J. Edgar [2011)

“I read the news today, oh boy…”

Ever since John Lennon sang those words on Sgt. Pepper‘s (and likely long before that) the news has had the power to depress us.

The power to shock.

The power to put our day into a tailspin.

But can we avoid the news?

And, perhaps more importantly, what is news?

As for avoidance.

Sometimes it is recommended.

To unplug.  To disconnect.

We all hit our saturation points concerning the dissemination of details.

Just what is deemed newsworthy accounts for much of our discomfort in keeping ourselves  abreast.

Even as private citizens.

We want to know the goings-on of the world.

Out of a sense of self-preservation.  To protect our families.

To be prepared.  Informed.  Able to make better decisions (we hope).

Today I made the mistake of digging a little deeper than recently.

And I came across several pieces on the ongoing pizzagate controversy.

I must start by saying that I have not followed this story much since the election.

Indeed, if the allegations are true, it is unfathomably revolting.

But there comes a time when waffling has its benefits.

I will just say that I don’t know what the truth is concerning pizzagate.

I’ve seen the pictures.  I’ve read the names.  I’ve connected the dots.

And now the ball is (back) in the FBI’s court.

[And perhaps that of the NYPD as well]

But it is germane to discuss a parallel matter which bears upon pizzagate.

And that is the coup which Dr. Steve Pieczenik described as having been undertaken by Hillary Clinton and her cabal around the first of November.

Just what was this coup?

Dr. Pieczenik was scant on details.

But perhaps it was the absolving statement of FBI Director James Comey.

And, if we give Mr. Comey the benefit of the doubt (which I’m not sure he deserves), then we might assume that the Clinton coup was largely activated from within the Department of Justice.  In essence, Comey’s boss (Loretta Lynch) could very well have compelled the Director to issue that statement at that particular time.

That would, in some ways, be a significant manifestation of a coup in progress.

Contrary to this was the countercoup of which Dr. Pieczenik spoke.

As I have written previously, this countercoup appears to have been initiated by other branches of the U.S. government (particularly the 16 intelligence agencies).  Dr. Pieczenik seemed to intimate that it was military intelligence in particular which was taking a lead on countering Clinton’s attempted coup.

Beyond these details (and they are vague), I know not much.

But we should return to pizzagate.

We should consider it as a phenomenon which might have several explanations.

Putting all our cards on the table, it is not out of the question that pizzagate was in itself the countercoup.

Which is not to say the allegations are false.

Indeed, it appears that the instigators of the countercoup were working closely with WikiLeaks to prevent Hillary Clinton from stealing an election by leveraging the Department of Justice (and other parts of the executive branch) improperly.

But there is a further possibility.

And I will pose it as a question.

Have we been the targets of a very sophisticated psychological operation?

And even muddier…did this operation save our country?

Investigating a child kidnapping Satanic ritualistic murder pedophile ring is certainly the purview of federal authorities.

The FBI.

But how much has the FBI been compromised?

Any American with at least two brain cells to rub together lost immense confidence in the Bureau in the years following 9/11.

And so history keeps repeating itself.

Sham investigations.  Issues too big to cover.

JFK.  9/11.  A litany forwards and backwards.

But I am beating around the bush.

I want to apologize if I have been less-than-stellar in citing my sources in the practice of my film criticism.

This is not an academic site.

I do not seek peer review.

But I do not lie.

I may jump to conclusions.

And yet, I would fancy myself a fairly astute observer.

Apologizing further, I do not seek to defame anyone.

That would be something too horrible to do (especially with the gravity of the pizzagate allegations).

But information will organically find its level as long as law enforcement is neutered by insiders.

Which brings us to a wonderful film by director Clint Eastwood.

This film covers just what we are talking about.

What is right.  What is wrong.

What methods are appropriate.  What methods are effective.

But at the heart of this controversial film (about a controversial personage) is the idea of serving one’s country.

However, we encounter much here which could fall into the “noble lie” category.

All of that aside, the idea of government service is put in its proper light.

A dirty game, sometimes.  But a noble pursuit.

And so this is less a review of the film J. Edgar and more a letter of THANK YOU to the men and women of the FBI.

Thank you for taking upon yourselves the stress of seeing unspeakable atrocities.

Thank you for taking upon yourselves the stress of following every lead.

But we thank you one further:

thank you for remaining humans.

You know the right thing to do.

Do the right thing.

And we will too.

From the depths of our hearts,

we salute you.

A bit late for all your thankless tasks gone by.

And in advance of your excellence…your leading by example…your adherence to the highest ethics…which we know will be evident in your future work.

-PD

Conspiracy Theory [1997)

Great courage only manifests itself under conditions of great fear.

