In September 1977 the renowned Hollywood gossip columnist Rona Barrett appeared on Good Morning America to talk about spy films.  Sat alongside her was CIA director Stansfield Turner, who commented that Hollywood movies would make poor training films for CIA spies.  Within days a memo was circulating within the CIA ...
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Joanne invited me on the Around the Empire podcast to do a ‘high level compare and contrast’ of two war comedy films set in different wars in Afghanistan: Charlie Wilson’s War and War Machine.  The films are similar in many respects – both comedies, both have A-list lead actors, both ...
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Joanne invited me on the Around the Empire podcast to do a 'high level compare and contrast' of two war comedy films set in different wars in Afghanistan: Charlie Wilson's War and War Machine.  The films are similar in many respects - both comedies, both have A-list lead actors, both ...
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Amazon's new headline streaming series Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan is the first TV show to film at CIA headquarters for several years, after a fairly disastrous run that saw two awful movies along with an awful TV programme film there circa 2014.  In keeping with the CIA's longstanding love affair ...
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The CIA’s Office of Public Affairs (OPA) was established in the late 1970s and contains their entertainment liaison office. This week I go through an 8-page summary of the CIA’s Entertainment Liaison and Media Outreach activities covering 2014-16. This includes their relationships with journalists, their involvement in entertainment such as ...
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The CIA's Office of Public Affairs is - ironically - very tight-lipped about what they actually do, so I was pleased that they recently responded to a 3 year old FOIA request and provided me with a document summarising their activities from 2014 to 2016.  This includes numerous meetings with ...
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Mark Felt is a 2017 biopic starring Liam Neeson as FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt, telling the story of his role in becoming a source for the Washington Post's reporting on Watergate. Following on from recent episodes on John Paisley and the Weather Underground, I offer a deconstructive view of ...
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Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House is a 2017 biopic of former deputy director Mark Felt a.k.a. Deep Throat.  The FBI were involved with the film early on in its development, which is odd because in many ways the film portrays the Bureau very badly. The ...
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