryan's theories include possible CIA coverups and other forms of foul play.
- Series.Manhunt Unabomber: The FBI has its share of jerks but overall they are all working to try to stop a domestic terrorist. The episode that explains Kaczynski's reasons showcases that when he was at college he was put through serious psychological hell courtesy of one of his teachers using him as a guinea pig for the infamous MK Ultra program.
- VideoGame.Mercenaries: Well, "CIA morally grey" is more like it. In the first game, the South Koreans were being "advised" by burned out CIA Agent Buford, who has clearly gone native and openly states (in Korean, when he thinks you don't speak the language) that he doesn't give a rat's ass what Langley says, and by the end of the game wanted you to take out the Chinese Army more than he wanted you to take out the North Korean threat. In the sequel, CIA Agent Joyce is calling the shots for the Allies, and is a lot colder and less likable than General Peng, though both are in the conflict almost entirely because of the oil. He even attempts to back out of the deal to give you a nuke if you side with the Allies at the end of the game.
- Characters.Blindspot: The face of the CIA in the show, he is unapologetically antagonistic to Jane and Weller's team.
- Characters.The Event: Potholed as "FBI Good" with no other context
- ComicBook.Batman Thrillkiller: Averted, Batgirl gets her wonderful toys from a contact in the CIA.
- Literature.A Bleeding Heart Of Steel: Subverted. The NKVD constantly butts heads with the KSR (the Soviet equivalent to the CIA). However, both of them are portrayed as being equally bad.
- Series.Wiseguy: Played dead straight in the Mel Profitt arc and the Miami arc.
- VisualNovel.Muv Luv Alternative: Although it's more like CIA Evil, U.S. Army Good.
- Website.Fin Fur And Feather Bureau Of Investigation: Averted, the FFFBI certainly hate the CIIIA for being far more competent and making them look bad, but both are definitely on the side of good.
- Characters.Star Trek Species A To M (under Early-Installment Weirdness): On a related note, the Obsidian Order were caught building a fleet of next-generation ships in the barren Orias System in "Defiant". Dukat mentioned that the Order never approved of the peace treaty with the Federation, and were planning to re-invade the Badlands with those ships, going entirely over the heads of the Central Command in the process (presumably to set up a kind of "CIA Evil, FBI Good" scenario). Later on in the season, Enabran Tain explains the fleet is part of a joint-operation with the Tal Shiar to launch a first strike on the Changeling's homeworld. This is slightly more in line with the Obsidian Order's organizational functions of maintaining security and carrying out espionage. I don't know what the context of this is.
- Characters.Primeval Paradox: Defied - while she is a member of the FBI, she also worked with the CIA, and is still technically a member, albeit as a liaison for both organizations. And this is related to the trope... how?
- Blackmail Backfire: The Punisher (2017): CIA Agent Bill Rawlins [[spoiler:(the architect of "Project Cerberus" and the man who ordered the death of the Castle family) is able to convince his superior, Deputy Director Marion James, to allow him to continue trying to finish off Frank Castle and David "Micro" Lieberman and thus finally silence all witnesses of Cerberus and keep the Agency from being publicly shamed.
- Series.Re Genesis: Caroline Morrison, FBI, is the benevolent leader of NorBAC and spends most of her time trying to outwit the US army, government, CIA and MI6 to help David and the others in their investigations. The FBI is clearly good here, but the CIA is barely mentioned and I can't tell what their portrayal is like.
- Film.Nemesis: And LAPD...worse? Whatever the reason, it seems that the Los Angeles Police Department has a lot more power than it should, because they set up this huge sting operation all the hell the way over in Java.
- Monster.Film S: Nikolai Tarkovsky, Ted Winter, is a KGB sleeper agent who infiltrated the US Government and kidnapped Evelyn Salt's husband Mike, giving him to Orlov and allowing him to force Evelyn to assassinate the Russian president and execute Mike once he's no longer of use to them. Infiltrating the White House, Tarkovsky murders countless people there before to launches nuclear missiles against cities Mecca and Tehran, intending to kill millions of innocent people there and inciting the wrath of billions of Muslims onto America. After he frames Salt for his atrocities, he tries to kill her as she is taken to custody. ???
- Literature.CHERUB Series: Inverted. Intelligence agents tend to be brave heroes doing a tough job with minimal casualties. Regular police — except those who work with the Intelligence Services of course — are usually stupid, arrogant, violent and generally in need of a good kicking. Not even about the CIA or FBI, or their equivalents.
- Series.Intelligence 2014: With Clockwork in place of the FBI in this trope.
- Series.Colony: Zigzagged; Will worked for the FBI Fugitive Task Force prior to the invasion and suspects his new boss Phyllis is ex-CIA based on her attitude. Doesn't say anything about morality.
- Film.Above The Law 1988: CIA evil, though the Bureau are obstructive at best and Lawful Stupid at worst.
- Literature.Icarus Falls: Averted utterly. Both agencies are horribly corrupt and authoritarian, the FBI having been responsible for the unlawful detention and killings of thousands of (mostly black) citizens deemed "subversive", while the CIA sponsors Neo-Nazi terrorism and supports overseas dictatorships. Gets to ridiculous levels when the director of the CIA tries to launch a coup.
- Monster.Valiant Comics: Issues 17-19 ("Jurassic Politics" arc): Thomas Higdon is a CIA agent who is secretly in league with the monstrous Spider Aliens. Rest of the example unrelated.
- WesternAnimation.The Zeta Project: Averted entirely, as the Zeta threat is given over instead to a NSA taskforce and seems to be handled entirely handled by them. Given how often the NSA is ignored in fiction, this seems odd until you learn that the NSA does in fact have these taskforces in real life. Counts also as Shown Their Work.
