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
6 - The Level of Politicization
At
times the DOD has shown itself unwilling to see or hear the most
durable and well-evidenced facts from history, where they run
contrary to its political interests. The entertainment industry and
the examples that follow demonstrate that the CIA and DOD are
primarily and explicitly concerned with promoting a positive
self-image and propagating a useful version of history and politics
where they play a critical and benevolent role.
They
have repeatedly sought to have dialogue, scenes and sequences that
contradict this desired image changed or removed from scripts in the
development phase. While this observation will not be surprising to
some, it is not made clear in public pronouncements and available
historiography. While the usual justification for involvement in the
entertainment industry is recruitment to the armed services, the
following examples establish that the DOD’s agenda is broader and
more politically motivated:
-
Thirteen Days (2001): Negotiations fell through between the DOD and
the producers. After reading the script, the DOD demanded several
changes that, if implemented, would have resulted in the film being
factually in opposition to the historical record of the 1962 Cuban
Missile Crisis. White House audio tapes demonstrate that as the
President was leaning towards a Naval blockade of Cuba, Joint Chief
of Staff General Curtis LeMay was aggressively arguing in favour of
an invasion. Strub wrote, ‘Both General LeMay and General Maxwell
Taylor are depicted in a negative and inauthentic way as
unintelligent and bellicose’ (Robb, 2004).
Likewise,
Strub asked the producers to remove one scene in which a U2
reconnaissance pilot is shot down and killed over Cuba. The reasoning
provided for this request was that it didn’t happen, even though
the DOD’s own records show that this pilot was posthumously
honoured for his final U2 flight over Cuba. The film’s producers
sent Strub a copy of the letter of condolence that President Kennedy
had written to the widow of the pilot but they received no reply
(Robb, 2004: 55).
-
Windtalkers (2002): The DOD negotiated with the producers to ensure
that the film did not explicitly say that the Marine command ordered
its men to kill its Navajo soldiers if captured, even though Robb
shows that this is an historical fact established by Congress (Robb,
2004).
Two
other sequences were excised from the original script as a result of
DOD demands. Firstly, a sequence where a Marine stabs a dead Japanese
soldier in the mouth to retrieve a gold filling. ‘The activity is
unMarine’, was the view of the DOD, insisting on its removal and
trying to pin the blame for such activities on conscripts. This is
despite National Archives footage, cited by Robb, of a Marine yanking
teeth from the jaw of a dead Japanese soldier. Secondly, the original
script sees the hero (Nicolas Cage) kill an injured Japanese soldier
who is attempting to surrender by blasting him with a flame-thrower.
The DOD complained and the scene was deleted (Robb, 2004: 64). In
keeping with the overall image of the DOD as a positive force in a
dangerous world, another scene is retained in which a Marine is
brutally shot in the back by Japanese soldiers while he is handing
out chocolates to children is retained.
-
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016), Contact (1997), Hulk (2003): In these
three films elements were changed or removed in order to demilitarize
aspects at the DOD’s behest. In Whiskey Tango Foxtrot the DOD’s
database describes how, ‘[t]he script portrayed a US Army transport
brake failure, resulting in it hitting a group of Afghani shoppers in
Kabul, killing and injuring them. This was changed to an NGO vehicle’
(DOD, 2017).
On
Contact the Pentagon thought that there was ‘[o]riginally a fair
amount of silly military depiction’ so they ‘[n]egotiated
civilianisation of almost all military parts’ (DOD, 2017). For
example, when the protagonists are discussing whether to build a
machine based on extraterrestrial blueprints, the panicky line ‘It
could just as easily be some kind of Trojan Horse. We build it and
out pours the entire Vegan army’ was ultimately given to a National
Security Advisor rather than the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
For
Hulk the DOD requested ‘pretty radical’ script alterations in
exchange for Marine Corps support including: changing the desert lab
where the Hulk is created into a non-military, privately-owned
facility; making the ‘baddie’ an ex-military character who runs
the lab, rather than a serving officer; removing dialogue about ‘all
those boys, guinea pigs, dying from radiation and germ warfare’;
and changing the codename of the operation to capture the Hulk from
‘Ranch Hand’ to ‘Angry Man’ since Ranch Hand had been the
name of a real chemical warfare programme during the Vietnam war
(USMC, 2017).
