Steven Seagal: CIA Hitman?
In Steven Seagal’s first film vehicle, 1988’s Above the Law , he portrays Nico Toscani, a mob-connected Italian-American who trained in aikido in Japan, where he was recruited by the CIA to carry out top-secret missions in Southeast Asia before becoming disillusioned and abandoning intelligence work to join the Chicago Police Department. Since then, uncertainty has surrounded Seagal’s background, the degree to which Above the Law mirrors the impiously Jewish Seagal’s own origin story being a matter of dispute, alleged fabrication, and ridicule from elements of the press. Barna William Donovan, author of The Asian Influence on Hollywood Action Films , writes that “the actor did participate in spreading a colorful line of rumors and insinuations in his early rounds of publicity interviews,” continuing: Since the plot of Above the Law involves a CIA drug-running conspiracy, Seagal and the Warners publicity department started suggesting that, while in Japan, the future actor worked w