And Dr. Steve Pieczenik was right when he wrote recently that the conspiracy theorists have won.

And so it is worth revisiting where we have been.

Worth spicing up the espionage tank with a genuine slice of spookery.

No spoofs here.

Citizen detective reborn.

The Justice Department would do well to revisit this film.

Laughable Loretta Lynch.

And her feckless predecessor Eric Holder.

A travesty of justice.  A mockery.

These two buffoons.

Enter Mel Gibson as the outcast.

Newspaper clippings.

A wizard with a highlighter.

Making copious connections.  Connecting dots with more efficiency and efficacy than Saul Berenson’s wildest pragmatic dreams.

Because of inspiration.  That spark.  Banzai!  Geronimo!!!

She has a dog in the fight.

America.

Back when the Twin Towers were still standing.

A horrible gift.  To be able to see through the news.

To be able to “translate” it at a high level of accuracy.

Patrick Stewart is our Sidney Gottlieb.

And maybe the details are Hollywooded, but they are basically true.

McGill University.  Perhaps he would have made a better Ewen Cameron.

A little Hannibal Lecter escape.

Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

The moment I first believed.

Amazing grace.

William Colby.  DCI.  Talking about the CIA’s heart attack gun.

The Church Committee.  1975.

But not all psychiatrists are bad.

Indeed, the most dangerous thing is when they change sides.

Or rather, when their “community” becomes so corrupt that the good guys become a de facto vestige of the original principles…operating outside of the official apparatus.

These would be the patriots like Dr. Pieczenik.

The brave man who called bullshit on the bin Laden “assassination”.

Described by Antoine Marfan in 1896.

You can’t kill a dead man.

But damage control is always as attractive as it is elusive.

And so slimed.  Tagged.  Made.

Conspiracy Theory is not a masterpiece, but it’s an essential film.

Because it comes back to love.  Comes back to the real “why”.

We don’t need Simon Sinek or the RAND Corporation to tell us this.

We just need Mozart.  And Alex Jones.

And we might look in vain for the man behind the curtain.

Because each man (or woman) leads to another man (or woman).

When you meet shameless liars, then you have found the stink.

And if you follow the stench, you get closer to the source of repugnance.

Moments of tenuous trust.

Knowing you’re dealing with actors.

Several layers of reality.

Mine.  Yours.

But you’ve never seen her run!

Julia Roberts.

In a role of which to be proud.

Pretty Woman doesn’t matter.

Make a good film.  Make a statement.  Leave something timeless.

What is this counterintelligence organization?

And where was it when Snowden took a vacation?

We get a black site.

Remember when the FBI had to overcome armed DoE agents at Rocky Flats?

Just like the end of Spies Like Us.

Humor and dead-on detail.

Maybe you only live twice…

But you can do it silently for love.

Love of country.

Love of people.

Devotion to principles worth upholding.

A dirty business.

With some golden hearts here and there.

Well-done, Richard Donner.

 

-PD

Citizenfour [2014)

Four days till the US election.

OK, three.

But we must take a look at things as they seem.

And analyze what they might be.

I have always written about Edward Snowden glowingly.

But this film is an enigma.

If you know the history of film, you realize that certain filmmakers (particularly Robert Flaherty) presented staged events as if they were documentaries.

This is known as docufiction.

And if you have followed my take on the two US Presidential candidates (Johnson and Stein can suck it…though Stein has true credibility), you’ll know that my assessment of Trump and Clinton has been mainly through the lens of film.

What we (I) look for is credibility.

Having watched all three Presidential debates (in addition to extensive supplemental research), it has been a no-brainer to conclude that Hillary Clinton has ZERO credibility while Donald Trump has immense credibility.

The differentiation could not be more mark-ed.

[Docu-fiction]

But what about Edward Snowden?

Let me start off by saying that Mr. Snowden does not come off as a wholly believable whistleblower in this film.

Perhaps Laura Poitras’ inexperience as a filmmaker is to blame.

Perhaps it is indeed because Edward Snowden is no actor.

But Mr. Snowden is completely inscrutable and opaque in this documentary.

HOWEVER…

there is something about his ostensible North Carolina drawl which rings true.

And so there are two major possibilities…

  1. Edward Snowden is an extremely brave individual who succeeded in “defecting to the side of the public” (to paraphrase)
  2. Edward Snowden is a superspy

I had read of Snowden.  In studying what he had leaked, his credibility seemed beyond a shadow of a doubt.  Such a damaging agent could not possibly have been a Trojan horse operation (so I thought).

Indeed, the most believable part of this film is the last 10 minutes or so.

Sadly, my “copy” of the movie switched to a German overdub for this final segment.

