Movies you might like..

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Movies you might like..

Postby OpLan » Tue Aug 01, 2006 3:59 am

Check out the new <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.theufomovie.com/" target="top">ufo movie</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <br><br>I can't remember how I came across this one,but it's supposedly inspired by Armistead Maupins correspondence with a victim of child abuse.<br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.thenightlistener-movie.com/" target="top">The Night Listener</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>On Video Google,I came across <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1620137662471578899&q=iron+mountain" target="top">Iron Mountain: Blue Print for Tyranny </a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br> Not watched it yet..not even heard of it before.Anyone got an opinion on it? <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Movies you might like..

Postby 4911 » Tue Aug 01, 2006 6:19 am

where was the link that had the Dan Aykroyd: unplugged on UFOs link to it? <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Movies you might like..

Postby xsic bastardx » Tue Aug 01, 2006 6:54 am

<br><br><br> just go to google video and type in Nasa UFO's.....it's fucking awesome. Best UFO video I have EVER seen. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Movies you might like.. the "Road" genre

Postby IanEye » Tue Aug 01, 2006 10:48 am

I would like to mention “The Road to Hong Kong”.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056417/">www.imdb.com/title/tt0056417/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><br>There is a lot going on under the surface of this goofy “Road” movie. Some of the elements present are:<br><br>Mind Control<br><br>Illicit drug trade in Asia in the early 60’s<br> <br>UFOs [that turn out to be craft of a KAOS/SPECTRE type group of Earthlings]<br><br>General theme of Cold War espionage<br><br>Plus, this is the last of the “Road” pics Crosby and Hope made, filmed in 1962 in London the only time a Road pic wasn’t filmed in Hollywood and it comes out the same year as “Dr. No”, the first Connery Bond pic. It is almost like there is a “hand shake” going on in the Entertainment Complex. With Crosby/Hope [and Martin/Sinatra] making room for a more Anglophonic entity [JPG&R] to manifest itself in the American consciousness.<br><br>After this movie came out, Bing Crosby focused on the role of Producer [Hogan's Heroes].<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.hogansheroesfanclub.com/videosBingCrosbyHollywoodPalacePictures.php">www.hogansheroesfanclub.c...ctures.php</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><br>Leaving Hope to journey on the "Road to Viet Nam" by himself (cue feline rolling of rrrrrrrs)<br><br>If all that doesn’t sway you, perhaps the sight of Bing feeding Bob Hope bong hits in order to obtain information from him will “peak” your curiosity……<br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=ianeye@rigorousintuition>IanEye</A> at: 8/1/06 9:32 am<br></i>
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Re: Movies you might like.. the "Road" genre

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Tue Aug 01, 2006 2:29 pm

Wow. That's some spicy Cold War propaganda.<br><br>Even as a kid I knew there was something wrong with a concentration camp with a laugh track. Somebody was pushing something too hard by far.<br><br>Using the aroma of WWII as Uncle Sam Saving the World in subsequent wars is an ongoing campaign. <br><br>Tom Brokaw is now the point man for this Council on Foreign Relations/US State Department spew of Americana about "the greatest generation."<br><br>Thanks for that informative whiff. <p></p><i></i>
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Propaganda

Postby professorpan » Tue Aug 01, 2006 4:40 pm

Yes, Hugh, it's all propaganda. Entertainment does not exist, nor does independent creative thought. <br><br>Do you ever discuss anything else? I'd hate to be stuck in a corner with you at a party. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Propaganda

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:23 pm

Hugh, check out a movie called "ghosts of the civil dead".<br><br>I'd be interested to hear your opinion on that one. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Propaganda

Postby IanEye » Tue Aug 01, 2006 10:17 pm

another "attempt" at Mind Control is the Educational Film "Marijuana" starring Sonny Bono.....<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://imdb.com/title/tt0251221/usercomments">imdb.com/title/tt0251221/usercomments</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.dvdverdict.com/printer/sexanddrugs.php">www.dvdverdict.com/printe...ddrugs.php</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>The Whole "giving Both Sides of an Argument" thing went out with the "Meaning of Life"<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://imdb.com/title/tt0085959/usercomments">imdb.com/title/tt0085959/usercomments</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><br><br>thanks for Reading,<br>ianeye<br><br>PS: just trying to introduce some laughter into the full scale Pornicopia of Insanity that is the Corporate News Cycle?!?!?.......... <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Movies you might like..

Postby MinM » Sat May 04, 2013 10:47 am

Conspiracy Film: Keeper of the Flame

Posted 25 April 2013 - 12:43 PM

In 1942 Donald Ogden Stewart began working with I. A. R. Wylie, who had just published a novel entitled, Keeper of the Flame, that had been inspired by the activities of Charles Lindbergh and the America First Committee. Stewart later recalled: "The Keeper of the Flame was perfectly made for my desire to contribute to an understanding of democracy's war by exposing the danger of un-Americanism within our own gates. The story begins with the five-star funeral in a small town of one of America's favorite sons, someone like, say, General MacArthur. Spencer Tracy is a New York reporter who has been sent to cover the event and attempts in vain to obtain an interview with the widow (played by Katharine Hepburn). Accidently they meet, and he becomes increasingly suspicious that the lady is not telling the true story about her husband's death. Finally he becomes convinced that in some way she was responsible (for the death of her husband)." Eventually she confesses that she had not saved her husband from the accident because "Her husband, the great national hero, had become the spearhead of a plot to overthrow the Roosevelt-like government and substitute a Mussolini-type dictatorship... The backers of this coup were a group in the extension of the power of the people a dangerous challenge to their own type of Free World. The plot had in those days strikingly believable parallels, including Hitler's successful takeover of his country with the backing of Krupp, Thiessen and other powerful Germans."