-
Clear and Present Danger (1994): The original script depicted US
foreign policy in less favourable terms than the final movie. For
example, the US President says of the Columbian drug lords in the
movie, ‘Those sons-of-bitches… I swear, sometimes I would like to
level that whole damn country – and Peru and Ecuador while we are
at it’ (Robb, 2004: 35). The offending line was deleted along with
any Presidential references to ‘payback’, ‘Bustin’ some butt’
and his calling the dealers ‘monkeys and jabaloneys’ – all as a
result of the demands of the DOD, according to Robb (2004: 37).
The
DOD also made clear its ‘obvious objections to portraying the
highest level of US government engaging in illegal, covert
activities’ (Hogel, 1993). Two notable ideas suggested by the DOD
were for the on-screen President to establish to the Joint Chiefs of
Staff ‘that young Americans are dying in the streets because of
this illicit drug activity in South America. The audience will
clearly understand … the drug runners will not be seen as
“innocent” or “unarmed”.’ Similarly, The DOD asked for the
on screen F15 fighter jets to be shown to be under direct threat from
the drug barons (Greer, 1993). Both ideas were implemented.
The
CIA functions with a comparable set of political preconditions as the
DOD. When working on 2003 spy thriller The Recruit, Tricia Jenkins
used a document leaked exclusively to her to report how Brandon
scripted a scene depicting the head of the Clandestine Service
addressing fresh recruits. The character states: ‘I know you have a
lot of questions … and one of them may be whether or not there will
be real operational work here now that the Cold War is over.’ He
then uses former CIA Director James Woolsey’s refrain: ‘We did
slay the great dragon. But in the new world order we are learning
that there are a multitude of poisonous snakes’ and adds: ‘These
dangerous serpents have deadly names. Can you identify some of them?’
The leader explains how countering terrorism is the Agency’s
‘number one priority’, echoing the response of one of the
recruits, before others suggest the proliferation of mass
destruction, transnational crime syndicates, and the theft of
intellectual property rights, not to mention a list of set of state
actors: North Korea, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Colombia, [and even] Peru
(Jenkins, 2016).
This
scene explicitly seeks to reiterate the importance of the CIA’s
changed but still crucial role in the post-Cold War world. Other
scenes in The Recruit encouraged viewers to believe that the Agency
did not fail in the years leading up to 9/11 but was actually busy
preventing numerous similar attacks, while the public remained
unknowing. These elements of the film were almost certainly the
result of Brandon’s influence, says Jenkins (2016).
There
were similarly multiple changes made to Zero Dark Thirty. Documents
obtained by Judicial Watch show how the CIA leaned on Boal to remove
or change several scenes in the movie, including one where a drunken
CIA officer fires an AK-47 into the air from the roof of a building
in Islamabad. This was removed at the CIA’s request (CIA, 2012).
They also asked that the filmmakers change a scene involving the use
of dogs to intimidate prisoners and one showing the protagonist Maya
physically carrying out torture.
The
DOD has also played a critical role in preventing certain products
from being produced. One was a screenplay called The Smoldering Sea,
on which the DOD refused to collaborate because it ‘shows the Navy
in a very objectionable light’ (Robb, 2004: 356). Another was a
film based on the book by Clay Blair (Robb, 2004: 353–355), which
portrayed Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover very well but which Rickover
personally opposed as he was not allowed full production control.
