CIA's most famous operative is a secret star

By Howard Kurtz, CNN

Editor's note: Howard Kurtz is the host of CNN's "Reliable Sources" and is Newsweek's Washington bureau chief. He is also a contributor to the website Daily Download.

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(CNN) -- Maya is about to become the most famous CIA operative since Valerie Plame.

Except that's not her real name. We're not allowed to know her real name. Maya is the name of her character in the film "Zero Dark Thirty", which is already generating controversy for its depiction of the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

This has an only-in-Washington feel, a collision between our celebrity culture and the need to protect our spies from having their identities exposed. So the operative somehow becomes a movie star (played by Jessica Chastain) while remaining in the shadows.

Howard Kurtz

Perhaps inevitably, questions are mounting about the CIA employee, her personality and her contacts with the filmmakers. And she can't properly defend herself because she's not allowed to talk to the press.

Thus it was that the Washington Post ran a highly unusual front-page profile of someone whose name is unknown. The woman was passed over for a promotion, the story says, and is an abrasive sort who e-mailed colleagues saying they didn't deserve to share in a prestigious award she received for her role in the mission. (By the way, what does it take to get a government promotion if helping eliminate the world's top terrorist doesn't qualify?)

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