Welcome back, everyone, to Porkins Policy Radio! This long-awaited return of PPR marks our 35th episode!
For this milestone in Porkins Policy history we were joined by our very good friend Tom Secker to discuss the 1973 JFK conspiracy thriller Executive Action. Starring Burt Lanchaster and Robert Ryan, this film follows the exploits of a right-wing cabal of businessmen, politicians and ex-intelligence operatives as they plot and carry out the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Tom and I begin the conversation by picking apart the film and its overall interpretation of the conspiracy and assassination, with particular attention to the film’s suggestion that this whole intricate plan could have been carried out by a lone black ops intelligence agent. We also focus on the bizarre way the film portrays Oswald – – a bumbling, sheep-dipped fool who has no idea what is going on or who is actually running him. We note the obligatory praising of Kennedy as a progressive saint, and who and what the film leaves out in terms of players and events surrounding the conspiracy.
Later we take a look at the three people who actually wrote and researched the film. We start with the curious case of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo – – the pro-war WWII propagandist later turned blacklisted Hollywood communist is an odd choice for a screenwriter of a JFK “truther” film. Tom discusses Trumbo’s checkered past, as well as his own theories about who Trumbo really was and who he may have been working for. Then I talk about the two men behind the story and research for the film, Mark Lane and Donald Freed, and how both of these individuals, in particular Mark Lane, were at the forefront of controlling the alt-media and conspiracy culture of the time. I talk about Lane’s involvement not only within the JFK assassination community, but also in representing James Earl Ray in the MLK killing, his role alongside Donald Freed as Jim Jones’ legal council, his close friendships with a “who’s who” of CIA assets, and his later defense of the American Free Press. We also touch on his relentless attacks on true researchers such as Mae Brussell, and how he deliberately controlled the flow of information coming out about JFK and other conspiracies.
We close out by considering what may have been the goal of Lane and Freed in crafting this distorted view of the JFK assassination. Tom and I also discuss the trend in the alt-media of propping up and supporting so called “truther” films without understanding who is behind them and what their producers’ intentions might actually be.
[NOTE: There was a serious audio issue with the end of this podcast. This is the updated mp3 and Youtube versions]
FULL DISCLOSURE: I am no longer associated with Sibel Edmond, or BoilingFrogs/Newsbud. I think she is a con-artist and a petty and vindictive individual. If you want to know more about why I broke off all ties with Sibel you can find out more here:
In this BFP Roundtable episode Sibel Edmonds and Pearse Redmond discuss the recent “bombshell” article by Seymour Hersh regarding the so-called Bin laden Raid, offer their analysis of the article itself, and explain why this is yet another attempt to obscure the elephant in the room. The discussion includes two never-before-released revelations regarding the Hersh story and the FBI’s Bin Laden tapes: Extrapolating from her sources, Sibel explains why Hersh wrote this article, the timing of it, and the players and agenda behind it. Later she delivers another bombshell that deals with the FBI’s infamous Bin Laden tapes: From her time as an FBI translator Sibel was privy to some very interesting information regarding these tapes, how they were used by the Deep State, and how this relates back to the Hersh article.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I am no longer associated with Sibel Edmond, or BoilingFrogs/Newsbud. I think she is a con-artist and a petty and vindictive individual. If you want to know more about why I broke off all ties with Sibel you can find out more here:
In this introductory episode Sibel Edmonds, Guillermo Jimenez and Pearse Redmond introduce the new BFP Roundtable Season and discuss new ideas and possibilities for coming shows. From there the panel quickly moves on to its first topic: Senator Graham’s so-called smoking gun (The infamous redacted 28-pages), the possible reasons for and timing of this old pickled issue’s circulation, in conjunction with the Saudi Arabia-Yemen angle and connections. The panel heatedly debunks more than one widespread spin used by mainstream and pseudo-alternative media outlets in reporting Saudi Arabia’s assault on Yemen with the carefully-designed Iran element. And finally, the panel invites BFP activist community members to join and expand this discussion and provide their ideas for coming roundtable discussion topics.
