SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
[Ed. note: This is one of the longest stories I've seen submitted to the site. I was unsuccessful in my attempts to shorten it. As I found it to be well-written, I have decided to post it in its entirety — in my view it is well worth the read.]
Tom Secker has been continuing his research and reporting on the engagement of the security services in the entertainment industry. A recent two part edition of his podcast, ClandesTime covers prolific author Tom Clancy, his books and the subsequent adaptations into film.
From ClandesTime 074 – The Secret World of Tom Clancy Part I – The Films:
Tom Clancy was one of the most popular spy authors of all time, but was he a spy himself? What are the nature of his government connections? How were the film adaptations of his novels supported by the Pentagon and the CIA? What script changes were made by the DOD in exchange for their support? In Part I of this two-part podcast we examine five Tom Clancy films – The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. I outline the government involvement in each adaptation and the censorship involved in their production.
[...] a reasonably high number of American spy authors, at least some of the more prominent ones have been CIA or ex-CIA. E Howard Hunt, William F Buckley Jr. and Charles McCarry spring to mind. But the most successful authors like Robert Ludlum, Alan Furst and Tom Clancy do not appear to have been spooks. And I should say – I am a fan of several of these authors, I even like Ian Fleming despite the misogynistic and colonialist overtones to pretty much everything he ever wrote.
Essentially, there is no evidence that Tom Clancy was a spy, he never actually worked for intelligence or military intelligence or even private intelligence, at least as far as we know. But he was something. He moved in that world to some extent, he was certainly much closer to being a state propagandist than other authors are or were.
[...] since the beginning all of the movie adaptations of Tom Clancy's books have been supported by the Pentagon and/or the CIA. This often came at a price, and occasionally the script changes brought to bear by the government had the effect of pissing off Clancy himself. This does raise the question of the extent to which Clancy was on board with the DOD and CIA's overall propaganda missions. However, even the one film – Clear and Present Danger – that the DOD heavily altered and the CIA refused to properly support still had some CIA consultancy and the DOD worked for months to get the script into a shape they were happy with.
What this proves is that there are differences between what is tolerated in book format and what is tolerated in film format. The usual assumption is that people who read books are more intelligent, which is often true. As such they can be subjected to more controversial information without the state being too bothered about it. By contrast, for the plebs who go to the cinema and mindlessly munch popcorn, the DOD and CIA only wants good images of themselves.
From ClandesTime 075 – The Secret World of Tom Clancy Part II: The Government Connections:
[Continues.]
Tom Clancy's books are known for their technical accuracy, their political realism and their curious ability to foreshadow future events. In this episode we explore his government connections – to the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and the White House. We examine whether these connections are what enabled Clancy to write such prophetic fiction, and the impact of that on his readers. We also look at the influence of Clancy's work on the government, from an elaborate inside joke within the CIA to the reading habits of Ronald Reagan. We round off looking at two possible Clancy copycats, both American men who flew planes into buildings (one before 9/11 and one after).
[...] This whole question of where Clancy got his ideas from has come up time and again in interviews with him. One nice example is provided by a 1987 New York Times article, [...] What I love about this article is that they act as though this guy who is lunching with the Secretary of the Navy, going on submarines and talking to a Soviet defector is just doing what any of us could do. As though you or I could just sit down to lunch with the Secretary of the Navy or a Soviet defector.
The article also mentions the United States Naval Institute, but neglects to mention that it is they who published Hunt for Red October, which as we learned last time was the book that got Clancy in with the CIA and got his books in with Hollywood. Nor does it mention that Clancy was a lifetime member of the US Naval Institute, nor that their headquarters are at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland (which I've been to). They are supposedly an NGO, but if you believe that then I've got a canal in Panama to sell you.
