Tom Secker and I recently sat down to talk with Ed Opperman all about Matt Alford’s new book The Writer With No Hands. The book deals with the bizarre “death” of Hollywood screenwriter Gary Devore and his mysterious links to the CIA. We also talk about the second season of The CIA and Hollywood, and some recent Jeffrey Epstein developments.
Show Notes:
From Tom Secker’s site, SpyCulture.com (and by extension, Pearse’s site Porkin’s Policy Review): “Jay Dyer joins us for this episode where we analyse the 2009 comedy The Men Who Stare at Goats, loosely based on Jon Ronson’s book of the same name. It tells the story of a journalist who is inducted into the world of psychic soldiers during the Iraq war. The movie goes on to explain some of the history behind the First Earth Battalion, an experimental Pentagon uni
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.
We welcome Ed Opperman to the series and discuss the 2005 docudrama Good Night, and Good Luck which retells the story of the 1954 confrontation between senator Joe McCarthy and television journalist Ed Murrow of CBS. McCarthy was pursuing Communists within the State Department and other government agencies and innocent people were getting caught in the crossfire, creating a climate of suspicion, mistrust and hostility.
In this first episode of the new season Pearse and I discuss the 1958 spy drama The Quiet American, adapted from the novel by Graham Greene. We focus in on the role of Air Force and CIA officer Ed Lansdale’s relationship with the film-maker Joseph Mankiewicz, and how the CIA were involved in assisting Mankiewicz the first major American movie to be filmed in Vietnam. Mankiewicz met Lansdale in Vietnam while doing research for the movie and, apparently unaware that Lansdale is one of the inspirations for the Pyle character in the original book, befriended him. Lansdale later reviewed the
I recently had the pleasure of joining Robbie Martin on Media Roots Radio. We discussed The CIA and Hollywood series and the upcoming second season. I also discuss Newsbud and all the amazing things you can look forward to with this new media platform.
Jacob Appelbaum is a journalist, hacker and a major developer on the TOR project. However, he neglects to mention the origins of TOR (the Office of Naval Research) or the Pentagon's role in funding its development. In this episode I reflect on whether Appelbaum should be taken seriously as an advocate for an open society free from mass surveillance. Using a recent presentation by Appelbaum I explore how his proposed solutions and means of circumventing surveillance technology are exactly the reason why a politics of anti-surveillance is unlikely to emerge from the hacker culture.
