During WWII the US Office of War Information opened the Beurau of Motion Pictures to further their relationship with Hollywood. Between 1942-45, this bureau reviewed more that 14,000 scripts and revised or abandoned projects which portrayed the the US government in a bad light.
Entertainment Liaison Offices - After WWII the DoD developed the first “Entertainment Liaison Offices” to act as conduits for U.S. government messaging to Hollywood studios. The CIA did not publicly establish a similar office until 1996.
Researcher Tom Secker uncovered a 1958 memo on “Films for Counterintelligence Training” involving screenings of the films, The Man Who Never Was and Walk East on Beacon. The memo makes it clear that some of the Hollywood films were being used to train new recruits.
Researcher Tom Seckler discovered that in 1996, a CIA officer named Chase Brandon was hired to work directly with Hollywood studios to rehabilitate the agencies image. Chase Brandon is also the first cousin of actor Tommy Lee Jones. Some of Chase Brandon’s work involves well known films like the 2002 Tom Clancy political thriller The Sum of All Fears starring Ben Affleck. The CIA gave Affleck and the film makers a personal tour of CIA headquarters and provided access to analysts. Chase Brandon visited the set to provide advice. He was also a regular on the set of tv show Alias, starring Affleck’s then-wife Jennifer Garner, who would go on to film a promotional video for the CIA.
In 2017, Tom Secker and Matthew Alford, professor at University of Bath, released their book National Security Cinema providing conclusive evidence of the massive influence the U.S. intelligence and military have exerted on Hollywood. The book is based on files obtained via open records requests which detail how the Department of Defense offered support to more than 800 films between 1911 and 2017, including: Transformers, Iron Man, Pirates of the Caribbean, Mission: Impossible, and The Terminator. The research of Alford and Secker shows that 7 of the top 10 highest-grossing film franchises of all time have benefited from Department of Defense and CIA support, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe, James Bond and The Fast and the Furious. When it comes to the Transformers franchise, the DOD paid the filmmakers to gain “very early influence over the scripts” by giving them the most military assistance in filmmaking history, including “twelve types of Air Force aircraft and troops from four different bases.” National Security Cinema also details how more than 1,100 tv productions received backing from the Pentagon. The vast majority of these took place after 9/11, including Flight 93, Ice Road Truckers, Army Wives, 24, Homeland, and The Agency. The CIA has helped with around 60 film and TV productions since 1947.
Famed CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou made a living on the side by advising Hollywood, serving on a board made up of former C.I.A. officers, diplomats, and F.B.I. agents, who reviewed scripts about spies or terrorism to make them more realistic.
Luigi Luraschi was the head of censorship at Paramount Studios where he was in regular contact with an anonymous individual at the CIA. The purpose of the contact was to inform the CIA of the studios’ ability and desire to change movies to meet U.S. government expectations. For example, a 1955 film, Strategic Air Command, was changed so Americans did not appear as “a lot of trigger-happy warmongering people.” Films which received advice and/or support, as well as script changes: The Bourne Identity, The Sum of All Fears, The Recruit, Avatar, Charlie Wilson’s War, Contact, Hotel Rwanda, The Interview, The Kingdom, Lone Survivor, Rules of Engagement.
Matthew Alford has said the Marine Corps admitted there are 90 boxes of relevant material in its archive. “The government has seemed especially careful to avoid writing down details of actual changes made to scripts in the 21st century.”
In December 2019 former CIA officer turned Democrat Representative Elissa Slotkin said: “Some movies are just total craziness and don’t represent reality at all. Actually, the CIA has a whole office that will help Hollywood understand how to portray what really goes on.”
In 2016, professor Tricia Jenkins published leaked private memos as part of her book The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television. These memos and other memos show that, among others, the Osama bin Laden assassination movie Zero Dark Thirty and the film Argo, were heavily influenced by government officials to make the government look impressive or to downplay their mistakes.
Sometimes script changes requested by the government can be subtle, like when Tricia Jenkins says the US government requested the script for the 1996 blockbuster Independence Day be changed so that the protagonists worked for the military rather than as civilians.
The Green Beret's with John Wayne depicted the North Vietnamese committing atrocities actually committed by the US.
In 1986, Top Gun started the modern era of military and intelligence influence in Hollywood films. The film served as a successful promotional film for the US Navy with enlistment for naval aviators jumping 500 percent.
The most recent example of the U.S. military seeking to influence the public’s perception via films came in early 2021 when it was revealed that the U.S. Marine Corps played an integral role in the development of James Cameron’s Avatar. Nearly 1,700 pages of documents released by the Corps’ entertainment media liaison office show this relationship in action. An April 2009 report details how Hollywood liaison officers “met with director/writer James Cameron”. The documents reveal that the military viewed the film as a propaganda success, including having entertainment liaison officers invited to speak on a military panel at Comic Con in 2011. The military liked the film so much they arranged screenings on military bases and had actors and producers participate in a Navy Entertainment Program visit.
MPA - Jack Valenti was the CIA's man in Hollywood, responsible for the MPAA film rating system. He also might have helped kill JFK. Before becoming president of the Motion Picture Association of America, Valenti had served as a Special Assistant to Lyndon Johnson.
Valenti was born in 1921 into two mob families, The De George, on his mothers side, and the Valenti family on his fathers. FBI files indicate that, Valenti had been investigated for crimes such as bank fraud and smuggling women into Mexico for illegal abortions. According to FBI informants, Valenti had associations with an unidentified hoodlum and book maker in Houston, likely Joseph Lucia, due to that families history with the Valentis.
According to an FBI document investigating his background, it is indicated that Valenti and Lucia carried on a homosexual relationship, and that Lucia covered his honeymoon expenses to Las Vagas.
Valenti applied to Harvard but was rejected because he was only a b/c student. After flying to Boston, however, he was somehow secured permission to enter their eighteen month business school. [FBI file Jack Valenti page 90, archive.org]
In the 50s Jack Valenti ran an ad business called Weekly and Valenti in Houston, servicing clients such as Continental Oil. Valenti started working for Humble Oil as a hall-boy, moving up the ranks to become manager of sales promotion and advertising.
Him and his company were hired to run LBJ's campaigns in Texas, then an ad contract for Kennedy's presidential run in 1960. A 1963 FBI memo reveals that Valenti's payroll was moved from that of a "federal agency" to that of the white house. (FBI File, Jack Valenti, Page 49, archive.org)
Valenti was employed as a consultant in the state department from 1966 to 1969, however it is recorded that during his employment he worked of total of zero days. 1966 was also the year Jack became head of the Motion picture association of America. If you can't tell by now, the CIA runs Hollywood.
granted clearance for top secret 6 days before leaving government service. This position was renewed in 1967 when he was granted a position on the board of foreign scholarship, which only terminates when the persons relationship with the DoS terminates. [FBI file Jack Valenti page 173, archive.org] In May of 66 Valenti was given most of Bill Moyors security functions and made to preside over the meetings of CIA officials such as Richard Helms, who reported to him. [Jack Anderson, The Washington post, byplay in the Valenti appointment, may 11, 1966] Jack Valenti quit as Johnson's aid to become head of the MPAA. (Motion picture association of America)
