ClandesTime

What connects JFK, Allen Dulles and the CIA's invasion at the Bay of Pigs to the movies Thunderball and Goldfinger? The answer is the relationship between the CIA and James Bond. In this episode we look at Fleming's decades-long relationship with American intelligence, from the OSS through to the CIA, and how Dulles' friendship with Fleming allowed the Agency to quietly improve their public image via the James Bond novels. We also examine how the CIA were invited to a screening of Goldfinger by Charles Russhon - the military consultant and technical advisor on the early Bond movies. Rounding off with the story of the CIA's secret support for the movie of Thunderball and its connections to JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis, this is an epic exploration of the relationships between popular culture, high politics and intelligence. (Read more...)

Today we welcome back Robbie Martin of Media Roots and A Very Heavy Agenda to discuss the psychological impact of the most fierce and fearful US election in recent memory. We discuss the polarisation both in the US over the presidential election and in the UK over the EU referendum, before looking at the string of 'October Surprises' that have dominated the news in recent weeks. We round off by talking about the new Adam Curtis documentary Hypernormalisation and our reservations about the glowing critical and popular response it has received. (Read more...)

I don't believe any of the alternative theories about the moon landings but this week I thought it would be fun to explore some of the arguments around these seminal events. We begin by looking at some of the arguments people have made in support of the conspiracy theories and the questions they overlook and evidence they do not have. I then take a look at why there are both optimistic (secret space program) and pessimistic (we never went) conspiracy theories about the moon landings and whether this is a good thing. (Read more...)

Roar is a truly unique piece of cinema, possibly the most dangerous and brave and crazy film ever made. This week I take a look at this fascinating production which took 11 years to make, cost over $15 million and put most of its cast and crew in the hospital. The result is a magical, terrifying, hilarious story of the power of nature, the dangers inherent in our relationship with it and of good intentions gone badly wrong. (Read more...)

This has been a presidential election campaign like no other, where both sides are cynically exploiting identity politics and the loathsome nature of their opponent to try to seize political capital. In this episode I try to offer a new take on the election and outline a concept I'm calling 'Rorschach politics' where the candidates are little more than ink blots onto which their supporters project their desires and dreams. I analyse the hypocrisy at the heart of the 'liberal consensus' and the psychological and political origins of the 'alt right' before tentatively offering some possible solutions to this total fucking quagmire. (Read more...)

The Soviet-Afghan War helped bring down the Soviet Union and encouraged the rise of Al Qaeda and Islamism. The films about this war have been sponsored by both Western governments - Britain, the USA and Israel - and by Russia. This week I look at these films, their state sponsorship and how they portray both the Red Army and the Mujahideen, with some surprising results. (Read more...)

Mutt and Jeff were a pair of Norwegian double agents during WW2, named after the popular cartoon characters. They played a crucial role in deceiving the Nazi intelligence apparatus by taking part in false flag sabotage and deception operations. Several of these operations have very curious codenames including Operation GUY FAWKES and Operation BUNBURY. In this episode I dwell on the relevance of MI5 operations sourcing their codenames from historical and fictional figures. I also analyse how an episode of Spooks in 2002 foreshadowed the declassification of government documents on these WW2 operations, before asking if MI5 are suffering from hyperreality. (Read more...)

Today we take a look at the documentary series A Very Heavy Agenda by Robbie Martin, which I reviewed a few weeks ago. This is a very in depth conversation where we get into numerous elements covered in Robbie's documentary including: the Kagan family, what the neocons have been up to during the Obama administration and leading into the current presidential election, the philosophy and strategy of neoconservatism and the geopolitics of NATO and Russia. Robbie's documentary series is an excellent watch and extremely informative so if you enjoy this conversation then don't miss it. (Read more...)

Rounding off this second season we take a look at SALT, the 2010 action thriller starring Angelina Jolie as a CIA officer accused of being a Russian sleeper agent. SALT is one of the less well known CIA-assisted productions, but along with technical advice from former CIA officer Melissa Boyle Mahle the producers also consulted with the CIA themselves in a video conference. There is also a very weird story involving one of the extras in the opening sequence in North Korea. We analyse the mystery of Evelyn Salt's underwear and then the conversation hones in on Russia, who in 2010 were not on the news agenda, and how this movie predicted the rise of the 'new Cold War' that is commonplace in most current spy films and TV shows. (Read more...)

Robbie Martin is our final guest for this season as we dissect the 2012 docudrama Zero Dark Thirty. We discussed the difficulty in defining what kind of film this is - somewhere between a spy thriller, a documentary and a dry European art house movie. We get into the well-documented CIA support for the film and ask why this is the only major movie about the Abbottabad raid to get 'Bin Laden' and why it wasn't particularly successful. Was the film meant to serve as a substitute for any real evidence of what happened in Abbottabad in 2011? Did the filmmakers even care whether what they were portraying was true or were they blinded by the excitement of the special access they were granted? (Read more...)

James Evan Pilato is our latest guest as we dissect the 2009 Disney UFO adventure Race to Witch Mountain. We start off looking at Disney as a corporation - its long standing interest in UFOs and extraterrestrials, the connections to government agencies and their recent takeover of the fantasy genre. We then get into Race to Witch Mountain itself - a strange blend of a kids' movie, a love letter to the UFO culture and an homage to spy thrillers especially Enemy of the State. Next, we examine the deliberately hyperreal nature of the film and dwell on the effects of a fantasy movie set in the real world with real people. A children's movie about 'illegal aliens' being pursued under the Patriot Act is not Hollywood's typical output. (Read more...)

Adam from Themes and Memes is our guest to talk about the 2015 action comedy American Ultra. We start by trying to define this film, which is an intense mixture of cartoonish ultra violence, CIA covert operations, romance, comedy and horror, looking at the dissociating nature of this blend. The intentions of screenwriter Max Landis and the director Nima Nourizadeh are discussed and we ask whether they were reaching out to the CIA or trying to flatter them by making MKULTRA seem cool to stoners and young people. We go on to look at the prominence of female and often maternal characters in modern spy fiction, particular in CIA-assisted productions and ask what difference this makes to how these films and TV shows portray the CIA as a whole. (Read more...)

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 unit devoted to developing a new generation of super soldier informed by the hippy and New Age movements. We examine what the film leaves out, especially in the form of MKULTRA and similar CIA projects and experiments with similar aims, and ask whether the purpose was not to emplore 'How could love and peace help win wars?' but to weaponise New Age philosophy and the New Age movement. (Read more...)

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 examine Barris' true life history, focusing in on his marriage to Lyn Levy - the daughter of one of the founders of CBS - and his incredibly selfish relationship with their daughter Della. None of this appears in the film so taking this into account we consider whether Barris was a CIA assassin, a psychopathic fabricator or an emotionally warped narcissist (or all of these things rolled into one). If Barris truly was a CIA agent then what was his job? Was he an assassin, or did they employ him to 'slay the audience' by developing the prototypes for reality TV? (Read more...)

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. In this episode we take a sideways look at the historical events and ask why Clooney and Heslov chose to lionise not just Murrow but the whole See it Now/CBS crew. We try to persuade Ed of an alternative interpretation of events, with Murrow not quite being the heroic counter-establishment figure of the film and CBS being a rotten media organisation with deep ties to the CIA. (Read more...)