*This is our introductory episode for the new BFP Roundtable season. The coming episodes will be here at Boiling Frogs Post, and will be available only to BFP activist members. You can subscribe and join our community here.
Pearse and Tom round off season 1 looking at the 2012 Oscar winning historical drama Argo, which is based on a real life exfiltration operation during the Iranian revolution. We discuss the CIA’s almost too-obvious involvement in the film, the background of how the story was declassified and turned into a movie including the shadowy figures of producer David Klawans and writer Chris Terrio. We stick the boot into Ben Affleck and his film, not just for its ‘Reel Bad Arabs’ racism but also its outrageous and possibly intentional historical inaccuracy. We analyse the weirdest Oscars ceremony ever, where Argo producers Affleck, George Clooney and Grant Heslov won the Best Picture award, before wrapping up by reflecting back on season 1 of this series and briefly looking forward to season 2.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I am no longer associated with Sibel Edmond, or BoilingFrogs/Newsbud. I think she is a con-artist and a petty and vindictive individual. If you want to know more about why I broke off all ties with Sibel you can find out more here:
Sibel Edmonds is our final guest as we dissect this shambolic re-telling of the Soviet-Afghan War. Much of this conversation is devoted to what the film leaves out, such as Charlie Wilson being a CIA asset, the origins of Operation Cyclone being older and much more important than one drunk congressman and his ultra-right wing Christian friend and of course the likes of Jalaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Osama Bin Laden who are completely absent from the movie. This was a no-holds-barred critique of this quite shameful piece of CIA propaganda, and all the more fun because of that.
Thomas Sheridan joins us to talk about the 2010 film The Social Network, which tells the story of the origins of facebook. We discuss the class struggle portrayed in the story, the mechanism by which the film could have been influenced by the CIA, the archetypes in the finely-produced melodrama that plays out, the CIA’s silicon valley network which is conspicuous by its absence from the narrative, and the meaning of the movie’s dark and brooding tone. We also get into some unusual areas, including the mystery of the sub sandwich.
Good friend Adam joins us to discuss the 1998 action thriller Enemy of the State, and its unprecedented ‘revelation’ of surveillance technology. We talk about how the film has a rogue’s gallery of technical advisers – including Chase Brandon and Marty Keiser – and how this led to one of the most spectacular depictions of the NSA and the spy state in general. Following from this we analysed the likely purpose in the CIA masking themselves as the NSA in the film, and how this has scuppered the progress of any serious dialogue about mass surveillance.
Aaron Franz joined in the conversation as we looked at the film The Recruit, which more than any other film we’re covering in this season was moulded by CIA entertainment liaison Chase Brandon. Like so many films, it tells the story of a young person inducted into a secret world with secret rules and codes of thinking and behaviour, and in doing so inducts the audience into that same world. We discussed this dynamic from various angles – black operations, secret societies, occult or mystery school philosophies – before studying Brandon’s appearance in the most fascinating ‘making of’ documentary ever made.
Guillermo Jimenez joins us for this episode to talk about Robert De Niro – a man whose relationship with the CIA spans two decades. We look at four films – Wag the Dog, Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers and The Good Shepherd, the latter three of which have documented CIA assistance in their production. We discuss Robert De Niro’s transformation from a serious dramatic actor into a kooky comedy figure, and the CIA’s apparent involvement in that. This led to us asking whether the three comedy films are trojan horses for a sneaky CIA agenda, and talking about how The Good Shepherd has many flaws but this did not stop the CIA themselves from praising it as ‘probably as good as any film on the Agency’.
In this opening episode of the new series Pearse and Tom look into the CIA’s adaptations of George Orwell’s two most famous novels – Animal Farm and 1984. We focus primarily on Animal Farm, a revolutionary animated film in several senses of the word, produced by Louis De Rochemont – a man who had worked with several other government agencies prior to making Animal Farm with the CIA. The animation was does by British firm Halas and Bachelor, and we also discuss their background. This episode also examines the paper trail, looking in Orwell’s FBI file and the MI5 records on actor Michael Redgrave, who starred in 1984 despite being a suspected Communist. We conclude that the CIA had something of an obsession with Orwell at this time, and were subverting his works quite radically in these films.
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