The film, Keeper of the Flame, directed by George Cukor, was screened for the Office of War Information's Bureau of Motion Pictures on 2nd December, 1942. The Bureau's chief, Lowell Mellett, was unhappy with the picture and disapproved of its anti-capitalist message. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer head Louis B. Mayer, also hated the movie, as he felt it equated wealth with fascism. Stewart claimed that Meyer "walked out in a fury" of the New York City premiere "when he discovered, apparently for the first time, when the picture was really about". Republican Party members of Congress complained about the film's left-wing message and demanded that Will H. Hays, President of the Motion Picture Production Code, establish guidelines regarding propagandization for the motion picture industry.

Stewart regarded Keeper of the Flame as "the most radical film of his that Hollywood could accept. The authors of Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story Behind America's Favorite Movies (2002) have pointed out: "Keeper of the Flame is a brilliant and badly underrated film, not only because Tracy draws out Hepburn step by step, raising her confidence in herself rather than breaking her down, but also because the familiar idea of rich and ruthless totalitarians attains here as high a statement ever made in a major film." Martha Nochimson, has argued in Screen Couple Chemistry (2002) that the film is a "truly provocative in that it was one of Hollywood's few forays into imagining the possibility of homegrown American Fascism and the crucial damage which can be done to individual rights when inhumane and tyrannical ideas sweep a society through a charismatic leader."

After the war the the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began investigating the entertainment industry. Attention was drawn towards Keeper of the Flame and by 1950 David Ogden Stewart was blacklisted. Unable to work in Hollywood he moved to London. As a result his passport was taken away and was unable to return to the United States. He died in London on 2nd August, 1980.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... opic=20151

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Re: Movies you might like.. the "Road" genre

Postby MinM » Sat May 04, 2013 11:41 am

If the NYTimes were ever inclined to pay homage to a piece of psynematic™ propaganda it might look something like this:
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Book about the movie ‘The Searchers,’ by Glenn Frankel

There are a few Hollywood movies so thematically rich and so historically resonant they may be considered part of American literature. “The Searchers” is one.


In his vivid, revelatory account of John Ford’s 1956 masterpiece, Glenn Frankel, whose reporting from the Middle East for The Washington Post won him a Pulitzer Prize, writes that “The Searchers” may be “the greatest Hollywood film that few people have seen.” Perhaps that should be “have really seen.” Constantly televised, frequently revived, readily available on DVD, “The Searchers” has never been hard to find; still, the subject this most troubling of movies addresses is an inducement to denial.

Like a modernist drama, “The Searchers” opens on a void, in this case an empty stretch of Texas: an angry loner returns to his family after a long absence. A day or two later, they are massacred by Comanche raiders. He spends the next seven years in dogged pursuit, seeking revenge and the young niece taken captive, but when he realizes the child has come of age as an Indian woman, his objective shifts. He seeks not to rescue her but to murder her. This, briefly, is the plot of what, in its return to the genre’s root issues, is the most radical western ever made.

“The Searchers” was adapted from a novel by Alan LeMay that was inspired by the case of Cynthia Ann Parker; in 1836, she was abducted at age 9 by Comanches who slaughtered her family before her eyes. The underlying story is even older: dating back to the 17th century, memoirs of white women held captive by Indians are the original indigenous American narrative. Frankel notes that the year Cynthia Ann was taken, three of America’s four best-selling novels were by James Fenimore Cooper, with captivity figuring in all; the fourth was the true story of a settler woman who, captured by the Seneca Indians, married into the tribe, had seven children and refused to rejoin white civilization.

Just as relevant, although Frankel doesn’t mention it, was one of the most popular American melodramas of the first half of the 19th century, Robert Bird’s “Nick of the Woods” — published a year after Cynthia Ann disappeared into the wastes of Comancheria. After the hero’s family is massacred, he declares war on all Indians, determined to murder as many as he can. This tenacity is comparable to that of Cynthia Ann’s Indian-­hating uncle James Parker, an original Texas Ranger who spent eight years searching for her. Meanwhile, Cynthia Ann became a Comanche bride and gave birth to three children. Twenty-four years after her abduction, she was recaptured along with her infant daughter. The man credited with rescuing her went on to serve two terms as governor of Texas; the captive, however, was unwilling and unable to readjust to white society. Her daughter died of smallpox (though there are differing versions of the story), and longing for her lost sons, Cynthia Ann followed.

Frankel calls the Comanches “the most relentless and feared war machine in the Southwest.” In his graphic account, the atrocity-filled death match between Texan settlers and Indians escalated from disputes over horses and hunting rights into “the most protracted conflict ever waged on American soil, a 40-year blood feud between two alien civilizations” — a struggle that was personified by the twice-­abducted and permanently traumatized Cynthia Ann Parker. Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, her story became the stuff of operas and melodramas. In 1936, her white relatives and Comanche descendants gathered to re-enact her kidnapping and subsequent recapture.

