By Julie
Lévesque
“One of the most pervasive trends in 21st century western culture has become somewhat of an obsession in America. It’s called “Hollywood history”, where the corporate studio machines in Los Angeles spend hundreds of millions of dollars in order to craft and precisely tailor historical events to suit the prevailing political paradigm.” (Patrick Henningsen, Hollywood History: CIA Sponsored “Zero Dark Thirty”, Oscar for “Best Propaganda Picture”)
With Michelle Obama
awarding Ben Affleck’s Argo the Oscar for best movie, the industry
showed how close it is to Washington. According to Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, Argo
is a propaganda film concealing the ugly truth about the Iranian hostage crisis
and designed to prepare the American public for an upcoming confrontation with
Iran:
Global Research,
February 28, 2013
Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/screen-propaganda-hollywood-and-the-cia/5324589
http://www.globalresearch.ca/screen-propaganda-hollywood-and-the-cia/5324589
“One of the most pervasive trends in 21st century western culture has become somewhat of an obsession in America. It’s called “Hollywood history”, where the corporate studio machines in Los Angeles spend hundreds of millions of dollars in order to craft and precisely tailor historical events to suit the prevailing political paradigm.” (Patrick Henningsen, Hollywood History: CIA Sponsored “Zero Dark Thirty”, Oscar for “Best Propaganda Picture”)
Black Hawk Dawn, Zero
Dark Thirty and Argo, those are only a few major recent productions showing how
today’s movie industry promotes US foreign policy. But the motion picture has
been used for propaganda since the beginning of the 20th century and
Hollywood’s cooperation with the Department of Defense, the CIA and other
government agencies is no modern trend.
Foreign policy
observers have long known that Hollywood reflects and promotes U.S. policies
(in turn, is determined by Israel and its supporters). This fact was made
public when Michelle Obama announced an Oscar win for “Argo” – a highly
propagandist, anti-Iran film. Amidst the glitter and excitement, Hollywood and
White House reveal their pact and send out their message in time for the
upcoming talks surrounding Iran’s nuclear program [...]
Hollywood has a long
history of promoting US policies. In 1917, when the United States entered World
War I, President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information (CPI)
enlisted the aid of America ’s film industry to make training films and
features supporting the ‘cause’. George Creel, Chairman of the CPI believed
that the movies had a role in “carrying the gospel of Americanism to every
corner of the globe.”
The pact grew
stronger during World War II [...] Hollywood ’s contribution was to provide
propaganda. After the war, Washington reciprocated by using subsidies, special
provisions in the Marshall Plan, and general clout to pry open resistant
European film markets [...]
As Hollywood and the
White House eagerly embrace “Argo” and its propagandist message, they shamelessly
and deliberately conceal a crucial aspect of this “historical” event. The
glitter buries the all too important fact that the Iranian students who took
over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, proceeded to reveal Israel ’s dark secret to
the world. Documents classified as “SECRET” revealed LAKAM’s activities.
Initiated in 1960, LAKAM was an Israeli network assigned to economic espionage
in the U.S. assigned to “the collection of scientific intelligence in the U.S.
for Israel ’s defense industry” (Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich Oscar to Hollywood’s “Argo”: And the
Winners are ... the Pentagon and the Israel Lobby)
For a real account of
the Iranian hostage crisis, a CIA covert operation, Global Research recommends
reading Harry V. Martin’s article published in 1995: The Real Iranian Hostage Story from
the Files of Fara Mansoor:
Fara Mansoor is a
fugitive. No, he hasn’t broken any laws in the United States. His crime is the
truth. What he has to say and the documents he carries are equivalent to a
death warrant for him, Mansoor is an Iranian who was part of the
“establishment” in Iran long before the 1979 hostage taking. Mansoor’s records
actually discount the alleged “October Surprise” theory that the Ronald Reagan-George
Bush team paid the Iranians not to release 52 American hostages until after the
November 1980 Presidential elections.
With thousands of
documents to support his position, Mansoor says that the “hostage crisis” was a
political “management tool” created by the pro-Bush faction of the CIA, and
implemented through an a priori Alliance with Khomeini’s Islamic
Fundamentalists.” He says the purpose was twofold:
- To keep Iran intact and communist-free by putting Khomeini in full control.
- To destablize the Carter Administration and put George Bush in the White House. (Harry V. Martin, The Real Iran Hostage Crisis: A CIA Covert Op)
Zero
Dark Thirty
is another great silver screen propaganda piece which spurred outrage earlier
this year. It exploits the horrific events of 9/11 to present torture as an
effective and necessary evil:
Zero Dark Thirty is
disturbing for two reasons. First and foremost, it leaves the viewer with the
erroneous impression that torture helped the CIA find bin Laden’s hiding place
in Pakistan. Secondarily, it ignores both the illegality and immorality of
using torture as an interrogation tool.
The thriller opens
with the words “based on first-hand accounts of actual events.” After showing
footage of the horrific 9/11 attacks, it moves into a graphic and lengthy
depiction of torture. The detainee “Ammar” is subjected to waterboarding,
stress positions, sleep deprivation, and confined in a small box. Responding to
the torture, he divulges the name of the courier who ultimately leads the CIA
to bin Laden’s location and assassination. It may be good theater, but it is
inaccurate and misleading. (Marjorie Cohn, “Zero Dark Thirty”: Torturing the
Facts)
Earlier this year the
Golden Globe awards made some analysts criticize Hollywood’s dark “celebration
of the police state” and argue that the real Golden Globe winner was the
military-industrial complex:
Homeland won best TV
series, best TV actor and actress. It IS a highly entertaining show which
actually portrays some of the flaws of the MIIC system.
Argo won best movie
and best director. It glorifies the CIA and Ben Affleck spoke with the highest
praise for the CIA.
