In the second of my subscriber-only reviews of The Wire I look at season 2. Focusing on smuggling through the port of Baltimore this season explores how capitalism has evolved to a post-industrial phase dominated by service industries like sex and drugs, how investigating sex slavery is relegated behind lesser crimes, and the parallels between […](Read more...)
This is part 1 of a new subscriber-only review series where I talk about The Wire. In this episode I discuss some of the recurring themes – the war on drugs, the failed police tactics, the dirty money trail – along with the complex metaphysics of the show. I talk about some of my favourite […](Read more...)
Just as politicians start to believe their own speeches, intelligence agencies start to believe their own propaganda. Nowhere is this clearer than in the CIA's black stite torture program initiated in the wake of 9/11. Recently declassified documents detailing current CIA director Gina Haspel's role in the torture program show that the Agency adopted the '24 mentality' whereby they excused their crimes via claiming to stop imminent terrorist plots.
The new Amazon series Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan is the first TV show to film at CIA headquarters for several years, in keeping with the Agency’s long-time support for adaptations of Clancy’s work. In this episode I review and analyse the series, including the inevitable references to 9/11, the hallmarks of CIA input on the script and the question of whether the series acts as revenge fantasy for Islamist terrorists.(Read more...)
The CIA’s Office of Public Affairs (OPA) was established in the late 1970s and contains their entertainment liaison office. This week I go through an 8-page summary of the CIA’s Entertainment Liaison and Media Outreach activities covering 2014-16. This includes their relationships with journalists, their involvement in entertainment such as the Benghazi movie 13 Hours, and their relationship with deep state lawyer and Hollywood consultant Rich Klein.
The CIA's Office of Public Affairs is - ironically - very tight-lipped about what they actually do, so I was pleased that they recently responded to a 3 year old FOIA request and provided me with a document summarising their activities from 2014 to 2016. This includes numerous meetings with journalists, facilitating tours of CIA headquarters for Hollywood stars and helping to rewrite the Benghazi movie 13 Hours and one of the Ghost Recon video games.
Condor is a TV reboot of Three Days of the Condor, and centres around a CIA officer who goes on the run after he is framed for killing 11 of his colleagues. In this episode I examine whether Condor was CIA-sponsored, why the Agency might support a series that shows them planning massive crimes, and […](Read more...)
For movie censors, crime is perhaps the most complex issue to make decisions about. They want the public to be alert to the possibility of crimes happening, and respectful of law enforcement institutions. But entertainers and audiences want dramatic, ambiguous villains and stories of institutional corruption and hubris.
While most entertainment supports or promote the military, police and intelligence agencies there is a smaller but important sub-genre that critiques and satirises the security state. On this month’s subscriber-only podcast I look at four examples – two TV series and two films – that mock and criticise the security and intelligence agencies. From Snake […](Read more...)