As detailed by Frankel, Cynthia Ann’s son Quanah was a remarkable figure in his own right. Quanah was a Comanche war chief who, after reaching an accord with the whites, would be “the most important and influential Native American of his generation,” a man whose dinner guests ranged from Geronimo to Theodore Roosevelt. Nevertheless, when LeMay began researching his book, he was less interested in Cynthia Ann (or Quanah) than in the obsessed, long-forgotten uncle who had devoted years to chasing her memory. “The Searchers” (1954), LeMay’s 13th novel, was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post and sold more than 14,000 copies in hardcover. President Eisenhower read it; so did John Ford.

Ford, by Frankel’s unsentimental account, was a drunk and a bully, a political opportunist and a genius who, according to his assistant director, “shoots a picture in his mind before he ever turns on a camera.” Before filming began in June 1955, Ford announced that his new western would be a “psychological epic.” Indeed, “The Searchers” is steeped in pathology — not just the director’s, but ours. No American movie has ever so directly addressed the psychosexual underpinnings of racism or advanced a protagonist so consumed by race hatred.

Raising the stakes, Ford’s savagely driven Ethan Edwards was played by Hollywood’s reigning male star and most outspoken anti-Communist, John Wayne. As I’ve written elsewhere, “Ethan takes America’s sins — racism, cruelty, violence, intolerance — onto himself.” He is at once hero and villain, perhaps even a saint in his mad, essentially selfless quest. At least that’s how it looks in retrospect. Ford’s biographer Joseph McBride tells Frankel that when “The Searchers” opened in the spring of 1956, “racism was so endemic in our culture that people didn’t even notice it. They treated Wayne as a conventional western hero.”

However misunderstood, “The Searchers” was hardly unappreciated. The New York Herald Tribune termed the movie “distinguished”; Newsweek deemed it “remarkable.” Look described “The Searchers” as a “Homeric odyssey.” The New York Times praised Wayne’s performance as “uncommonly commanding,” and The Los Angeles Times would note the actor’s unusually favorable reviews in the Eastern press. The movie was a hit, tied with “Rebel Without a Cause” as the year’s 11th top box-office attraction.

Only Ford’s fans were made uneasy by the film’s rambling plot and unpleasant protagonist. Writing in the British journal Sight and Sound, the future director Lindsay Anderson objected to the hero’s character: Ethan Edwards was “an unmistakable neurotic, devoured by an irrational hatred of Indians.” It was another future director, Jean-Luc Godard, who was likely the first to regard “The Searchers” as a masterpiece. In a 1959 Cahiers du Cinéma essay, Godard compared the movie’s ending to “Ulysses being reunited with Telemachus”; in 1963, he called it the fourth-greatest American sound film.

In the United States, the critical re-­evaluation of “The Searchers” coincided with America’s Indochinese adventure. A generation, more or less Frankel’s, grew up in a world saturated with westerns, and many took the genre as a metaphor with which to understand the historical and psychological basis of the Vietnam War. (In order to save his despoiled and brainwashed niece, Ethan — or rather John Wayne — believes he must destroy her. Better dead than red.) “The Searchers” would be a touchstone for a new wave of Hollywood directors and can be found refracted in some of the most notable ’70s movies, including “Star Wars” and “Taxi Driver.”

It was around this time that Leslie Fied­ler published a slim volume making the case that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” “The Birth of a Nation,” “Gone With the Wind” and “Roots” could be read as a single, multimedia “inadvertent epic” — a story about slavery, race and family that America gave to itself. As framed and enriched by Frankel, “The Searchers” is another such epic; recounting the making of what he calls “an American legend,” he has retold it well.

J. Hoberman is the author, most recently, of “Film After Film: Or, What Became of 21st Century Cinema?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/books ... d=all&_r=0

IanEye wrote:
Luther Blissett wrote:Can someone help me out - what's going on with page 19 of this thread? I'm trying to do some research and I believe that the information about CIA posting desk positions at major studios and news agencies in the mid-20th Century exists on that page. However, whenever I try to browse to that page - or even the information contained on that page in the search results - my browser freezes. Unless someone knows that it exists elsewhere.


this what you are looking for?

viewtopic.php?p=487284#p487284
Spiro C. Thiery wrote:http://www.alexcox.com/blog.htm
TONY SCOTT'S SUICIDE NOTE
2012.10.7

...

According to Saunders, a secret campaign was undertaken by the CIA and Pentagon in 1955, called "Militant Liberty". This was designed to insert the theme of "freedom" into American movies, and to remove any elements which were critical of the United States. In June and July of 1956, representatives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff met with a group of Hollywood acolytes which included John Ford, Merian C . Cooper, John Wayne, and Ward Bond, to promote the illegal domestic propaganda program. A producer named C.V. Whitney, not coincidentally the cousin of CIA agent Tracey Barnes, signed on and made THE SEARCHERS (in the light of which we might view the film as an anti-Communist parable, with "redskins" standing in for "reds").

