SITE

Richard Whiteley is best known for presenting the popular afternoon quiz show Countdown, and Ricky Tomlinson is best known for starring in the popular sitcom The Royle Family. Back in the 1970s things were very different. This week we examine Tomlinson's recent allegation that Whiteley was a 'member' of the security services, due to his role presenting an 1973 documentary that influenced the trial of the Shrewsbury 24 - including Tomlinson.

I recently acquired some decades-old Pentagon directives and instructions. These documents formed the basis for DOD policy in their engagement with the entertainment industry, establishing a range of conflicting criteria for the military's liaisons with film and TV producers.

It is with some pride that I can announce that the American Journal of Economics and Sociology has today published an edition featuring not just one, not just one and a half but two articles that I wrote.

In this month’s subscriber podcast I talk about the Pentagon’s database on their collaboration with Hollywood – what it is, how I got it and what it contains. I highlight some of the more provocative and politically relevant entries and provide details on how the Pentagon rewrote elements of films such as Forrest Gump and […](Read more...)

This week I joined Pearse on his radio show to revisit the 1993 WTC bombing, in light of the recent anniversary and the death of former CIA asset the Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. (Read more...)

While I have written about 1973 thriller Scorpio before, documents made available on the CIA CREST database shed new light on this, the first movie to film at Langley. The CIA were not just spying on media coverage of the film as it developed but also had assets within the MPAA keeping an eye on things.(Read more...)

Pearse and I were recently invited onto Black Op Radio with Len Osanic to talk about The CIA and Hollywood. We mostly discussed Ed Lansdale's involvement in The Quiet American (1958), which butchered the original book in part as a result of Lansdale's influence on writer/director Joseph Mankiewicz.

In 1953, in the early weeks of the Eisenhower administration, the CIA conducted an operation to alter the content of Hollywood films to help promote positive images of America to foreign audiences.

Nightcrawler is one of those rare films that is beautifully written, very well executed and is about something that actually matters. It tells the story of Lou Bloom, a young man in poverty-struck Los Angeles who gets into nightcrawling - filming violent crimes and accidents and selling the footage to TV news.

Die Another Day is widely considered to be one of the worst James Bond films ever made. It's the one with the invisible car in the ice cave and Halle Berry. The production got limited supported from the US Marine Corps, who recently released a short folder to me from their entertainment liaison office archive.
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