Is Sean Penn a CIA operative?

Conspiracy theorists claim actor’s interview with El Chapo was an elaborate government plot to capture fugitive drug lord

As news emerged of the peculiar series of events that led to El Chapo’s capture, Twitter was ablaze with one question: Is Sean Penn a CIA spy?

The actor met with the world’s most wanted drug lord in the jungle to ask him a handful of Hollywood-worthy questions such as ‘do you dream?’ and ‘how would you define yourself?’

And then just hours after the Sinaloa cartel leader was detained by Mexican marines, the Rolling Stone published a lyrical 10,000-word account of their meeting.

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.  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 

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.’