My personal take is that the trope is far too narrow and/or covered by concepts that either already exist, or have yet to exist.
If the FBI and CIA are in conflict because of jurisdiction, that would be covered by Jurisdiction Friction. Any two LE agencies or departments being morally contrasted would fit better under a concept like "Black & White Law Enforcement". Evil spies deserve their own trope if they do not have one already ("Sinister Spy" or "Insidious Intelligence").
Edited by MacronNotes on May 31st 2022 at 10:07:06 AM
(she/her)
Since this has been languishing for a while and no one seems willing to work on it right now, I am going to try to finish this up. Hopefully this won't be too hard to do.
EDIT: I copypasted Sky's cleanup instructions to the OP and stickied it.
Edited by MacronNotes on May 21st 2022 at 12:49:40 PM
Macron's notes
The Draftsman of Doom
Thanks Mac. There are already some valid examples in the sandbox that I added.
Rawr.
Just stoic wisdom.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Would it be worth placing onto the Wick Cleaning Projects page?
(she/her)
Adding TRS/cleanup projects to Administrivia.Wick Cleaning Projects is a free action, so sure.
Macron's notes
Just stoic wisdom.
Done, did my best to condense the summary when adding it to the page.
Vehicle-Based Characterization | Grief-Induced Split | Locker Mail
The Draftsman of Doom
I think once the wicks are cleaned, we should keep the cleanup thread around to make sure no further misuse happens.
Rawr.
(she/her)
Main/ to Fanfic/ have been cleaned. Wicks are down to 247.
Edited by MacronNotes on May 24th 2022 at 2:39:39 PM
Macron's notes
(she/her)
Does this count? I am not seeing a clear juxtaposition between CIA and FVI moralities here.
From PersonOfInterest.Tropes A To G
- CIA Evil, FBI Good: The first part definitely (though some of them claim to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist), the second part is still in the air but plausible: they apparently want to shut down the evil operations of the CIA (And any other serious criminal operations they become aware of, such as HR), but they are also trying to stop Reese. In their defense, all the evidence they have of Reese's operations suggests that he's far more malignant than he really is.
- Donnelly toed the line very close with this, however. His willingness to pursue The Man In The Suit meant he'd quite happily resort to methods which, while mostly legal, were hardly ethical. Right until he allows the Aryan Brotherhood to viciously beat Reese in the exercise yard, merely in hopes he'd use his hand-to-hand combat skills to defend himself. His actions very nearly got Reese killed. That the Warden was under the impression that an FBI Special Agent had that kind of authority is a bit alarming, which is another example of Donnely exerting pressure, by threatening to expose the warden's breaches in protocoll to get what he wants, which is a red flag because Donnelly should have just reported those infractions anyway.
- Given that the FBI are the only ones Carter trusts to arrest Quinn and finally defeat HR, they probably qualify as this. Donnelly was honest, he just ultimately slipped into Inspector Javert.
The Draftsman of Doom
![[down]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_down.png "[down]"){kind=icon}
That was fast.
(she/her)
Alright, I cut it on those grounds. Everything down to Series/ is done so this thread will wrap up soon. I should be able to finish everything after I wake up.
Edited by MacronNotes on May 27th 2022 at 10:58:59 AM
Macron's notes
The Draftsman of Doom
By the way, didn't we agree to cut any examples which excluded the CIA, FBI or their historical/fictional equivalents? We need a new page quote, since the Get Smart quote is inadequate on those grounds, as there is no FBI in the film, IIRC and Control isn't equivalent to the FBI.
And we need to remember to add valid examples to the Sandbox.
Edited by SkyCat32 on May 27th 2022 at 10:27:41 AM
Rawr.
(she/her)
Well, if the quote is doesn't represent the trope's definition, it should go. Also, this really wasn't something that needed to be hollered.
As for adding valid examples to the sandbox, I'll do that when I have time. A lot of the ones I found were already on the sandbox, though.
EDIT: Are aversions to this trope notable to be mentioned? I have been leaving those examples alone but I am leaning on them not being notable enough to count as I don't think there's a straight good/evil divide in most works that mention the CIA and FBI or their equivalents
Edited by MacronNotes on May 27th 2022 at 6:26:32 AM
Macron's notes
The Draftsman of Doom
Won't do that again, sorry.
Also, as long as there is a moral contrast, this trope is in play. We can allow subversions & other played with examples where the supposedly good organization turns out to be just as evil or vice versa, but I am wary of examples which don't have any moral contrast whatsoever.
Edited by SkyCat32 on May 30th 2022 at 10:25:15 AM
Rawr.
(she/her)
Wick cleaning is done. Now all we have to do is crosswick the good examples onto the sandbox.
Macron's notes
The Draftsman of Doom
(she/her)
I didn't say anything that contradicted that? I think I just missed the Music/ namespace
Macron's notes
The Draftsman of Doom
In any case, I re-added
it under Filthy Feds.
(she/her)
So, do we have enough examples to swap the sandbox over? I crosswicked a few of the examples that enough context from the wicks but I lost interest in this project so I won't be looking at all of the wicks alone. We have the clean up thread so maybe we can continue crosswicking/vetting examples there.
Macron's notes
The Draftsman of Doom
Sure thing. I hope for at least 20-ish examples on the page, BTW.
(she/her)
Alright, I swapped the sandbox in. We have least 20 on page examples so we are good. Further vetting and crosswicking can go into this clean up thread.
~Locking
Macron's notes
Crown Description:
Alt titles for Black And White Law Enforcement.
This trope is now NRLEP.
Rawr.