The relationship between intelligence agencies and the entertainment industry is complex and multi-faceted. Angles include the influence of the agencies on their own public image, the influence of entertainment on the agencies, and intelligence-gathering by those agencies on the culture industry.
In 1998 retired FBI deputy director Cartha DeLoach was asked by the producers of The X-Files to review the script for an episode of the show that was set in the 1950s. The FBI recently released DeLoach's response to the producers, where he branded t
In my latest article for Shadowproof I examine the FBI's role in the Mark Felt biopic Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House. Using documents obtained under FOIA and an interview with Ed Gray, the son of FBI acting director Pat Gray (who is depicted in Mark Felt) I
The 2010 thriller Unthinkable courted controversy by depicting the torture of a suspected terrorist who claims to have planted nuclear bombs in three US cities.
Little Mizz Innocent has been languishing in development hell for several years as the 'female Jason Bourne movie' has struggled to get into production.
In late 2009 the FBI got wind of the fact that Martin Scorcese was developing The Wolf of Wall Street, about stock fraudster turned federal cooperator Jordan Belfort. So the Bureau's Michael Kortan wrote to Scorcese to offer their help and supp
Public Enemies is a 2009 historical drama/thriller film that tells the story of the Bureau of Investigation’s manhunt for Public Enemy Number One John Dillinger. In this episode I examine the film, the politics of crime and the romanticising of criminals.
Just like other government agencies the FBI are deeply involved in the entertainment industry, collaborating with film andTV producers to polish the Bureau’s public imageand project their messaging into the minds of moviegoers.
The FBI recently released a tranche of documents on the USA Network TV series Burn Notice.
Anwar al Awlaki rose to notoriety in the 2000s as a leading internet jihadist whose lectures and videos were very popular among the emerging Islamist movement.
Compared to the DOD, the US intelligence agencies support a more politically diverse range of movies, from the hi-tech surveillance thriller Enemy of the State to torture porn like Zero Dark Thirty and Unthinkable. One such controversial movie was Shooter, which depicts a deep state element framing a Vietnam veteran fo
Missy Peregrym and Zeeko Zaki, two of the stars of the CBS drama FBI were asked about the government shutdown this week, and responded with a statement that sounds like it was written by the FBI's Investigative Publicity and Public Affairs Unit.
In our latest article, Matt and I reflect on two of the most common claims made about National Security Cinema, namely 1) That the government is really important in making movies more militaristic and 2) That Hollywood doesn’t produce dissenting films.
Nazis make the perfect Hollywood villains – instantly recognisable, obviously deplorable and easy to recreate. So why were there no anti-Nazi films until 1939, on the eve of World War 2?
The Spook Who Sat by the Door tells the story of the first African-American to be recruited by the CIA. After becoming disillusioned with the Agency he quits and sets up a black power guerilla army that wages urban war across the United States.
The FBI got back to me recently with a response to my request on The Spook Who Sat by the Door, including a few pages from Sam Greenlee's FBI file, which they'd previously claimed they could not find.
Sam Greenlee is perhaps most famous for writing the novel The Spook Who Sat By the Door, which was adapted into a film in the 1970s. Greenlee believed that the CIA and FBI suppressed the film because it portrayed them in such a bad light, and promoted b
In September 1977 the renowned Hollywood gossip columnist Rona Barrett appeared on Good Morning America to talk about spy films. Sat alongside her was CIA director Stansfield Turner, who commented that Hollywood movies would make poor training films for CIA spies.
The story of the relationship between Disney and the various branches and agencies of the US government is long and complex. A recently uncovered memo adds one more episode to the relationship between Disney and the CIA, and revolves around a question that was critical for national security: How would
The pain of 9/11 remains unresolved because the crime of 9/11 remains unsolved.
Mark Felt is a 2017 biopic starring Liam Neeson as FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt, telling the story of his role in becoming a source for the Washington Post's reporting on Watergate.
[audio mp3="http://www.corbettreport.com/mp3/2018-09-06%20James%20Evan%20Pilato.mp3"][/audio]This week on the New World Next Week: US gov terrorists have 9/11 first responder blood on their hands; US plans to obliterate USSR and China declassified; and the New Mexico Compound story continues to get weirder.Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House is a 2017 biopic of former deputy director Mark Felt a.k.a.
The FBI’s entertainment liaison office has supported a wide range of Hollywood productions, from conspir
The Weather Underground were the most active and successful militant left-wing group in US history. As part of their anti-Vietnam war operations they bombed the Pentagon, the State Department, corporate headquarters and other high-profile targets.
[audio mp3="http://www.corbettreport.com/mp3/2018-07-26%20James%20Evan%20Pilato.mp3"][/audio]This week on the New World Next Week: the FBI have their hands all over the Taos compound story; Iran (and China) fire back at US sanctions; and the Club of Rome recycles 45 year old Armageddon propaganda.
The Weather Underground were the most successful Leftist militant group in history, a radical offshoot of the SDS and the anti-Vietnam War movement. As a result, Hollywood has almost no interest in telling stories about them and the only recent 
Alfred Hitchcock virtually invented the spy movie genre, and made a career making films about murder, intrigue, cover-ups, suspense and spies. He suspected that he was under FBI surveillance during the production of Notorious, but the release file only covers a later period. Rather than be
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.
The Untouchables TV series (1959-63) was the first of its kind – a police procedural with explicit violence and action. Up until the
[audio mp3="https://www.corbettreport.com/mp3/episode336-lq.mp3"][/audio]Television has taught us that the crack CSI experts and their state-of-the-art technology can solve any crime through the power of science. In reality, more often than not the crime-detection technology of the past has turned out to be pseudoscience at best, and outright fraud at worst. And, of course, it has been used to put innocent people in jail.