Saunders also observes that when, in 1946, Ford and Cooper set up their independent production company, Argosy, the principal investors were all intelligence men: William Donovan (former head of the OSS), Ole Doering, David Bruce and William Vanderbilt. C.D. Jackson, a CIA agent and vice president of Time, listed as helpful "friends" Cecil B. DeMille; Spyros P. Skouros and Darryl Zanuck at Fox; Nicholas Shenk, president of MGM; producer Dore Schary; Barney Balaban, president of Paramount; Harry and Jack Warner; James R. Grainger, president of RKO; Milton Rackmil, president of Universal; Harry Cohn, president of Columbia; Herbert Yates, head of Republic Pictures; and, inevitably, Walt and Roy Disney.

If Jackson's claim is true, then all the studios except United Artists were in the CIA's pocket by 1954. But CIA influence didn't stop with studio heads. A CIA agent, Carleton Alsop, worked undercover at Paramount, where he prepared lists of actors and technicians to be blacklisted, ordered script changes, and shut down films of which he disapproved. Alsop was quite powerful: he killed the project GIANT at Paramount because it was unflattering to rich Texans and depicted racism against Mexicans.

How many other studios had in-house CIA censors isn't clear: but it's unlikely that Carleton Alsop worked all alone.

...

Tony Scott, RIP; John Ford; John Wayne; Cecil B. DeMille; Darryl Zanuck; Luigi Luraschi (head of domestic and foreign censorship at Paramount in the 1950s); Joseph Mankiewicz; John Chambers and Bob Sidell (studio makeup men); Jack Myers; David Houle; Scott Valentine (VP of Sony Pictures); Jack Gilardi (ICM agency); Rick Nicita (CAA agency); Ron Meyer (COO of Universal); Matt Corman; Chris Ord; Kristy Swanson; Tim Matheson; Roger and Robert Towne; Tom Berenger; Ron Silver; Michael Frost Beckner; Jennifer Garner; Jeff Apple; Roger Birnbaum; Colin Farrell; Ben Affleck; Phil Alden Robinson; Lawrence Lasker; Mark Bowden; Mike Myers; Kevin and Michael Bacon; Mace Neufeld; J.J. Abrams; Paul Attanasio; Doug Liman; David Arata; Kiefer Sutherland; Tom Cruise.

(Not all Hollywood actors are thus inclined. Post 9-11, some have spoken out against CIA and government spying: Jenkins lists Al Pacino, Martin Sheen, Hector Elizondo, Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, Kristin Davis, Samuel L. Jackson and Jake Gyllenhaal as standing up for the American Civil Liberties Union in a series of advertisements.)


as far as the freezing goes, not sure what to say.
i used to get weirdness on some of my ri blog posts, but i just assumed it had something to do with the amount of images and video links i was posting...

viewtopic.php?p=487284#p487284

viewtopic.php?p=495069#p495069
IanEye wrote:I would like to mention “The Road to Hong Kong”. There is a lot going on under the surface of this goofy “Road” movie. Some of the elements present are: Mind Control .. Illicit drug trade in Asia in the early 60’s .. UFOs .. General theme of Cold War espionage

Plus, this is the last of the “Road” pics Crosby and Hope made, filmed in 1962 in London the only time a Road pic wasn’t filmed in Hollywood and it comes out the same year as “Dr. No”, the first Connery Bond pic. It is almost like there is a “hand shake” going on in the Entertainment Complex. With Crosby/Hope [and Martin/Sinatra] making room for a more Anglophonic entity [JPG&R] to manifest itself in the American consciousness.Leaving Hope to journey on the "Road to Viet Nam" by himself (cue feline rolling of rrrrrrrs)...

If all that doesn’t sway you, perhaps the sight of Bing feeding Bob Hope bong hits in order to obtain information from him will “peak” your curiosity…
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Re: Movies you might like..

Postby MinM » Sat Jun 15, 2013 7:49 pm

Image @disinfo: Mickey Mouse In #Vietnam http://goo.gl/fb/f1EJC #news #animation #cartoons #disney #mickeymouse #video

Mickey Mouse In Vietnam

A lost cartoon classic via Vimeo:

In 1968, an underground, anti-war short film was produced by Lee Savage and Milton Glaser called Mickey Mouse in Vietnam. Mickey Mouse (unofficially) starred in a one minute animation that depicted the Disney icon travelling to Vietnam in a boat, entering the country, and being immediately shot in the head. The film was shown to associates of the creators in 1970 and onward. It is rumoured (though unconfirmed) that Disney tried to destroy every copy that they could get in their possession.

Until recently, the only known copies available for public viewing were one owned by the Sarajevo Film Festival, and one included on the Film-makers’ Coop’s 38 minute, 16mm collection reel. The only pieces of hard evidence of the short’s existence available online were a few screenshots (all but one found in a 1998 French book entitled ‘Bon Anniversaire, Mickey!’).

http://disinfo.com/2013/06/mickey-mouse-in-vietnam/
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Re: Movies you might like..

