Files on government involvement in popular culture, from the CIA in Hollywood to the Pentagon and reality TV. I obtained these documents via FOIA requests and from various archives.
The production of Ice Station Zebra is a great case study in just how much influence the Pentagon can have…
In late 2009 the FBI got wind of the fact that Martin Scorcese was developing The Wolf of Wall Street,…
Top Gun was an enormous critical and commercial success and helped redefine the military-supported movie. It is not quite a…
The US military, particularly the Air Force, invested a lot of time and resources in helping make Captain Marvel, and…
The 1968 spy and counterspy classic Ice Station Zebra was inspired by a real life event during the CIA/Air Force…
Of all the many, many, many projects the Pentagon has supported, one of the most surprising and seemingly innocent is…
In early 1977 the producers of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes approached the Pentagon about filming a couple of brief…
Just like other government agencies the FBI are deeply involved in the entertainment industry, collaborating with film andTV producers to…
The FBI recently released a tranche of documents on the USA Network TV series Burn Notice. While most of the…
Anwar Al Awlaki was the head of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula until his death in a CIA drone…
Compared to the DOD, the US intelligence agencies support a more politically diverse range of movies, from the hi-tech surveillance…
1996’s action thriller Executive Decision may be light on action and lacking thrills but it is notable for one thing…
The Department of Defense’s entertainment liaison office file on the 1996 thriller Executive Decision was, for many years, secreted in…
The DOD claim that they only rewrite Hollywood scripts in order to ensure accuracy and to inform the public about…
The Pentagon’s censorship of movie scripts is fairly well established – I have documented numerous instances on this site. But…
A few months ago, then DOD Hollywood liaison Phil Strub gave an interview in which he described the work of…
The 1990 World Cup was considered a big success for the England football team, as getting to the semi-finals was…
One of the Pentagon’s consistent bugbears when it comes to movie scripts is swearing. Whether it is from the mouths…
Air Force One is one of the great military commercials disguised as a feature film. Laden with Russophobic rhetoric and…
A few weeks ago, Hollywood star Gerard Butler found himself behind a podium at the Pentagon talking to the national…
In 1994 the Chinese government first allowed Hollywood films to be distributed within the country. Since then the US and…
While some senior military officials have spoken openly about the possibility of a war between the US and China, the…
Four years ago, scholar Ben Urwand revealed how the Nazis’ man in Hollywood Georg Gyssling censored and rewrote film scripts…
The latest release from the US Army’s entertainment liaison office provokes many questions. Why did they refuse to support the…
The FBI got back to me recently with a response to my request on The Spook Who Sat by the…
The US Army’s entertainment liaison office has worked on as wide a variety of TV entertainment as you can imagine,…
The latest reports from the US Army’s entertainment liaison office show surprisingly few examples of them providing production assistance to…
12 Strong a.k.a. Horse Soldiers is based on a book about a US Army Special Forces group sent to Afghanistan…
The late Cold War classic Top Gun is one of the most well-liked military movies of all time. It’s combination…
The Vietnam war had a huge impact. 3 million dead Vietnamese, tens of thousands of dead Americans, and millions more…