[...] Apparently, back in the 1980s someone within the CIA wrote a spoof account of how the real CIA leadership would have dealt with the events of the book. The Hunt for Red October: The Untold Story then became something passed around Langley, and then emailed around when that became the norm. As the former analyst says in the thesis:
For me, "The Hunt for Red October: The Untold Story" also served as a sort of barometer for my own acculturation process.During my first week of work in May of 2007, at least five people eagerly sent me the file saying things like, "You have to read this—it is the funniest thing ever!" But I didn't get it, of course; not right away. By the end of my time there in early 2011, however, I revisited the text and found myself laughing out loud. Even though this story echoes other themes of this chapter, I place the Red October discussion here because of its legendary status; everyone seemed to know this story, so it was a shared cultural and institutional memory among the initiated. In fact, I was specifically told that "you aren't truly initiated into CIA until you think that 'The Hunt for Red October: The Untold Story' is funny."
The article includes a full version of the spoof and it is pretty funny, so what that says about my relationship with the CIA is not something I will dwell on, but there is a serious point here too. Clearly the CIA in the 1980s with Clancy and Red October was a bit like the CIA in the 1950s with George Orwell or in the 1960s with James Bond – a bit of an obsession.
[...] Clancy also seems to have made a serious impression on Ronald Reagan. Recently declassified Downing Street files record the run up and reaction to the 1986 Reykjavík Summit between Ronnie Reagan and Mike Gorbachev. They make for interesting reading for a dozen reasons, not least of which was Reagan's ludicrously inflexible politics and outright neo-con paranoia and constantly blaming the Soviets when the talks collapsed. But one memo detailing a conversation between Thatcher and Reagan before the summit shows that Reagan recommended to Thatcher Tom Clancy's new book Red Storm Rising, which Reagan thought 'gave an excellent picture of the Soviet Union's intentions and strategy'.
Unlike Ian Fleming, or even George Orwell to some extent, Clancy was born an outsider. He is a guy who charmed his way into the establishment by writing popular books that flattered the establishment. I very much believe that was the dynamic at play at that stage at least. However, where this gets really spooky is with Clancy's relationships with Soviet defectors.
[...] Clancy knew three defectors, and met one other Soviet officer by being escorted to a reception at the Soviet embassy by an officer in the US Navy. This leads us the obvious question – how did Clancy get to know Soviet defectors? These people don't just post their addresses and phone numbers in the newspaper. Clancy must have contacted someone in a position to know, and they must have helped make it happen. Again, the likely suspect is the CIA and given the timeline, when Clancy was invited to Langley after the publication of Red October in '84 and became acquainted with at least two of these defectors in '86, did Clancy ask the CIA for help in speaking to and getting to know these ex-Soviets? However, to get to know a defector in Britain living under a pseudonym would presumably require help from British intelligence too, so it seems Clancy spent the 80s cuddling up to a lot of agencies.
There is a lot more information in the podcast. I encourage anyone with an interest in this topic to keep an eye on Tom Secker's work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @07:49PM
Wow, what a lengthy TFS...
It almost reads like anti-American propaganda.
It would not surprise me to find the ClandesTime podcast is being promoted and funded by anti-USA agents of subversion. [youtube.com]
Has Soylent, or any of its News, ever been a member of the Communist Party?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @08:18PM
You might be onto something. The whole "Spy Culture" website linked in TFS seems to focus only on USA/western spy agencies intersection with media. Kind of odd since the Soviet Regime collapsed and revealed tons of concrete examples of how Soviets manipulated popular culture.
If you were really interested in how such secret state agencies operate wouldn't you be at least interested in dissecting one that has already spilled its guts?
P.S. "what a lengthy TFS" = "what a lengthy the fucking submission/story". Don't make me call in the Grammar Nazis. [imgur.com] (image depicts correlation between Grammar Nazism and Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP, subliminal messaging technique used by propagandists))
>>>/32/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by n1 on Monday April 25 2016, @10:13PM
Now i'm going to take the bait here, but also thanks for taking the time out to agree with yourself on this topic.
If you are aware of other research being done on state engagement with entertainment industry as a means to influence public opinion and perception or similar, in any country, i'd like to see that submitted to this site, and i'm sure Tom Secker would like to read about it too.