Postby MinM » Thu Jul 10, 2014 10:07 am

‘Rathergate’ Drives ‘Truth’ Film; Robert Redford To Play Dan Rather, Cate Blanchett To Play Producer

Redford is attached to play CBS News icon Dan Rather and Cate Blanchett is attached to play his producer Mary Mapes in Truth, a film that will mark the directorial debut of James Vanderbilt, the A-list screenwriter behind the first two installments of The Amazing Spider-Man. The film will explore the scandal that erupted after Rather reported on 60 Minutes II that George W. Bush had gotten preferential treatment that put him in the National Guard to avoid the Vietnam War draft. The ensuing scandal during Bush’s reelection campaign left Mapes fired and Rather’s storied reputation in tatters.

SNIP

Mapes, who’d worked in TV news 25 years and won the Peabody Award, was subsequently fired for what the network called lapses in judgment. Strangely, the Bush campaign benefited from the scandal, and exploited Kerry’s military service by getting some of his former soldiers to speak against him. When the current Secretary of State could not win that issue—he served while Bush didn’t—his campaign was doomed. Mapes maintained her belief that the documents were real, and that she and Rather were done in by a right-wing internet smear campaign that put the focus on “Rathergate” instead of the issue of whether the president benefited from his father’s powerful relationships to avoid service in Vietnam.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025217391

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Re: Movies you might like..

Postby MinM » Mon Feb 22, 2016 2:57 am

ImageThe New York Times @nytimes

How U.S. policies on cybersecurity are tied to Ronald Reagan's viewing of 1983's "WarGames" http://nyti.ms/1XGyUun
Image

WarGames’ and Cybersecurity’s Debt to a Hollywood Hack

By FRED KAPLAN FEB. 19, 2016

Movies rarely influence public policy, but Washington’s policies on cyberattacks, computer surveillance and the possibility of cyberwarfare were directly influenced by the 1983 box-office hit “WarGames.”

The film — starring Matthew Broderick as a tech-whiz teenager who unwittingly hacks into the computer of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and nearly sets off World War III — opened nationwide that June 3. The next night, President Ronald Reagan watched it at Camp David. And that is where this strange story — culled from interviews with participants and Reagan Library documents — begins.

The following Wednesday, back in the White House, Reagan met with his national-security advisers and 16 members of Congress to discuss forthcoming nuclear arms talks with the Russians. But he still seemed focused on the movie.

At one point, he put down his index cards and asked if anyone else had seen it. No one had, so he described the plot in detail. Some of the lawmakers looked around the room with suppressed smiles or raised eyebrows. Three months earlier, Reagan had delivered his “Star Wars” speech, imploring scientists to build laser weapons that could shoot down Soviet missiles in outer space. The idea was widely dismissed as nutty. What was the old man up to now?

After finishing his synopsis, Reagan turned to Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and asked: “Could something like this really happen?” Could someone break into our most sensitive computers? General Vessey said he would look into it.

One week later, the general returned to the White House with his answer. “WarGames,” it turned out, wasn’t far-fetched. “Mr. president,” he said, “the problem is much worse than you think.”

Reagan’s question set off a series of interagency memos and studies that culminated, 15 months later, in his signing a classified national security decision directive, NSDD-145, titled “National Policy on Telecommunications and Automated Information Systems Security.”

The first laptop computers had barely hit the market; public Internet providers wouldn’t exist for another few years. Yet NSDD-145 warned that these new machines — which government agencies and high-tech industries had started buying at a rapid clip — were “highly susceptible to interception.” Hostile foreign powers were “extensively” hacking into them already; “terrorist groups and criminal elements” had the ability to do so, too.

General Vessey could answer the president’s question so promptly — and national-security aides could compose NSDD-145 in such detailed language — because, deep within the bureaucracy, a small group of scientists and spies had been concerned about this looming threat for more than a decade.

In the 1960s, the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency undertook a program called the ARPAnet. The idea, a precursor to the Internet, was to let Pentagon labs and contractors share data and research on the same network.

Just before the program’s rollout, in April 1967, an engineer named Willis Ware wrote a paper called “Security and Privacy in Computer Systems.” A computer pioneer dating back to the ’40s, Mr. Ware headed the computer science department at the RAND Corporation, the think tank in Santa Monica, Calif.

In his paper, he lauded the goals of the ARPAnet but explained some risks of what he called “on-line” networks. As long as computers sat in isolated chambers, security wasn’t a problem. But once multiple users could gain access to data from unprotected locations, anyone with certain skills could hack into the network — and, once inside, roam at will, pilfering unclassified and secret files alike. Mr. Ware’s warnings went unheeded for decades, though he remained a frequent consultant. (He died in 2013, at the age of 93.)

In 1980, Lawrence Lasker and Walter Parkes, former Yale classmates in their late 20s, were writing the screenplay for “WarGames.” (It would be nominated for an Oscar but would lose to Horton Foote’s “Tender Mercies.”) A hacker friend had told them about “demon-dialing,” in which a telephone modem searched for other modems by automatically dialing each phone number in an area code and letting it ring twice before proceeding to the next number. If a modem answered, it would squawk; the demon-dialing software would record the number, so the hacker could call back later. In their screenplay, this was how their hero broke into NORAD. But they wondered if this was plausible: Didn’t the military close off its computers to public telephone lines?

Mr. Lasker lived in Santa Monica, a few blocks from RAND. Figuring someone there might be helpful, he called the public affairs office, which put him in touch with Mr. Ware, who invited the pair to his office.

