In Wag the Dog, war - and the government-industrial complex that supports it - is instrumentalized as a product of mass media and manufactured narratives that are disengaged from material reality. A CIA agent (William H. Macy), armed with all the facts of the agency's global intelligence network, is overridden by the more compelling, if fictional, narrative spun by a consultant to the executive branch (Robert De Niro), determined to distract the public from a domestic scandal. A few months after the release of the film, President Clinton, who had admitted to an inappropriate relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, ordered air strikes in Afghanistan and the Sudan, prompting accusations of a similar attempt to distract media attention from a sex scandal with military action abroad.