Dennis Rodman's visit to North Korea in early 2013 sent shock waves through the international media and inspired a CIA-supported Hollywood film about assassinating Kim Jong-Un. It also drew the attention of the US State Department, who recently released cables about Rodman's trip, though they are highly classified and heavily redacted.
The Untouchables TV series (1959-63) was the first of its kind – a police procedural with explicit violence and action. Up until then most detective stories focused on the investigation, but The Untouchables featured the gunfights and car chases that became staples of the genre by the 1970s. It was also subject to investigation by […](Read more...)
Remote mind control, facial recognition tests and space miner trillionaires + this day in history w/Hubble Space Telescope launch and our song of the day by Girl Talk on your Morning Monarchy for April 24, 2018.
Newly released documents in the JFK files have cast fresh light on the CIA’s plots to kill Fidel Castro. One interview with William Harvey – known as ‘America’s James Bond’, reveals that Robert Kennedy invoked 007 while trying to urge the Agency forward in its anti-Castro operations. William King Harvey joined the CIA after being […](Read more...)
A recently released document from the JFK files has confirmed an old rumour: that the CIA helped arrange the affair between actress Susan Cabot and King Hussein of Jordan. The memo records how the man directly involved was the CIA’s on-the-ground fixer in Hollywood, Robert Maheu. The Affair Cabot was a well-known B-movie starlet who […](Read more...)
Leaked documents from JTRIG (the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group) show that GCHQ's operations are not only bigger, more invasive and more manipulative than previously realised, but also that they name their tools and techniques after films, TV shows and even genres of music. (Read more...)
Just as with James Bond and Ian Fleming, the CIA’s CREST database is littered with reference to Tom Clancy. In preparation for this weekend’s podcast I put together a collection of over 100 pages of internal Agency memos and open source records that record Clancy’s relationship with the CIA for several years after the publication […](Read more...)
In 1987, as part of a typical politician’s attempts to seem down with the kids, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did an interview with the pop magazine Smash Hits. There was just one problem: Thatcher knew absolutely nothing about pop music, or anything even close. So her advisors drew up a briefing, including a brief […](Read more...)
Officially, the Science and Entertainment Exchange (or SEEX) is the outreach program of the National Academy of Sciences – a non-governmental, non-partisan, non-profit honorific body who give awards and the like. In reality it is a government-funded entertainment liaison office who work closely with the military to help them accomplish their aims. A full account […](Read more...)
Tom Clancy was a good friend of US intelligence. After the publication of his enormously successful Hunt for Red October in 1984, he was repeatedly invited to speak at the CIA, NSA and FBI. The CIA even paid him a $500 honourarium for his ‘performance’ for speaking at Langley in 1986 – but Clancy gave […](Read more...)
