In the 1970s, as the American Mafia began its long decline in real life, we got the Godfather, one of the great films of all time. And then when the Mafia sputtered and died, in the 1990s, we got Goodfellas, another of the great all-time films, and The Sopranos, maybe the best television drama ever.

Now, the Cold War is over, and the Central Intelligence Agency is in decline.

And this fall, the entertainment industry is going CIA-crazy.

One of the big movies of the fall will be Spy Game, starring Brad Pitt as a WASPy thirty-something CIA operative kidnapped by the Chinese, and Robert Redford as a WASPy sixty-something retired CIA operative called back into service to rescue Brad Pitt.

And three of the four big broadcast networks are airing new hour-long dramas about WASPy hunks working for the CIA.

This glut of CIA shows is interesting and a little peculiar. Because these new entertainments all show the CIA in a new way…a kind of new old-fashioned way.

They treat the agency earnestly, as a group of primarily good guys fighting overwhelmingly evil guys. Their operatives are likable, decent, even heroic. Which is rarely the way spy agencies and their agents have been treated by the popular culture.

Beginning back in the 1960s, with the Cold War at its height, secret agents were arch and amoral, like James Bond or The Man from UNCLE. Or else they were clowns, like Maxwell Smart in the TV spoof Get Smart. Then for the last 20 years or so, national security agencies like the CIA have epitomized government evil, as in Three Days of the Condor and Enemy of the State.

This fall's new strain of CIA entertainment is proof that in our post-Cold War age, the culture has really changed. Even a few years ago, I don't think any TV network would have put on series glorifying the CIA.

But today, the American public is more pragmatic -- even cynical -- about the ugly things the government needs do for the sake of national security. Today there's no raging foreign policy debate, or any great ideological divide between the anticommunists and anti-anticommunists. Today the CIA just doesn't matter as much as it used to.

Maybe it will again. Right now, the people in charge of the agency, the real CIA, are letting the producers of The Agency -- the CBS show about the CIA -- actually film scenes for their show at CIA headquarters in Virginia.

This should not surprise us.

Because today practically everybody accepts and even encourages the blurring of fiction and reality for the sake of entertainment. Because today, everything -- including the CIA -- is a brand. And the managers of brands -- including directors of the CIA -- understand the value of product placement.

Every Thursday night on CBS at 10, 9 central.

This is Kurt Andersen, in Studio 360.