Documents

In early 1997 the Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen Charles Krulak issued an order authorising the use of video...

The post US Marine Corps Order on Using Video Games for Military Training first appeared on Spy Culture.

The new season of Amazon’s Jack Ryan just came out, and much like previous seasons it benefited from large scale...

The post Jack Ryan Season 3 got Government Support from Everyone first appeared on Spy Culture.

Anyone who has followed the CIA’s relationship with the entertainment business will be familiar with the 2003 thriller The Recruit. ...

The post Is Netflix’s The Recruit Sponsored by the CIA? first appeared on Spy Culture.

The military-Marvel relationship has waxed and waned over the years, but 2019’s Captain Marvel was a high point – a...

The post The US Military’s Captain Marvel Documents first appeared on Spy Culture.

The Office of War Information’s Bureau of Motion Pictures was the US government’s first formal office for liaising with Hollywood...

The post ‘The Enemy is Militarism’ – Office of War Information Manual for Film Makers first appeared on Spy Culture.

Steven Spielberg’s 2005 alien invasion adventure War of the Worlds helped kick off the recent string of military-supported extraterrestrial war...

The post How the US Military Rewrote War of the Worlds first appeared on Spy Culture.

The story of how an FBI assistant director for public affairs wrote to Ruthless Records to complaint about Straight Outta...

The post That Time the FBI Wrote a Letter of Complaint to N.W.A. first appeared on Spy Culture.

There I was, innocently digging through some 1970s entertainment liaison office reports from the US Marine Corps when all of...

The post The US Marine Corps and The Cat From Outer Space first appeared on Spy Culture.

Jerry Bruckheimer has a long history of working with the Pentagon, going all the way back to Top Gun, but...

The post ‘This is not the time’ to normalise black operations – Phil Strub email on Bad Boys II first appeared on Spy Culture.

75 years ago this week, President Harry Truman signed into law the National Security Act, which brought into being the...

The post The National Security Act Turns 75 – and so do the US Military’s Entertainment Liaison Offices first appeared on Spy Culture.

In September 2018 the US Air Force ran a tour of Special Operations Command for a dozen Hollywood bigshots.  The...

The post AFSOC and the Swag Bag Controversy first appeared on Spy Culture.

In 2015, legendary TV producer Dick Wolf approached the FBI about developing scripted and unscripted products based around the Bureau. ...

The post “I Would Like to See a Show that Makes Every Boy and Girl Want to be an FBI agent” – James Comey first appeared on Spy Culture.

While digging into the production of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent I contacted the Croatian Ministry of Culture for...

The post No Porn, No Sitcoms and No Soap Operas: The Croatian Ministry of Culture’s Rules first appeared on Spy Culture.

Among the numerous agencies who vetted and reviewed the script for the 1994 film adaptation of Tom Clancy’s Clear and...

The post The President Cannot be Racist – FBI File on Clear and Present Danger first appeared on Spy Culture.

One of the recurring propaganda techniques identified by Roger Stahl in Theaters of War is that you can remediate military...

The post In Hollywood, You’re More Likely to be Rescued by the CIA and the Pentagon than by an Ambulance first appeared on Spy Culture.

Three years ago, when the third and final season of Designated Survivor came out on Netflix, I said the show...

The post CIA Confirm Months-Long Relationship with Producers of Designated Survivor first appeared on Spy Culture.

In my latest piece for Shadowproof I outline the production history of Top Gun: Maverick, using documents from the Pentagon,...

The post How the Pentagon Shaped Top Gun: Maverick into a PR Vehicle first appeared on Spy Culture.

The 1995 nuclear submarine mutiny thriller Crimson Tide was rejected by the US Navy, for fairly obvious reasons (the whole...

The post ‘We Don’t Request Script Changes’ – US Navy File on Crimson Tide first appeared on Spy Culture.

In the first of a series of releases, the FBI sent me some of their historical files on working with...

The post You Can’t Get Away With It – The First Film to Star J Edgar Hoover first appeared on Spy Culture.

Something I recently stumbled on while researching the 2011 terrorism sci-fi thriller Source Code is a batch of contracts between...

The post In Hollywood the Metro Trains Have to Run on Time – Even if You’re Blowing Them Up first appeared on Spy Culture.