They’d come to the right man. Not only had he long known about the vulnerability of computer networks, but he’d also helped design the software for the real NORAD computer. And Mr. Ware proved remarkably open, even friendly. Listening to the writers’ questions, he waved off their worries. Yes, he told them, the computer was supposed to be closed, but some officers wanted to work from home on weekends, so they’d leave a port open. Anyone could get in, if the right number was dialed.

“The only computer that’s completely secure,” Mr. Ware told them with a mischievous smile, “is a computer that no one can use.”

Ware gave the writers the confidence to go ahead with their project. It’s fitting that the scenario of “WarGames” — which aroused Reagan’s curiosity and led to the first national policy on reducing the vulnerability of computers — owed a crucial debt to the man who’d first warned that they were vulnerable.

Meanwhile, Reagan’s directive hit a roadblock. It put the National Security Agency in charge of securing all of the nation’s computer servers and networks — government, business and personal. The agency had been established in 1952 to intercept foreign communications; it was expressly barred from spying on Americans. Representative Jack Brooks, a Texas Democrat and a fiery civil-liberties advocate, wasn’t about to let a classified presidential decree blur the distinction. He sponsored and got passed a law overriding that directive.

The main author of Reagan’s NSDD-145 was Donald Latham, the Pentagon’s liaison to the National Security Agency — and a former N.S.A. analyst himself. General Vessey had assigned him to answer Reagan’s question on “WarGames” (Could something like this really happen?). Mr. Latham answered as he did (The situation is much worse than you think.) because he knew that the N.S.A. had long been hacking into the communications systems of the Soviet Union and China — and what we were doing to them, they could someday do to us.

Mr. Ware had been among the first to draw this conclusion. Mr. Latham knew about it early on because the two were longtime friends, Mr. Ware having served on the N.S.A.’s scientific advisory board. The N.S.A. was the most secretive branch of the American intelligence community. Reagan’s screening of “WarGames” brought Mr. Ware’s concerns into high policy-making circles for the first time. And it sparked the first public controversy over the tensions between security and privacy on the Internet, as well as the first public power struggle about the subject between the N.S.A. and Congress — a debate and a struggle that persist today.

Fred Kaplan is the author of “Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War,” due out March 1.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/movie ... -hack.html

BTW one of the screenwriters of War Games (Lawrence Lasker) is mentioned in the piece below by Alex Cox as being in the back pocket of the CIA...
Spiro C. Thiery » Wed Dec 26, 2012 5:55 pm wrote:http://www.alexcox.com/blog.htm
TONY SCOTT'S SUICIDE NOTE
2012.10.7

The Scott brothers, Ridley and Tony, lived in the north of England at the time of the Vietnam War. So did I. Britain didn't send troops to Vietnam and so Ridley, Tony and I didn't have to worry about being drafted and sent to die. But that vicious and immoral conflict played nightly on our televisions: it was the only non-sanitized war of our lifetime. It left many people - me included - with contempt for the CIA - which ran assassination and torture operations such as the Phoenix Program - and for the whole political/military/industrial machine.

My reaction was not uncommon. The United States and Europe are quite different in that in the US there is a nominal culture of respect for the military (though in practice it is the employment option only of the poor, invariably avoided by the rich and middle class), whereas in Europe armies and uniforms are widely disliked. Most of my generation grew up distrustful of governments, opposed to the military and to the creeps and provocateurs who spied on the peace movement. Remember The Clash song, The Call Up? It is an overt call to refuse to serve in anybody's army. Remember Strummer singing Straight To Hell? "There ain't no need for you..."

The Scotts went down a different path. They made commercials, and when they moved to the States became absorbed intothe Pentagon's Hollywood cheer-leading machine. The bros created glossy, highly dynamic recruitment propaganda like TOP GUN and BLACK HAWK DOWN, and - in the case of Tony - torture propaganda in the form of MAN ON FIRE.

So I wonder as to the contents of the various suicide notes Tony Scott left before jumping off that bridge. For a police force famous for leaking celebrity gossip, the LAPD has been close-mouthed about the matter. Perhaps the notes were merely tender messages to his family. Perhaps they were long screeds condemning the Hollywood studios for being a duplicitious, blacklisting mafia cartel. Or - and this is what I hope - perhaps they have been kept secret because they are a mea culpa: an apology for the years Scott wasted his talents working for the Pentagon and the CIA, promoting torture and war.

David Robb's Operation Hollywood is still the key text regarding the entertainment industryand the Pentagon. It is an important book, citing numerous examples of how studio producers, directors, and writers changed the content of their scripts in order to gain free tanks, battleships, and marines. Recently, three other books have appeared which begin to give a picture of how the CIA has shaped the cinema, and the careers of filmmakers.

The best of these books is the most general: Frances Stonor Saunders' Cultural Cold War (in England its title is Who Paid The Piper?). This is a broad look at how CIA money was used to influence the arts. It explains how the work of a talentless boozer, Jackson Pollock, found its way into museums owned by the Rockefellers, and thence onto gallery walls all over the US. Pollock's slap-dash canvases were bought and sold - at US taxpayers' expense - to show that American art was "better" than the crude naturalism which Russians supposedly preferred. Unfortunately, most Americans prefer crude naturalism, as do I: given a choice between a Pollock or a Norman Rockwell I would gaze on the Rockwell any day. Heck, I'd rather spend an afternoon in the Thomas Kinkaide store.

