Fwd: Hollywood's War-Propaganda -- Sources Revealed

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Subject:	Hollywood's War-Propaganda -- Sources Revealed

In November 2001 senior White House advisor Karl Rove and several dozen
studio executives met in Beverly Hills to discuss the war on terrorism. The
thoughtful movie moguls represented CBS, HBO, MGM, Showtime, Dreamworks, Viacom
and
other multinational cartel dream factories. The New York Times assures us
"several executives emphasized that they were not interested in making
propaganda
films." CNN mentioned that Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture
Association, "hoped the White House representatives weren't planning `to tell
us what
kind of movies to make.'"
Most reports of the closed meeting state that "patriotic" movies were the
topic of discussion. [Finally] the studio executives agreed to turn out flicks
in
the tradition of documentaries made during World War II. Among the volunteers
to this war effort, count directors David Fincher (Fight Club), Spike Jonze
(Being John Malkovich) and Randal Kleiser (Grease), and Die Hard screenwriter
Steven E. De Souza.
Just before Rove's summit, actor Tom Cruise met with CIA officials to discuss
ways of burnishing the agency's image in the upcoming Mission: Impossible 3.
The Central Intelligence Agency had already opened its headquarters to
Showtime and Paramount for the making of In the Company of Spies. "The CIA's
objectives were clear," screenwriter Roger Towne told the Associated Press.
"They
hoped to see a human face put on the agency." ("Hollywood Whores for
Washington,"
http://www.xmag.com/archives/7-08-feb00/antiDrug.html and
http://www.xmag.com/archives/7-08-feb00/antidrugCont.html) Tenet boasted that
the movie
"portray[s] us in a good light, and I want the American people to know the
values we
believe in."
Soiled by a half century of PR disasters, in 1996 the CIA hired Chase
Brandon, a 26-year veteran paramilitary officer, to fill the newly-created
position
of Entertainment Liaison Officer. "The popular image of us is as some kind of
rogue organization creating mayhem and madness on a whim," Brandon told the
press a week before 9-11. "We hate to see ugly imagery of us in television and
films."
Washington's [Hollywood propaganda office] originated in 1991 under the
presidency of George HW Bush, the product of a still-classified study
undertaken by
the CIA.

Collateral Brain Damage?
The Hollywood Propaganda Ministry
by Alex Constantine,
Scheduled for the July 2002 issue of High Times
"Without censorship, things can get terribly confused
in the public mind."
--General William C. Westmoreland,
Time, April 5, 1982




Tinseltown Down
During the filming of Black Hawk Down, the Pentagon persuaded its producers
to change the name of Army Ranger John Stebbins, portrayed by Ewan McGregor,
because the true-life "patriot" had been convicted to a 30-year prison term for
the sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl. (Megan Turner, "WAR-FILM `HERO' IS A
RAPIST," NY Post, 12/18/01) In the movie, "John Grimes" stands in for
pedophile Stebbins. Despite this and numerous other revisions to the record of
the
famed Somali military fiasco, Black Hawk Down met with widespread acclaim. The
film's Washington premiere was attended by Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, Oliver North and a division of generals. It grossed $75.5-million in
its first three weeks.
But jeering protestors -- including Brendan Sexton, an actor in Black Hawk
Down -- decried the movie, a riot of Hawkish clichés ("C'mon, let's roll!"), as
crude war propaganda, a drug intended to stupefy the country into supporting
covert operations and oil company maneuvers in Somalia, still more dead
civilians. The Pentagon's heavy hand in the making of the film was condemned as
a
manipulation of public sentiment recalling the Goebbels propaganda mill.
A glance that way is instructive. "Films," Heinrich Goebbels opined,
constitute a "scientific means of influencing the masses," of molding
attitudes, and
he cautioned, "a government must not neglect them." Movies were central to the
Nazi regime's domestic propaganda blitz. Under Nazi rule, some 1,300 movies
were approved or commissioned by the Reich. Robert Hertzstein, a former
consultant to the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, notes
in The
War that Hitler Won that Goebbel's ministry salted popular films with
repetitious words and symbols that stirred the emotions of the German populace:
"heroism," "sacrifice," "mass murder," "hatred for Germany." (in Robert Edwin
Herzstein, The War that Hitler Won: Goebbels and the Nazi Media Campaign, New
York:
Paragon, 1987, p. 272.) A half century later, Black Hawk Down -- with its
profuse "heroism," "sacrifice," "mass murder," "hatred for America" -- swept
the
next bellicose right-wing "homeland." The parallels were glaring.
And obnoxious. Brendon Sexton, speaking at an anti-war forum held at Columbia
University, recalled that in preparation for his role, he and a fellow actor
flew to Georgia for `Ranger Orientation Training' at Fort Benning in Columbus.

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