Which is to say, I was more focused on images in the finale.

Every once in a while I was able to make out the beginning of a phrase from William Binney or Glenn Greenwald.

At all other times during this last portion, the German superimposed upon the English made the latter an almost palimpsest.

My German is that bad.

Entschuldigung.

But here are my reservations concerning hypothesis #1 (from above).

A).  Glenn Greenwald’s earliest interview after the leak was clearly shot with the skyline of Hong Kong in the background.  It is somewhat inconceivable that the NSA in conjunction with the CIA (and possibly the FBI or DIA) did not immediately follow Greenwald’s every move from that point forward (courtesy of operatives under the Hong Kong station chief of the CIA).

B).  Glenn Greenwald is a little too smooth to be believable (the same going for Snowden).  Greenwald’s sheer fluency in Portuguese (a bizarre choice for a second language) seems particularly suspect.  The credulous me wants to believe that Greenwald is simply brilliant.  The incredulous me sees Greenwald as just as much a CIA operative as Snowden.

Indeed, hypothesis #2 would be that Edward Snowden is in fact a CIA operative.  His complete calm at The Mira hotel in Hong Kong does not harmonize with a computer geek who just lifted the largest cache of the most top-secret files in world history.  Instead, his mannerisms almost all point to someone who has been hardened and trained at Camp Peary rather than someone who grew up so conveniently close to NSA headquarters.

Snowden is admittedly a former employee of the CIA.

But what could the purpose of such a Trojan horse exercise possibly be?

One strong possibility comes to mind.

As we learn in Dr. Strangelove, there’s no purpose in having a “doomsday machine” if the enemy doesn’t know about it.

In fact, we don’t even need cinema to illustrate this.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were demonstrations as much as they were mass-murder war crimes.

Weapons are “tested” often as much for the power of display as for the exercise of weapon efficacy.

But the world has always been a weird place.

And it is indeed possible that Edward Snowden is an idealistic, independent party in this affair.

The esteemed Dr. Steve Pieczenik (of whom I have spoken much recently) has lately called Snowden “no hero”.

I’m not exactly sure what he means by that.

Possibly Pieczenik knows the Snowden affair to positively be an intel operation.

Possibly Dr. Pieczenik (whom I respect deeply) merely sees Snowden as of no great bravery when compared to the men and women (both military and intelligence employees) who risk their lives on battlefields across the world…by direct order through the US chain of command.

But Dr. Pieczenik has also pointed out that some orders must be disobeyed.

That is part of the responsibility of defending the Constitution “against all enemies foreign and domestic”.

So we have a very interesting case here.

And it directly parallels our current election choices.

What SEEMS to be?

What is patriotism?

At what point must standard operating procedures be put aside?

What constitutes peaceful protest?

Who among us has the duty and privilege to spearhead a countercoup?

I’ve often thought to myself that I would be a horrible NSA employee because I would have a framed picture of Snowden on my desk.

Suffice it to say, I’m sure that is strictly NOT ALLOWED.

But this film makes me doubt the Snowden story.

As a further instructive detail, why does Snowden (in this film) feel so confident in his ability to withstand torture (!) as a means of coercing from him his password(s)?

Again, that does not sound like a standard ability of an “infrastructure analyst”.

Snowden does not admit in this film to ever having been a field operative.

Indeed, it almost feels like Louisiana Story or Tabu:  A Story of the South Seas when Snowden drapes a red article of cloth over his head and torso to ostensibly prevent Greenwald and Poitras from visually seeing his keystrokes.

It is overly dramatic.

These are thoughts.

No doubt, someone knows much more than me about the truth in this strange tale.

And so the film is, in turns, shockingly brilliant and daftly mediocre.

In a strange way, it is just as suspect as James Bamford’s books on the NSA (which I have long suspected were really NSA propaganda pieces).

One of the keys to propaganda and social engineering is gaining the trust of your targets.

In a large-scale psychological operation, the entire world (more or less) is the target.

Back to cinema, we need look no further than Eva Marie Saint “shooting” Cary Grant in North by Northwest.

Yes, Body of Secrets (Bamford) was damaging to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and US military in general (the revelation of Operation Northwoods) while also exposing Israel as a craven “ally” (the USS Liberty “incident”).

But if we are not careful, we are taken in by these juicy bits of “truth” (in all likelihood, very much true) on our way to accepting the whole book as an accurate exposé.

And this is what makes the world of intelligence so tricky.

Like a chess game in which you are blindsided by a brilliant move.

It takes years (perhaps decades) or an innate brilliance (perhaps both) to discern the organic from the synthetic in the shifting sands of this relativistic world of espionage.

I can only guess and gut.

 

-PD