SITE

In the five years running up to 9/11 the NSA were monitoring Osama Bin Laden's satellite phone and Al Qaeda's communication hub, and the CIA were closely following their key operatives, including to the so-called '9/11 summit' in Malaysia. So why didn't they prevent the attacks?

In June 2016 the Pentagon repealed a ban on openly transgender people serving in the US military. A year later and Tzar Trump I has reinstated the ban, causing a panic among the liberal Left for whom the right of transgender people to kill innocent civilians in foreign countries is more important than the right of those people to not be killed. From my perspective, less people in the military is a good thing, regardless of whether they consider themselves male, female or anything else.

Chris Cook had me as a guest on Gorilla Radio recently to talk about National Security Cinema, how modern military propaganda is different to that of the WW2 era, how widespread militarised pop culture has become, how the government rewrites and censors films, and why s

Good friend Aaron invited Matt and I on his show to discuss our new book National Security Cinema.

On August 7th 1998 two almost identical truck bombs exploded outside the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In this episode we look at the embassy bombings, their genesis and consequences. From the role of triple agent Ali Mohamed to the absurd circumstances of the explosion in Nairobi, this story reflects much of what we saw with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Robbie Martin invited Matt and I onto Media Roots to talk about our new book National Security Cinema. We discussed a lot of the core material - the scripts changes and political censorship enforced by the Pentagon and CIA - we spent much of this discussion looking at the industry as a whole and the dynamics that allow the government to operate in this way.

Hrvoje Moric invited me onto his podcast Geopolitics and Empire to talk about our new book National Security Cinema.  We get into the difficulties of researching this topic, how Matt and I managed to break through the veil of secrecy to make public this information about government manipulation of Hollywood, and the impact of entertainment […](Read more...)

Doug McKenty of The Shift invited me on his show to talk about my new book National Security Cinema.

The Al Qaeda training manual ‘Military Studies in Jihad Against the Tyrants’ is one of the most important documents in the history of the terrorist gang. Perhaps more than any other artefact it encompasses the absurd contradictions of the War on Terror – people have been convicted for owning a copy, but for years it was available on the Justice Department’s website and on Amazon.

While Hollywood is generally supportive of the government - and of the military in particular - the Pentagon faces a problem. In order to stand out from the crowd and make their screenplays a bit different to the usual schlock, screenwriters like to include subversive elements and aspects, even in films that are broadly in favour of institutions like the Department of Defense and the CIA.