New evidence for the surprisingly significant propaganda role of the CIA and the DOD in the screen entertainment industry
This
article reassesses the relationships of the Central Intelligence
Agency and Department of Defense with the American entertainment
industry. Both governmental institutions present their relationships
as modest in scale, benign in nature, passive, and concerned with
historical and technical accuracy rather than politics. The limited
extant commentary reflects this reassuring assessment. However, we
build on a patchy reassessment begun at the turn of the 21st century,
using a significant new set of documents acquired through the Freedom
of Information Act. We identify three key facets of the
state-entertainment relationship that are under-emphasized or absent
from the existing commentary and historical record: 1. The
withholding of available data from the public; 2. The scale of the
work; and 3. The level of politicization. As such, the article
emphasizes a need to pay closer attention to the deliberate
propaganda role played by state agencies in promoting the US national
security state through entertainment media in western societies.
Part
4 - The CIA’s Involvement in a Significant Number of Entertainment
Products Was either Not Known or Not Discussed Publicly in Any
Context Until 2014
Jenkins
used credit listings and occasional comments by CIA officers in the
press to identify productions the CIA has assisted. These included
Alias, JAG and 24, and the handful of films mentioned on relevant
IMDB pages. In the years since, more information has become available
showing that the CIA have been involved in a considerably larger
number of films and TV shows.
In
2014, Brandon updated his personal website to include the names of
not just films and TV shows on which he worked but also of people he
worked with in the entertainment industry.
While
his IMDB page lists only three films from his time as the ELO he also
helped to produce comedies like Meet the Parents and its sequel Meet
the Fockers and historical retellings of past CIA operations like
Charlie Wilson’s War and The Good Shepherd. This combination of
promoting the CIA through action and comedy and revising history
through cinematic drama is similar to the way the DOD liaises with
the entertainment industry.
In
total, while Brandon was running the CIA’s ELO, he worked on 12
major feature films, 11 TV shows or series, and had some kind of
involvement in at least 10 other television productions as well as
several books and unfinished film projects.
Among
his creative ‘partners’ Brandon listed producer Jeff Apple and
screenwriter Roger Towne, both of whom worked on The Recruit,
detailed elsewhere in this article. Brandon also listed producer
Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, who is responsible for the DOD-supported
Transformers franchise as well as the Salt and Red franchises.
Salt
credits a former CIA officer Melissa Boyle Mahle with providing
consultancy on the project but director Phillip Noyce – who
previously made Patriot Games with CIA assistance mentions on the DVD
commentary that the whole creative team had a video conference with
currently-serving CIA operations officers while they were writing the
script. This can only have happened with official CIA approval. Red
does not credit any consultants or technical advisors, but former CIA
officer Robert Baer is featured on the DVD commentary talking about
his role in helping to produce the film.
On
top of Brandon’s work, if we include former CIA agents providing
production assistance, then the number goes up to over 20 major TV
series and at least 29 films since 1996. It is reasonable to ask,
given the institutionalized secretiveness, whether the number is even
higher.
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