Finally,
there was Top Gun II, which was floated in the early 1990s but which
the Navy refused to work on because the original film had been
associated with the 1991 Tailhook Convention scandal in which over
100 US Navy and Marine Corps aviation officers were alleged to have
sexually assaulted at least 83 women and seven men, or had behaved in
an ‘improper and indecent’ manner – leading to damning media
coverage and a critical DOD Inspector General’s report (Robb, 2004:
182; see also DOD Inspector General, 1993). Predictably, Suid just
uses the DOD’s own description of ‘rowdy behaviour’ to describe
‘Tailhook’ (Suid, 2002: 234).
Beyond
these examples there are two other known instances of the DOD
terminating productions: Countermeasures and Fields of Fire:
Countermeasures.
In 1994 this film was in development but production was halted
because the DOD refused to collaborate. The DOD refused on numerous
grounds that were beyond technical and were, in fact, explicitly
political. In Strub’s view the depiction of Navy personnel was
‘completely unrealistic and negative … unprofessional … and
unapologetically sexist if not guilty of outright sexual harassment
or assault’. He went on to note that, ‘[m]aking the principle
villain an agent of the (then) Naval Investigative Service fosters a
negative perception of the service, implicates all agents by
association, and reinforces the allegations of a lack of
professionalism that was widely reported by the media over the last
few years’. The words ‘lack of professionalism’ probably refer
here mainly to the aforementioned Tailhook scandal. One other reason
for the DOD’s rejection of Countermeasures was references in the
script to Iran-Contra, an operation where the CIA sold weapons to
Iran and where some of that money was then used to support the
Contras in Nicaragua. Strub commented, ‘There’s no need for us to
denigrate the White House, or remind the public of the Iran-Contra
affair’, which is again an explicit rejection of a proven political
scandal (Strub, 1993). When the Spanish Navy heard that the DOD had
turned it down, they followed suit. The filmmakers needed access to
an aircraft carrier to be able to make the film so the DOD’s
decision effectively terminated the production (Robb, 2004: 46).
Fields
of Fire was a mid-1990s film-in-development under the direction of
James Webb, a Vietnam veteran who became Secretary of the Navy and
then Virginia’s state senator. In September 1993, Webb officially
asked the DOD for assistance, specifically Marines to serve as
background actors and access to shoot footage of aerial vehicles. The
DOD refused because the script included numerous scenes that they
found objectionable on the grounds of PR, not on the grounds of
accuracy. Sequences depicting Marines fragging, committing arson,
brutalizing and murdering people and posing for a photo with their
arm around a dead Enemy Prisoner of War (EPOW) were all problematic
for the DOD. A member of the Marine Corps’ Public Affairs Officer
(PAO), Lt Col Jerry Broeckert, wrote to the Navy’s Director of
Public Affairs J. M. Shotwell explaining that the Marine Corps had
issues with supporting the film due to the ‘admission in this
medium that those activities occurred in Vietnam’ (Broeckert,
1993). Surprisingly the USMC approved granting assistance to the
script, but Strub wrote to W. E. Boomer, Commandant of the Marine
Corps, saying that the audience, ignorant of the realities of war,
‘is very likely to conclude not only that these tragic events
occurred routinely but also that they represent the typical behavior
of our military forces when placed under the duress of combat’
(Strub, n.d.). These concerns were enough for the DOD to refuse
assistance to Fields of Fire and so the film died on the vine.
The
CIA has also managed to prevent the advancement of film projects,
which seemed set to go ahead had they not become involved. The PAO
retains the right to approve any publication by CIA personnel, so it
is possible that prospective scripts are just completely unknown. In
the early Cold War period, the Agency refused the producers’
requests for assistance on films like My Favorite Spy (CIA, 1951).
There are several documented cases of CIA harassment of former
employees turned authors, including Victor Marchetti, Frank Snepp and
Phillip Agee (Moran, 2015). In 2016, Nicholas Shou substantiated a
story that the CIA derailed a Marlon Brando picture about the
Iran-Contra scandal by establishing a front company run by Colonel
Oliver North to outbid Brando for the rights.
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