Aaron Franz joins us to discuss the 2002 biopic Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which tells the story of game show producer and host Chuck Barris. Barris claims that while becoming a TV star he was recruited by and worked for the CIA as an assassin, killing a total of 33 people. In this episode we analyse this claim, which has been dismissed by the Agency as a ludicrous fantasy.
Graham Greene was one of the most important novelists of the 20th century, and one of the greatest spy novelists of all time. He also holds the dubious honour of having worked for MI6 during WW2 but being spied on by the FBI as a suspected Communist. Few spies have FBI files, so Greene is in a very small and distinct club. The FBI records cover over a decade during the early Cold War, and Greene himself wrote a response to them. (Read more...)
Tom Clancy's books are known for their technical accuracy, their political realism and their curious ability to foreshadow future events. In this episode we explore his government connections - to the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and the White House. We examine whether these connections are what enabled Clancy to write such prophetic fiction, and the impact of that on his readers.
Tom Clancy was one of the most popular spy authors of all time, but was he a spy himself? What are the nature of his government connections? How were the film adaptations of his novels supported by the Pentagon and the CIA? What script changes were made by the DOD in exchange for their support? In Part I of this two-part podcast we examine five Tom Clancy films - The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.
Jack Valenti was present at the JFK assassination and became a close aide to Lyndon Johnson before being made head of the Motion Picture Association of America. Valenti's lengthy FBI file - which I will be writing on in several parts - details his White House career, investigations into both his mob ties and allegations of sexual perversion, some hints towards his CIA connections as well as some of his nearly 40 years at the MPAA.
I recently had the pleasure of previewing The Secret Garden - an independently made spy thriller. The film is inspired by the short story The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges, but transplants the themes and existential quandaries of that story into a CIA Cold War setting. While some recent films contain sequences where the characters dwell on the moral and psychological torment of espionage, in The Secret Garden this is as much a part of the story as nuclear terrorism.
Tom Clancy was one of the best selling spy authors of all time, known not only for his technical accuracy - gleaned through extensive government contacts - but also for an uncanny ability to predict the future. Part of his FBI file was released in 2014 but in recent weeks another section has been made available.
In the wake of the scandal over the CIA giving classified information to the makers of Zero Dark Thirty the Agency's Office of the Inspector General carried out an audit into their involvement in the entertainment industry. The report heavily criticises the CIA's entertainment liaison office for terrible record keeping and a very casual culture.
