Wolf Files: Top Weird Stories of 2003
(Page 8 of 10)
8. The Spy Who Gonged Me: Leave it to former Gong Show host Chuck Barris to break the CIA's legendary code of silence.
Barris the master of schlock TV had been claiming for years that he was a hired assassin for the CIA, killing 33 enemy agents in dangerous assignments all over the world.
As a matter of policy, the CIA never reveals who it employs in its cloak and dagger games. Most people just sloughed off the game show host's wild claims as a lame attempt to spice up his autobiography. After all, this is a guy who hosted a TV talent show that featured a 300-lb. stripper who sang "I Gotta Be Me" and a banjo-playing vampire known as "Count Banjula."
But in January, however, when George Clooney turned the outlandish TV producer's secret life into Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, the CIA was not amused and the famously stoic agency issued this historic statement:
"Chuck Barris never worked for the CIA. The notion that he worked for the CIA as an assassin is utterly ridiculous. Mr. Barris used to host The Gong Show And he may have spent too much time next to the gong." [Next: First Family Bad Boys]