Rich Klein

Michael Bay is well known for working closely with government agencies when making his films, mostly the Pentagon but also...

Michael Bay is well known for working closely with government agencies when making his films, mostly the Pentagon but also...

The soft reboot of the political drama Designated Survivor recently dropped on Netflix and in spite of Kiefer Sutherland making...

The soft reboot of the political drama Designated Survivor recently dropped on Netflix and in spite of Kiefer Sutherland making...

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.

Richard Klein is one of the most important people in the entertainment industry that you have never heard of - a former State Department employee who now works for McLarty Associates - an elite Washington DC law firm - as their liaison to Hollywood. Klein has worked with most of the major studios on some of the biggest film series, from Transformers to James Bond to Fast & Furious, alongside government agencies on both sides of the Atlantic including the CIA.

One of the most prominent influences of pop culture on government and on the deep state is in the use of code names. From the capture of Saddam Hussein to a counter-smuggling helicopter unit in Hawaii, from a mass surveillance program named after Blazing Saddles to Secret Service and MI5 code names taken from cartoon characters, this is a widespread and frequent phenomenon.