And best actress went
to Jessica Chastain of Zero Dark Thirty, a movie that has been vilified for propagandizing
the use of torture.
***
The Military
Industrial Intelligence Complex is playing a more and more pervasive role in
our lives. In the next few years we’ll be seeing movies that focus on the use
of drone technology in police and spy work in the USA. We’ve already been
seeing movies that show how spies can violate every aspect of our privacy– of
the most intimate parts of our lives. By making movies and TV series that
celebrate these cancerous extensions of the police state Hollywood and the big studios
are normalizing the ideas they present us with– lying to the public, routinely
creating fraudulent stories as covers for what’s really going on. (Rob Kall
cited in Washington’s Blog, The CIA and Other Government Agencies
Dominate Movies and Television)
All these troublesome
Hollywood connections have been examined in an in-depth report Global Research
published in January 2009: Lights, Camera... Covert Action: The
Deep Politics of Hollywood. The article lists a great number of
movies in part scripted for propaganda purposes by the Defense Department, the
CIA and other government agencies. It is interesting to note that this year’s
Oscar-winning director Ben Affleck cooperated with the CIA in 2002 as he starred
in The Sum of All Fears.
Authors Matthew
Alford and Robbie Graham explain that compared to the CIA, the Department of
Defense “has an ‘open’ but barely publicized relationship with Tinsel Town”
which, “whilst morally dubious and barely advertised, has at least occurred
within the public domain.” Alford and Graham cite a 1991 CIA report revealing
the sprawling influence of the agency, not only in the movie business but also
in the media where it “has relationships with reporters from every major wire
service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation.” It was
not until 1996 that the CIA announced it “would now openly collaborate on
Hollywood productions, supposedly in a strictly ‘advisory’ capacity”:
The Agency’s decision
to work publicly with Hollywood was preceded by the 1991 “Task Force Report on
Greater CIA Openness,” compiled by CIA Director Robert Gates’ newly appointed
‘Openness Task Force,’ which secretly debated –ironically– whether the Agency
should be less secretive. The report acknowledges that the CIA “now has
relationships with reporters from every major wire service, newspaper, news
weekly, and television network in the nation,” and the authors of the report
note that this helped them “turn some ‘intelligence failure’ stories into
‘intelligence success’ stories, and has contributed to the accuracy of
countless others.” It goes on to reveal that the CIA has in the past “persuaded
reporters to postpone, change, hold, or even scrap stories that could have
adversely affected national security interests,"
Espionage novelist
Tom Clancy has enjoyed an especially close relationship with the CIA. In 1984,
Clancy was invited to Langley after writing The Hunt for Red October,
which was later turned into the 1990 film. The Agency invited him again when he
was working on Patriot Games(1992), and the movie adaptation was, in
turn, granted access to Langley facilities. More recently,The Sum of
All Fears (2002) depicted the CIA as tracking down terrorists who detonate
a nuclear weapon on US soil. For this production, CIA director George Tenet
gave the filmmakers a personal tour of the Langley HQ; the film’s star, Ben
Affleck also consulted with Agency analysts, and Chase Brandon served as on-set
advisor.
The real reasons for
the CIA adopting an “advisory” role on all of these productions are thrown into
sharp relief by a solitary comment from former Associate General Counsel to the
CIA, Paul Kelbaugh. In 2007, whilst at a College in Virginia, Kelbaugh delivered
a lecture on the CIA’s relationship with Hollywood, at which a local journalist
was present. The journalist (who now wishes to remain anonymous) wrote a review
of the lecture which related Kelbaugh’s discussion of the 2003 thriller The
Recruit, starring Al Pacino. The review noted that, according to Kelbaugh,
a CIA agent was on set for the duration of the shoot under the guise of a
consultant, but that his real job was to misdirect the filmmakers, the
journalist quoted Kelbaugh as saying [...] Kelbaugh emphatically denied having
made the public statement. (Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham, Lights, Camera... Covert Action: The
Deep Politics of Hollywood)
During the Cold War
the CIA’s Psychological Strategy Board (PSB) agent Luigi G. Luraschi was a
Paramount executive. He “had secured the agreement of several casting directors
to subtly plant ‘well dressed negroes’ into films, including ‘a dignified negro
butler’ who has lines ‘indicating he is a free man’”. The purpose of these changes
was “to hamper the Soviets’ ability to exploit its enemy’s poor record in race
relations and served to create a peculiarly anodyne impression of America,
which was, at that time, still mired in an era of racial segregation.” (Ibid.)
The latest award-winning
movie productions show that the Manichean view of the world put forward by the
US foreign policy agenda has not changed since the Cold War. The Hollywood-CIA
alliance is alive and well and still portrays America as the “leader of the
free world” fighting “evil” around the world:
The interlocking of
Hollywood and national security apparatuses remains as tight as ever: ex-CIA
agent Bob Baer told us, “There’s a symbiosis between the CIA and Hollywood”
[...] Baer’s claims are given weight by the Sun Valley meetings, annual
get-togethers in Idaho’s Sun Valley in which several hundred of the biggest
names in American media –including every major Hollywood studio executive–
convene to discuss collective media strategy for the coming year. (Ibid.)
Global Research
offers its readers a list of articles on this topic.
Contrary
to the Hollywood film industry, Global Research is not subject to any influence
from the US intelligence apparatus and works to provide you the truth rather
than fiction and propaganda.
We
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Patrick Henningsen,
Soraya
Sepahpour-Ulrich
Harry V. Martin,
Rob
Kall cited inWashington’s Blog, The CIA and Other Government Agencies
Dominate Movies and Television.
Marjorie Cohn,
Matthew Alford and
Robbie Graham,
Copyright © 2013
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