Until that happens, just in case you're worried about any anti-US sentiment... here's a recent piece from the Washington Post, now picked up Brookings Institute.
Do you feel better now?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday April 26 2016, @04:09AM
If you are aware of other research being done on state engagement with entertainment industry as a means to influence public opinion and perception or similar...
You probably won't find much serious research on it for obvious reasons, but it is pretty much settled fact at this point that Hollywood was lousy with Soviet agents back in the day. But since the media and government was too, those who exposed it were the ones History records as the villains of the story. _Trumbo_ recently received an Academy Award nomination for yet another coverup piece on the incident. Have to keep reminding people that resistance is futile.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday April 26 2016, @08:47AM
I have it on good background that jmorris is a deep-cover, remotely activated Soviet agent. Unfortunately, he out-lasted the Soviet Union, and so like any parasite seeking a host, he latched on to the Republican party, the only close resemblance to Soviet authoritarianism. This explains so much, his hatred of the liberal values that shaped America, the opposition to equal opportunity and racial and gender equality that was so much not a part of the Soviet Union, but is the core of the Republican Party of America today. But the Communist Party under Stalin, and the recent Republican Party of America do share one goal: they both seek to destroy America! And this is why, if you do research, you will not find any evidence that jmorris is a SALT, not even any evidence that he is a Morton! Shouldn't that make you all the more suspicious?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @08:08AM
That's a lot of text for not taking any "bait".
You really should do a single Google search before spewing uneducated nonsense. You could start here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union#Soviet_censorship_of_film [wikipedia.org]
Acting as the chief censor for films, Stalin was demanding meticulous revisions in a way befitting his interpretation, as if a co-author. One famous letter Stalin wrote to Alexander Dovzhenko pertained to The Great Citizen, a film about the purge trials. Stalin's letter made several intrusive revisions on the characters, props, and vital scenes such that the entire film needed restructuring.[9] More moderate cases were recorded, such as a picture by Ivan Pyryev, where Stalin only changed the title from Anka to The Party Card. However, movies which Stalin thought did not cohere with socialist realism were denied being released to the public; The Party Card was not such a film. This picture’s screenplay was written during the time of a national campaign to renew individual party cards, and losing one amounted to a serious lack of Soviet discipline. Anka, the main character, has her card stolen by her lover, who is the surreptitious son of a kulak.[10]
There are many instances of such on that page alone. All Historians acknowledge that, "History is written by the victors." This includes portrayals in subsequent plays, songs, etc. TFA itself links to many cited examples of state influence on media. You're deluding yourself to think the western democratic states are the only ones worth looking into about such things. North Korea exists, FFS. If you think Facebook is the only media outlet that Gemany's Angela Merkel has met with to silence dissenting opinion, you're daft.
I'm not your personal Google, so you'll have to engage your own logic to continue down the path of light.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by n1 on Tuesday April 26 2016, @11:08AM
I clearly said I was taking the bait, and your comments have indicated that you did not read either TFA or my comment with any intention of understanding.
There is state sponsorship of media everywhere, in every country at various levels, I have 0 doubt on that. But why should we focus on the known examples from decades past, or the cases where it has little meaningful impact.
What does North Korean propaganda and control of media have to do with the media i am presented with every day? Why is what Stalin did decades ago, which didnt work on the long term, as evidenced by the collapse of the Soviet Union, more important than what the CIA and DoD is doing today? Which, in my opinion, has been quite successful and has evolved since WW2.
Beyond that i'm more interested in what propaganda is being targeted at me... I don't actually speak Russian or Korean, so digging through their records is not something i'm able to do personally. A lot of Tom Seckers work is based off FoIA requests he has made, so that 'soviet stuff already widely available' is being added to by this work, so we can compare and contrast the techniques and evolution of state propaganda from different decades and cultures.
You are not my personal google, I never asked you to be. Judging by the lack of comprehension of the material available here, i'm really glad you're not.