Adams quoted Silver as once saying of his CIA service: "I thought it was patriotic. But then time came that life, love and girls distracted me." We took some interest in the tidbit, because Silver once told us the same thing: At a party, he claimed—off the record—to have worked with the CIA in the early 1970s in Laos, running drugs. Cool, we thought.

Well it looks to have been a tall tale he used to impress reporters. We've obtained Silver's FBI file through a Freedom of Information Act request, and it is fairly definitive: While he briefly considered becoming a CIA analyst, he never worked for the Agency.

In September 2007, Silver was named by George W. Bush to the board of directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a federally funded organization that advises the government on conflict resolution. Silver's position required a security clearance, so he subjected himself to an FBI background investigation.

The results of the background check, which run to hundreds of pages, are the only records in Silver's FBI file. It contains everything from his credit report to interviews with his agent, neighbors, and former therapist—all in all, he seems to have been a stand-up guy. But it also says unequivocally that the FBI checked with the CIA, and the agency had no record of Silver having worked with it:

Silver did travel around Southeast Asia in his early twenties, which in the Sixties and Seventies was practically a guaranteed tip-off that someone was a spook. But he told the FBI about his travels, and said it was all on the up-and-up. While he did very briefly consider a career as an "analyst in one of the intelligence agencies," he met once with one CIA representative and gave up on the idea:

So somewhere along the line, it looks like Silver blew up a sit-down with a CIA recruiter into a few swashbuckling years in black ops. Of course, it is possible that Silver's service was so sensitive that he lied—under penalty if perjury—to the FBI about it. Or maybe it was scrubbed from the file before being submitted to the White House for review. Indeed, five pages of the file were redacted by the FBI because they were classified "in the interest of national defense or foreign policy"—which could mean dark secrets are hidden there. But we're betting on Ron Silver liking the sound of saying, "I used to work with the Agency."

A friend told the Post: "Ron Silver died peacefully in his sleep with his family around him this morning."

The actor started the left-leaning Creative Coalition in 1989 but switched to the GOP following the Sept. 11 attacks, speaking at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

His West Wing character Bruno Gianelli underwent a similar conversion on that TV show. Silver also took on movie roles, including 1990's Reversal of Fortune, in which he played constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz.

Silver's cancer had not been previously publicized, judging from a quick Nexis search.

Silver had a son and a daughter, according to TV.com.

So what's Thompson to do? Take the show on the road and rake in the dollars elsewhere. The place that made the former Tennessee senator rich as an actor cannot be counted on to pour cash into his presidential run, especially if he's going around bashing gay marriage and Roe vs. Wade. The minute he comes out strong against embryonic stem cell research — a fervent Hollywood cause — he'll be banished from every cocktail party north of Sunset Boulevard.

"You're asking me if people here will support Fred Thompson?" said Donna Bojarsky, a longtime industry political consultant. "How do I put it? No. No. And no."

As unpromising as the above already sounds, things get even worse for Thompson: more socially progressive GOP candidate Rudy Giuliani has already planted his flag in Ron Silver, Hollywood's Token Conservative, appointing him a political advisor. We imagine the Thompson campaign might just cancel any planned L.A. fundraising trips altogether rather than suffer the indignity of begging Britney Spears, the town's lone unaffiliated Republican, to throw him a rager like the one Brett Ratner had for Hillary back in June.

• Hollywood won't back Fred Thompson [LAT]