But intel influence didn't end with paintings. For some reason the spooks hated the writer Howard Fast, and managed to get him blacklisted by the American publishing industry. FBI agents visited Little, Brown and seven other publishers to persuade them not to publish Fast's great popular novel, Spartacus. Alfred Knopf sent the manuscript back unopened, saying he wouldn't read the work of "a traitor". Fast, a Jew, was no traitor: he served time in jail rather than "name names" to the House Un-American Activities Committee. And when Kirk Douglas made a film of Spartacus, he gave the screenwriting assignment to Dalton Trumbo, another blacklisted writer who had been jailed rather than betray his friends.

Nevertheless, buoyed by the blacklisting of Fast, the CIA went all out on a massive book-burning binge. A terrified State Department was obliged to remove from American libraries in foreign countries the work of Fast, Dashiell Hammett, Langston Hughes, John Reed, Tom Paine, Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, and many other authors: Herman Mellville's Moby Dick, magnificently illustrated by Rockwell Kent, was also deemed unAmerican, and removed from the shelves. As Saunders observes, many of the books banned by the State Department had been burned by Hitler's Nazis, too. Some writers became active, witting agents of the CIA - including Peter Matthiessen and James Michener, "who used his career as a writer as cover for his work in eliminating radicals."

But, as Allen Dulles - head of the CIA till he was fired by John F. Kennedy - said, "nobody reads". So the spooks threw a wider net - arranging concerts and art exhibits, coming up with a $20,000 poetry prize for the fascist Ezra Pound (who at the time was in a hospital for the criminally insane), and quickly turning their attention to the propaganda possibilities of film.

According to Saunders, a secret campaign was undertaken by the CIA and Pentagon in 1955, called "Militant Liberty". This was designed to insert the theme of "freedom" into American movies, and to remove any elements which were critical of the United States. In June and July of 1956, representatives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff met with a group of Hollywood acolytes which included John Ford, Merian C . Cooper, John Wayne, and Ward Bond, to promote the illegal domestic propaganda program. A producer named C.V. Whitney, not coincidentally the cousin of CIA agent Tracey Barnes, signed on and made THE SEARCHERS (in the light of which we might view the film as an anti-Communist parable, with "redskins" standing in for "reds").

Saunders also observes that when, in 1946, Ford and Cooper set up their independent production company, Argosy, the principal investors were all intelligence men: William Donovan (former head of the OSS), Ole Doering, David Bruce and William Vanderbilt. C.D. Jackson, a CIA agent and vice president of Time, listed as helpful "friends" Cecil B. DeMille; Spyros P. Skouros and Darryl Zanuck at Fox; Nicholas Shenk, president of MGM; producer Dore Schary; Barney Balaban, president of Paramount; Harry and Jack Warner; James R. Grainger, president of RKO; Milton Rackmil, president of Universal; Harry Cohn, president of Columbia; Herbert Yates, head of Republic Pictures; and, inevitably, Walt and Roy Disney.

If Jackson's claim is true, then all the studios except United Artists were in the CIA's pocket by 1954. But CIA influence didn't stop with studio heads. A CIA agent, Carleton Alsop, worked undercover at Paramount, where he prepared lists of actors and technicians to be blacklisted, ordered script changes, and shut down films of which he disapproved. Alsop was quite powerful: he killed the project GIANT at Paramount because it was unflattering to rich Texans and depicted racism against Mexicans.

How many other studios had in-house CIA censors isn't clear: but it's unlikely that Carleton Alsop worked all alone.

Daniel J. Leab's Orwell Subverted deals with the first feature fully-funded by the CIA, ANIMAL FARM. As anyone who has seen it knows, ANIMAL FARM is an unsuccessful movie. The animation is reasonable, but the end - in which the animals rise up and overthrow their Soviet-Pig oppressors - contradicts Orwell's novel and the purpose of the parable. Reading Leab's book one cannot help but note how like studio executives the film's CIA "investors" were: they had no concept of filmmaking, or storytelling, but they were certainly full of ideas, demanding new scenes in which "a sheepdog, walking beside a kindly farmer, hears word of the revolt and laughs it off; so also does a plough horse, driven by another kindly farmer."

Leab has actually unearthed the stupid notes the CIA execs gave to their underlings: like David Robb he has found real material showing exactly how the spooks went about constructing their propaganda film. Years later, does it matter? ANIMAL FARM did not do well. But the filmmakers - John Halas and Joy Batchelor - were paid by the CIA to make a feature, something no other British animators could afford to do. Thereafter they received work from the BBC and the commercials industry. When I was young, animation from the Halas and Batchelor studio dominated British television. There was no other notable British company in the business till Ardman came along. That the CIA "set up" Halas and Batchelor as feature filmmakers, and that the BBC continued to promote them, gave them an incredible advantage over other animators, and set the rather mediocre tone of British animation for twenty years.

