Twitter was set ablaze this week as rumours emerged that Hollywood actor Sean Penn might be a CIA spy.
The actor met with one of the world’s most wanted drug lords, El Chapo, in the jungle shortly before he was apprehended by the Mexican military.
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Dailymail.co.uk reports:
Supposedly the entire ‘clandestine horror show’ – as Penn put it – was part of a research project to develop a Netflix-style drama about Guzmán and his prison break.
Though Penn insists he went to extreme lengths to hide the meeting from authorities, the details have sparked widespread speculation that he was in fact tapped by the CIA to locate the fugitive criminal – just as screenwriters were enlisted to make Argo to free US hostages in Iran in 1979.
El Chapo speaks: Sean Penn recounts his secret visit with the most wanted man in the world https://t.co/F4x6x8ANBd pic.twitter.com/8wDb2I6Xkt
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) January 10, 2016
‘Wait is Sean Penn a spy?’ asked one Twitter user.
Another said: ‘Argo has a sequel starring Sean Penn and El Chapo Guzmán’.
And many referenced the 1985 movie The Falcon And The Snowman, in which Penn plays a CIA informant.
‘Life imitating art,’ one Twitter user observed.
The sensational meeting took place deep in the Mexican jungle in October and was arranged by Penn, Mexican actress Kate del Castillo and a fixer, with the permission of the Sinaloa cartel.
El Chapo admitted in the bizarre interview to being the biggest drug trafficker in the world and said he sent engineers to Germany to learn how to build the tunnel he would eventually use to escape a maximum security prison.
The cartel boss was captured on Friday in a daring 4am raid by Mexican marines and was returned to Altiplano jail. The double Oscar-winning actor’s meeting with El Chapo led to the gun battle in which he was captured, an official said.
The U.S. has filed at least seven extradition requests in six different states for Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman to be extradited but justice officials warned that his lawyers were likely to ‘milk it’ by firing off different appeals at different stages of the extradition battle to prolong the legal tussle.
It would hardly be the first time the CIA had tapped a Hollywood-ite for their connections to take a different approach an international political case.
Argo was a movie fabricated for CIA operatives to have an excuse to fly to Iran during the hostage crisis in 1979.
Tony Mendez led the team to recover six American diplomats from Tehran, pretending that they were all members of a production team.
The Central Intelligence Agency is openly cooperative with Hollywood.
In 1996, the role of Entertainment Liaison Officer was created to provide filmmakers with factual advice and authentic props, and the agency has admitted to collaborating with actors, producers and directors for their own work.
Researchers who specialize in the CIA’s connection with Hollywood, Dr Matthew Alford and Tom Secker, told DailyMail.com on Sunday: ‘Spies have long used Hollywood as a front, from Pretty Woman producer Arnon Milchan, who admitted to stealing US nuclear secrets for Mossad, to Frederick Forsyth who did ‘favours’ for MI6. So the theory that Sean Penn was part of a CIA sting operation is an intriguing possibility.’
Indeed, Tricia Jenkins, author of The CIA In Hollywood, told DailyMail.com last year that she had recently acquired new evidence showing how the CIA worked off-the-books to influence Hollywood scripts to an extent never previously known.
She said: ‘In this documentation, concerning one major Hollywood movie, it is clear that the CIA functioned as the principle partner in shaping the original script and its influence exceeded that which would have been filled by an aggressive producer or studio executive.’
Penn wrote that El Chapo sent engineers – who were already accomplished in tunnel-building from the multitudes of underground paths they have built beneath the U.S.-Mexico border – to Germany to learn how to construct the tunnel he fled down as he escaped from prison in July last year.
The actor claimed the cartel leader was concerned about the low-lying water table beneath the jail.
The Mystic River star said he did not turn El Chapo in because the drug lord’s trust ‘was not to be f***ed with’.
‘I take no pride in keeping secrets that may be perceived as protecting criminals, nor do I have any gloating arrogance at posing for selfies with unknowing security men. But I’m in my rhythm. Everything I say to everyone must be true,’ Penn wrote.
Penn and del Castillo are now under investigation in Mexico.
In an article written by Penn for Rolling Stone, El Chapo says: ‘I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world. I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats.’
