by Hugh Manatee Wins » Sat Jun 17, 2006 1:04 pm
<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Not everything is so conspiratorial. Holloywood screen writers aren't all that bright (or imaginative) IMHO.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>The record says otherwise. This is one of many articles that might change your mind. Just looking at the 'product' ought to convince you there are themes and values serving the National inSecurity State.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/linkscopy/CBD.html">www.ratical.org/ratville/...y/CBD.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>The mutual admiration was still evident in November, 2001 when <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>senior White House advisor Karl Rove and several dozen studio executives met in Beverly Hills to discuss the war on terrorism.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> "It's important to hear what Hollywood has on its mind," Bush administration spokesman Ari Fleisher explained at a daily press briefing. The names Bill Maher, Oliver Stone, Warren Beatty or Larry Flynt did not come up.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>The thoughtful movie moguls represented CBS, HBO, MGM, Showtime, Dreamworks, Viacom and other multinational cartel dream factories. </strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->The New York Times assured, "several executives emphasized ... that they were not interested in making propaganda films." CNN mentioned that MPAA president Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association, "hoped the White House representatives weren't planning `to tell us what kind of movies to make.'" <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Rove wanted "concrete information, told with honesty and specificity and integrity." But most reports of the closed meeting note that "patriotic" movies were the topic of discussion.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> The studio executives offered to turn out flicks in the tradition of Why We Fight, a documentary made during World War II, and The Battle of San Pietro; they also committed to public service projects on biological terrorism and "homeland security." (Rick Lyman, "White House Sets Meeting with Film Executives to Discuss War on Terrorism," New York Times, 11-8-01.) Among the volunteers to the war effort, count directors David Fincher (Fight Club), Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) and Randal Kleiser (Grease), and Die Hard screenwriter Steven E. De Souza.<br><br>Never mind that Hollywood was already tummy-tuck deep in the propaganda biz. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>A few days before Rove's summit, actor Tom Cruise met with CIA officials to discuss ways of burnishing the agency's image in the upcoming Mission: Impossible 3.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> (Editorial, "Unease over Hollywood Washington pact," Guardian Unlimited, November 14, 2001.) Truth is, the nation's political and entertainment capitals had been on intimate terms for decades when the studio moguls issued their denials.<br><br>"For many years," Canadian media critic Doug Saunders writes, "Hollywood's most prominent products, its major studio films and TV series, have been almost indistinguishable from government-funded propaganda. With rare exceptions, whenever men in uniform appear on-screen, Hollywood has been singing Washington's song from the beginning." The grave flaws in American foreign policy "may loom large in history, but 50 years of cinema and TV have painted [the CIA and DoD] in bright and unmottled hues." And reaped immense profits with their art: CIA expenditures alone on propaganda during the Cold War ran to hundreds of millions of dollars each year. (Alex Constantine, And Now a Word from Our Sponsor -- the CIA, Virtual Government) "If Bush were to erect a soundstage on the White House lawn, he could not do a better job getting the official line across than movies and TV shows have been doing for years." (Saunders)<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Two years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency opened its headquarters to Showtime and Paramount for the making of In the Company of Spies. The program aired on Showtime. To celebrate the completion of this collaborative project, the CIA's George Tenet invited everyone involved to a private screening at CIA headquarters in Langley. "The CIA's objectives were clear," screenwriter Roger Towne told the Associated Press. "They hoped to see a human face put on the agency and we had just the story to do it."</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> ("Hollywood Whores for Washington," <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.xmag.com/archives/7-08-feb00/antiDrug.html">www.xmag.com/archives/7-0...iDrug.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> and <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.xmag.com/archives/7-08-feb00/antidrugCont.html)">www.xmag.com/archives/7-0...Cont.html)</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> This is an agency, mind you, with two faces, an international Gestapo that has trained death squads around the globe, assassinated a score of foreign leaders, plotted coups, conducted illicit human experimentation, peddled LSD, sprayed disease on Cuban crops, dragged the country into Vietnam, created bin Laden, etc. Tenet boasted that the movie "portray[s] us in a good light, and I want the American people to know the values we believe in."<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>"Never," noted the Washington Post, "has the CIA so fully embraced a movie." (Vernon Loeb, "The CIA's Operation Hollywood," Washington Post, October 14, 1999, Page C-1.)</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>The Langley-Hollywood romance began during World War II, when the Office of Strategic Services (the nascent CIA) and a Disney make-up artist designed disguise kits for agents on jungle assignment. In the postwar period, make-up artists were also recruited for the start-up of Studio Six Productions, a full-fledged CIA front complete with business cards, an office, movie posters and trade ads. Studio Six was run by John Chambers, who won an Academy Award for his make-up wizardry in Planet of the Apes, his partner Tom Burman and the CIA's Tony Mendez. (Robert P. Laurence, "Into the Shadows: The CIA in Hollywood," television review, San Diego Union-Tribune, 12-04-01.)<br><br>The CIA, soiled by a half century of PR disasters, hired Chase Brandon, a 26-year veteran paramilitary officer with experience "all over Latin America" -- also a cousin of actor Tommy Lee Jones, Al Gore's college roommate -- in 1996 to fill the newly-created position of Entertainment Liaison Officer. "The popular image of us is of some kind of rogue organization creating mayhem and madness on a whim," Brandon told the press a week prior to the World Trade Center air assaults. "We hate to see ugly imagery of us in television and films."<br><br>Brandon's office was conceived on December 20, 1991 by the "Task Force on Greater CIA Openness" in a study undertaken at the request of then CIA director Robert Gates, a Bush, Sr. appointee, and immediately classified, though a few copies were leaked. The report proposed an image upgrade to neutralize public hostility. The task force was in "substantial agreement that we generally need to make the institution and the process more visible and understandable rather than strive for openness on specific substantive issues." </strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->Forget openness, the Openness Task Force advised. The report "seems to recommend no real change in attitude," complained The Excluded Middle, an anti-CIA Internet site, "only in the way that the agency presents itself to a hostile or at least an indifferent public." The authors of the report boast arrogantly that the CIA's Public Affairs Office (PAO) censored and had buried projects that it found objectionable in the past. Chase Brandon hails from the PAO. Contact with "every major wire service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation" was advised by the panel. The result was the Entertainment Liaison Office. (Anonymous, "CIA MEMO ON GREATER OPENNESS REVEALS CONTRADICTIONS," Excluded Middle, <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.elfis.net/tem/ciaduh.htm)">www.elfis.net/tem/ciaduh.htm)</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>The CIA's PR campaign was calculated to convince viewers that programs like The Agency on CBS -- praised by Brandon for portraying "the bravery and decency of the men and women who work here" -- were true-to-life. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Wolfgang Peterson, an executive producer of the spook show, observes that Americans "are questioning whether we need a CIA, and this is a great opportunity to get the word out." With CIA oversight, of course. Michael Frost Beckner, creator of series, worked closely with Brandon and submitted the product for Agency approval. (Duncan Campbell, "Hollywood helps CIA come in from the cold," The Guardian, September 6, 2001.)</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> The premiere episode of The Agency featured agents thwarting a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, a smoke-belching storyline fit for Rupert Murdoch's delusional Fox cable channel, or perhaps Nickelodeon. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <p></p><i></i>
