In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, President Bush’s chief spin doctor and senior advisor Karl Rove enlisted Hollywood’s help in selling the War on Terror. This week, I examine this White House-driven propaganda effort and assess its influence on Hollywood’s output. Focusing in on screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, I ...
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The soft reboot of the political drama Designated Survivor recently dropped on Netflix and in spite of Kiefer Sutherland making the least convincing president since Sarah Palin it is a considerable improvement on the first two seasons. What no other critic has noticed is that the CIA supported the series, ...
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The DOD's directive on working with Hollywood says that they can provide production assistance if it is deemed 'in the best interest of the Nation', but as with all their criteria for deciding whether to give support the Pentagon interpret this very broadly.  They use the considerable influence that DOD ...
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Vice has won awards along with praise from audiences and critics alike, but how well does it inform its audience about Dick Cheney? This week I take a look at the important material that Vice overlooked, or didn’t know about. From his rewriting of a key investigation into CIA black ...
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Osama Bin Laden’s death is the perfect postmodern event, in that most of the reports detailing how, where and when he died contradict all the other reports. This week I take an in-depth look at the Abbottabad raid of 2011 and the official story of Bin Laden’s death, analyzing some ...
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In early 1977 the producers of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes approached the Pentagon about filming a couple of brief scenes at National Guard armories.  Even though the National Guard Public Affairs staff thought it was a fun film and were happy to help, they were overruled by the Pentagon's ...
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The pain of 9/11 remains unresolved because the crime of 9/11 remains unsolved. In 17 years no one has been prosecuted for carrying out the attacks, and the court of public opinion is very much a hung jury ...
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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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A recently-released syllabus for the US Naval Academy's course FP130: American Government and Constitutional Development includes a section that advises students to watch and learn from the 1995 romantic comedy The American President.  Bizarrely, the scene does not involve the military or foreign or security policy in any way, but ...
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The entertainment highlight of the Trump-Kim negotiations is, undoubtedly, the fake movie trailer the White House showed to North Korean officials and displayed before Trump's press conference in Singapore. Perhaps the most interesting aspect to the Trump trailer is how commentators and critics have responded, trying to hide the US's ...
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This week I am joined by long-time 9/11 researcher and activist Jon Gold, to talk about his new book We Were Lied to About 9/11. We discuss Jon's experiences both of the 9/11 attacks and of his years of research and activism, along with the legacy of the 'truth movement' ...
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The new Tom Cruise film American Made bears all the hallmarks of being CIA-Hollywood propaganda. This short video explores Cruise and director Doug Liman's connections with the CIA and how the marketing for the film suggests it'll be nothing more than a remake of Blow, but with Barry Seal's name ...
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