Per Saunders, the CIA was also behind the production of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, pumping at least $100,000 into the picture via the "US Information Agency". Again, Orwell's bleak vision didn't satisfy the spooks, and the end had to be changed: in fact two endings were shot, one for American audiences, and another for the British - in which Winston Smith is gunned down shouting, "Down with Big Brother!" Ironically, the film starred Michael Redgrave, one of 125 people Orwell had shopped to the British secret service for crimes such as Communism, Jewishness, or being gay.

Tricia Jenkins' CIA in Hollywood isn't as comprehensive as one might like. Partially this is due to the spooks' inherent secrecy and refusal to reveal the details of the deals they make with Hollywood filmmakers. But it's also due to a certain authorial naivete regarding the CIA. Jenkins refers to five aspects of the public's perception of the CIA: 1) that the Agency assassinates people, 2) that it is staffed with rogue operatives, 3) that it fails to take care of its assets, and 4) that it is morally ambiguous, and 5) that it is marked by buffoonery and ineffectiveness.

This is an incomplete list. The fact that the CIA assassinates people is not in any doubt: CIA-directed drones perform extra-judicial killings for us on a weekly basis. But what about the DRUG DEALING? After assassination and torture, the biggest complaint, made consistently against the CIA since the Vietnam War, is that it is involved in the international drug trade, and uses the traffic and resale of illegal drugs to enrich its operatives and fund its "black" operations. The reader may consult Alfred McCoy's Politics of Heroin in South East Asia, or Henrik Kruger's The Great Heroin Coup (for chapter and verse detail of CIA involvement in the heroin trade), or Cockburn and StClair's Whiteout, or Gary Webb's Dark Alliance (for the same on CIA complicity in the importation and sale of cocaine). The CIA inspector general, Frederick Hitz, was unable to disprove any of Gary Webb's reporting (the unfortunate Webb was fired from his job, and committed suicide).

Even if Jenkins doesn't believe that the CIA smuggles drugs, the accusations are there, they've been there for a long time, and they're backed up with evidence. A book dealing with the reputation of the Agency and its manipulation of the media should address the issue of alleged CIA drug dealing. This is not done.

This is strange, as it was with Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes - a supposed history of the CIA which also ignored the Agency's "drug problem". This is a re-writing of history, in which some of the worst blowback from US intelligence activities is simply ignored. The Hollywood movie AIR AMERICA - based on a book about CIA drug dealing operations - airbrushed the drugs out, but not all pictures dealing with US intelligence have done likewise. What about that highly intelligent thriller WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN, in which a merchant marine played by Nick Nolte is pursued by CIA agents who want their cut of his drugs operation? Not worthy of mention? It is a good fiilm.

CIA in Hollywood also suffers from an incomplete index, which covers only a handful of the names and motion pictures cited, and an incomplete bibliography, which doesn't contain all the books the author cites.

Jenkins makes an excellent point that by choosing to support certain films and to deny other filmmakers assistance, the CIA is violating the First Amendment to the Constitution. And since the Agency is not allowed to propagandize domestically, its support of Hollywood films and TV shows like 24 is a violation of its own Charter. Not that the CIA is all that worried, I suspect. As Robb observed, the Pentagon, the FBI, the Secret Service and numerous other federal agencies breach the First Amendment in exactly the same way. And Hollywood - an illegal cartel - is unlikely to utter any protest. The CIA has even acted as a TV distributor - pumping episodes of DYNASTY into East Germany during the Cold War "in order to sell those residents on capitalism and the luxury life it could afford."

For your edification, here follow the actors, directors, writers, producers and studio execs who the author links to the CIA, usually found 1) visiting CIA headquarters to party with the spooks, 2) taking instructions from CIA, or 3) actively helping to encourage CIA recruitment. Tony Scott heads the list: Jenkins reports that CIA was particularly fond of his masterpiece TOP GUN, "the single best recruiting tool the navy - and specifically naval aviation - ever had" and "was looking for a project that could help them do something similar."

Tony Scott, RIP; John Ford; John Wayne; Cecil B. DeMille; Darryl Zanuck; Luigi Luraschi (head of domestic and foreign censorship at Paramount in the 1950s); Joseph Mankiewicz; John Chambers and Bob Sidell (studio makeup men); Jack Myers; David Houle; Scott Valentine (VP of Sony Pictures); Jack Gilardi (ICM agency); Rick Nicita (CAA agency); Ron Meyer (COO of Universal); Matt Corman; Chris Ord; Kristy Swanson; Tim Matheson; Roger and Robert Towne; Tom Berenger; Ron Silver; Michael Frost Beckner; Jennifer Garner; Jeff Apple; Roger Birnbaum; Colin Farrell; Ben Affleck; Phil Alden Robinson; Lawrence Lasker; Mark Bowden; Mike Myers; Kevin and Michael Bacon; Mace Neufeld; J.J. Abrams; Paul Attanasio; Doug Liman; David Arata; Kiefer Sutherland; Tom Cruise.

(Not all Hollywood actors are thus inclined. Post 9-11, some have spoken out against CIA and government spying: Jenkins lists Al Pacino, Martin Sheen, Hector Elizondo, Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, Kristin Davis, Samuel L. Jackson and Jake Gyllenhaal as standing up for the American Civil Liberties Union in a series of advertisements.)
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