Despite his notoriety, up until this point the Mexican gangster had always insisted he was ‘just a farmer’.
A top White House official said on Sunday that Guzman’s boast to Penn of being the world’s top supplier of illegal drugs is ‘maddening’.
‘I will tell you this braggadocious action about how much heroin he sends around the world, including the United States, is maddening,’ White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said in an interview with CNN’s State of the Union.
‘We see a heroin epidemic, opioid addiction epidemic in this country. We are going to stay on top of this with our Mexican counterparts until we get that back in the box.
‘But El Chapo is behind bars. That’s where he should stay,’ he added.
Guzman, 58, escaped from a Mexican maximum security prison through a tunnel in July, eluding his pursuers until his capture in the seaside town of Los Mochis after a raid that left five people dead.
Penn’s interview with the Sinaloa cartel chief was published Saturday by Rolling Stone magazine, and an official in Mexico City said Mexican authorities wanted to talk to him and actress Kate del Castillo, who helped arrange the meeting.
‘It poses a lot of interesting questions for him and others involved in this so-called interview. We’ll see what happens,’ McDonough said.
‘Arrest Sean Penn’: Scores of people demand actor is charged for meeting most wanted drug lord El Chapo while he was on the run and not turning him in to the authorities
Scores of people have called for Sean Penn to be arrested for meeting the world’s most wanted drug lord El Chapo while he was on the run and not turning him in to the authorities.
Twitter users demanded Penn be questioned by investigators as to why he met with the violent cartel leader and did not help the military track him down.
The double Oscar-winning actor and Mexican actress Kate del Castillo – who brokered the meeting with the self-confessed biggest drug trafficker in the world – are now under investigation in Mexico.
Calls for Penn’s arrest came in thick and fast after Rolling Stone published an article by the Mystic River star explaining how he met Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman in the depths of the Mexican jungle.
Penn spent seven hours talking to the kingpin and even took a photograph of him but did not alert the authorities to where he was, despite a huge manhunt being underway for El Chapo at the time.
The drug lord – who had escaped from a maximum security Mexican jail – even sent Penn a 17-minute video of him answering the actor’s questions about his life, using the exercise as an opportunity to boast about his wealth and relaxed life.
Dozens of people accused Penn of aiding and abetting El Chapo, was recaptured on Friday and is fighting extradition to the U.S., where is wanted in six different states.
Tracy Jeffords tweeted: ‘The only thing I’d like to hear about Sean Penn is about him being arrested for aiding and abetting a fugitive…other than that #yawn’
Troy Ellison replied: ‘I thought the same thing he met with an enemy of the state a man who also beheads people among other atrocities.’
Twitter user B. Randolph asked: ‘Wait why isn’t Sean Penn being arrested & charged with aiding and abetting?’
Another person wrote: ‘So I’m waiting for Sean Penn to be arrested for obstruction of justice or something…’
While Penn did not tell the authorities of El Chapo’s whereabouts, his extraordinary interview led Mexican marines to his location.
The sensational meeting took place deep in the Mexican jungle in October and was arranged by Penn, Mexican actress Kate del Castillo and a fixer, with the permission of the Sinaloa cartel.
El Chapo admitted in the bizarre interview to being the biggest drug trafficker in the world and said he sent engineers to Germany to learn how to build the tunnel he would eventually use to escape a maximum security prison.
But just days later the authorities came close to raiding the gangster, only stopping because he was with two women and a child.
El Chapo’s capture on Friday was helped by the meeting between Penn and El Chapo, a Mexican official said.
The cartel boss was captured in a daring 4am raid by Mexican marines and was returned to Altiplano jail.
The Mystic River star said he did not turn El Chapo in because the drug lord’s trust ‘was not to be f***ed with’.
‘I take no pride in keeping secrets that may be perceived as protecting criminals, nor do I have any gloating arrogance at posing for selfies with unknowing security men. But I’m in my rhythm. Everything I say to everyone must be true,’ Penn wrote.
El Chapo was caught after contacting actors and directors about making a Narcos-style biopic about his life, Mexican officials said. It is not clear whether Penn was contacted about the movie.
Sean Adl-Tabatabai
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