Following their on-screen debut in the James Bond movies, and their quiet support for Thunderball, the CIA under Richards Helms adopted a more pro-active approach to Hollywood.  They began spying on movie scripts depicting the CIA and considering requests from film-makers for official support.  One project that they rejected was ...
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In this month's subscriber-only podcast we explore the censorship of the one of the world's biggest film franchises - James Bond.  The Bond movies have been subject to both moral/cultural censorship by the British Board of Film Classification, and political censorship by the Pentagon's entertainment liaison offices.  This is a ...
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National Security Cinema is a new book that uses over 4,000 pages of documents to reveal government censorship and propaganda in Hollywood.  From the Pentagon's rewriting of James Bond to the CIA's manipulation of Meet the Parents this is the biggest and best book ever written about military-intelligence propaganda in ...
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The James Bond films, like the books on which they are based, have always pushed the boundaries of acceptable portraits of sex and violence.  Documents from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) show how for Thunderball they reviewed the script, recommending many changes if the film was to achieve ...
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Goldeneye is possibly the best of the Pierce Brosnan James Bond films, but like two others in the Brosnan period it relied on US military support.  This entailed the Pentagon reviewing the script and demanding two changes - one political, one promotional - in exchange for helping to shoot one ...
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From the Donald Trump school of naming things came The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World, a 1965 spoof of the James Bond movies.  Like many 1960s spy thrillers The Second Best Secret Agent was on the radar of the CIA. Licensed to Kill The movie began ...
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It is with some pride that I can announce that the American Journal of Economics and Sociology has today published an edition featuring not just one, not just one and a half but two articles that I wrote.  The latest issue of AJES focuses on the role of the CIA ...
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Die Another Day is widely considered to be one of the worst James Bond films ever made.  It's the one with the invisible car in the ice cave and Halle Berry.  The production got limited supported from the US Marine Corps, who recently released a short folder to me from ...
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