Spy Culture

What does the Deputy Director of the CIA think about spy movies?

Actor and producer Jack Webb is best known for his copaganda franchise Dragnet – which spanned radio, film and TV...

When it comes to black operations during the Vietnam War, the Phoenix Program (and its parallels and predecessors) is legendary...

The public inquiry into the 2017 Manchester bombing recently published its full and final report.

The US military’s targeting of children goes back decades.

The Shield season two ups the stakes on season one in every way – political, societal, personal.

If a military supported romance drama with Twitter-level gender politics sounds like a terrible movie then you aren’t wrong.

The Pentagon budget request for fiscal year 2024 comes in at a staggering $824 billion, the highest any country has...

Amazon’s foray into medieval fantasy epics – The Rings of Power, a Tolkien adaptation – is perhaps the most expensive...

When it comes to rolling over in response to demands from the world’s most powerful military, many film makers are...

Short answer: yes, with an if.

Films about torture are often exploitative and sadistic, and even more so when they are state sponsored.

Good Guys Wear Black is one of very few movies to explicitly discuss the Phoenix Program – a Vietnam-era behind...

In 2003 one of the longest-running shows on American TV debuted: NCIS.

In the first of several subscriber-only podcasts we look at season one of the unique and award-winning cop drama The...

The CIA-sponsored streaming wars hit a new high recently, when Netflix premiered The Recruit and within days Amazon released the...

Via Muckrock’s latest newsletter comes an interesting release – emails on the CIA’s twitter account, deciding what their first tweet...

In this quick podcast I review the biographical moral drama Worth (2020) a.k.a.

In early 1977 a retired NATO general put together a team of elite military officers to write a report on...

The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was America’s longest war.

Chris from Gorilla Radio invited me back to discuss the recent article Kit and I did on over 2,000 pages...

In early 1997 the Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen Charles Krulak issued an order authorising the use of video...

The CIA recently launched a new outreach effort – its own podcast.

The new season of Amazon’s Jack Ryan just came out, and much like previous seasons it benefited from large scale...

Anyone who has followed the CIA’s relationship with the entertainment business will be familiar with the 2003 thriller The Recruit. ...

Football is the world’s biggest sport, and perhaps the most state-sponsored sport.

Today, Netflix released Troll – a mythological action adventure movie where a 150-foot troll menaces Norway.

Imagine a world where secret government agencies used deep fakes to create evidence of events that never happened, and used...

In this guest article my friend and collaborator Matt Alford offers his thoughts on moviedom, deceit and the campaign to...

Somehow, in the midst of all the identity politics and culture war noise, the fact that Captain Marvel was the...

The military-Marvel relationship has waxed and waned over the years, but 2019’s Captain Marvel was a high point – a...

Alan MacLeod’s latest cultural investigation sees him hone in on Activision’s Call of Duty franchise, and how first person shooter...

The Rampart Scandal has been called the worst police corruption story in the history of Los Angeles, and altered a...

Well well, it seems the BBC are a nest of crypto-leftist peaceniks after all – Theaters of War recently got...

The 2012 attacks on a US diplomatic outpost and a nearby CIA base in Benghazi caused enormous controversy and political...

The Office of War Information’s Bureau of Motion Pictures was the US government’s first formal office for liaising with Hollywood...

Henri and I delved into the 2005 sci-fi alien invasion film/Tom Cruise vehicle War of the Worlds.

Mujahideen.

Steven Spielberg’s 2005 alien invasion adventure War of the Worlds helped kick off the recent string of military-supported extraterrestrial war...

The Leopold and Loeb case was one of ‘crimes of the century’, and inspired many books, plays and movies.

Amazon Prime are making the most expensive TV show of all time.

Obviously, I’m a movie addict but many of my favourites are low-budget features or belong to tiny sub-genres.

As youtube has become a centre for emerging pop culture brands, it has also become the target of the US...

Pam and Tommy tells the story of the stolen Pamela Anderson-Tommy Lee sextape.

There I was, innocently digging through some 1970s entertainment liaison office reports from the US Marine Corps when all of...

Jerry Bruckheimer has a long history of working with the Pentagon, going all the way back to Top Gun, but...

The 1998 asteroid disaster film Armageddon is often mocked, but rarely taken seriously despite its cultural relevance and impact.

I know, you weren’t expecting this, but Military Times have reviewed our documentary Theaters of War.

Henri invited Matt and I on his podcast to discuss Theaters of War (though Matt drops in about halfway through...

Matt and I were recently invited on the Dangerous History podcast to discuss our documentary Theaters of War.