[paraclete]

We all remember the succesfull Bourne series in film which features such clandestine operations as treadstone and blackbrier, it appears that a real life operation of similar proportions may have existed

Source: CIA hired Blackwater to help hunt al Qaeda leaders - CNN.com

This makes me wonder where do authors get their ideas and where does the cia get its inspiration

[N0help4u]

I believe a lot of the movies are based on things the government covers up. I know quit a few movies have been banned before anybody ever heard of them because they had high tech or some sort of other secrets the government didn't want to get out. Mostly coincidence but still depicted something the government was working on. Things like high tech military planes, telepathy, remote viewing, UFO's and many other things.

[paraclete]

I believe a lot of the movies are based on things the government covers up. I know quit a few movies have been banned before anybody ever heard of them because they had high tech or some sort of other secrets the government didn't want to get out. Mostly coincidence but still depicted something the government was working on. Things like high tech military planes, telepathy, remote viewing, UFO's and many other things.

Yes, the devices depicted in the Terminator series have a family resemblance to the predator drone and other devices and I sincerely hope they are not working on skynet. Are we to expect that the current crop of high tech movies are really propaganda preparing us for the worst or are they just the result of an overworked imagination?

[N0help4u]

I think in a way because they want us to believe it is all entertainment and make things appear to be too unrealistic in one sense while making them look realistic in another so we get complacent with it all in the long run.

[inthebox]

Remember Will Smith in "Enemy of the State?"





G&P

[paraclete]

remember Will Smith in "Enemy of the State?"

G&P

Yes perhaps one of his better roles

[tomder55]

Remember that big stink when it was revealed by Leon Penyata that Cheney had requested the CIA not tell Congress about plans in their preliminary stages that were not being implemented ? Well this apparently was the plan .

Now why would the CIA need to outsource activities they should be able to do themselves ? How about the fact that Congress through the last 25 years and even longer has done all they can to gut the CIA HUMINT capability . Clintoon administration policies in particular forbade the CIA from recruiting people who were not squeeky clean . That left the CIA bereft of all capability on the ground for gathering intelligence about terrorist groups.

Congressman and later Senator Torch Torricelli from NJ;acting on behalf of his "girl friend " Bianca Jagger , went so far as to disclose secrets he obtained while a member of the Intelligence Committee related to the CIA recruiting people who had been involved in killing and other unsavory activities (as if that is news ).

His allegatgations specifically involved the killing of an American hotel owner named Michael DeVine and a Guatemalan guerilla named Efrain Bamaca Velazquez.

CIA sources decided to stop giving information for fear they would be outed.

A 1997 report by the House Intelligence Committee later concluded :
"None of the allegations raised by Rep. Torricelli in the March 22, 1995 letter to the president [Clinton] or subsequent public statements concerning the involvement of the CIA in the DeVine and Bamaca deaths in Guatemala have proved true.”

But still the Clintoids made moves to gut the CIA's ability to recruit "bad guys " into their service. The net effect was that just when we needed those bad guys ,with an understanding of what AQ and jihadistan were up to on the ground ,all we had was spy in the sky intel and a bunch of boy scout desk jockies and careerists bureaucrats in the CIA.

The CIA was left with relying on the word and capability of foreign intel services like the Paki ISI ,or outsourcing ,at a time when we had zippo knowledge of the enemy that had just performed an attempted coup de gras on the US government and economy ,killing 3,000 civilians and military personel in the attempt .

Somehow under those circumstances I can't get too worked up about the fact that the CIA was considering hiring people with the ability to blow the scum away.

[N0help4u]

I have always said they will lie to get away with murder. I believe a lot of the stories of how over 50 people and a cat were killed involving Clinton cover ups. I can't say Clintons were directly involved but I do believe it was government cover up.

Marilyn Monroe's aunt says she was killed too because they knew she knew all the secrets President Kennedy told her. The aunt said that she was on the phone with her and heard a knock on the door. Then the phone call was cut off. She said that Marilyn was excited because her and Joe DiMaggio were getting remarried and going to go on a Honeymoon in Mexico.

[tomder55]

The Kennedys and the death of a lover ? Who'da thunk it ?

[tomder55]

Here is an example of how the American left undermines our security and made it difficult for the CIA to do their job.
From the Washington Compost :

The Justice Department recently questioned military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay about whether photographs of CIA personnel, including covert officers, were unlawfully provided to detainees charged with organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

Investigators are looking into allegations that laws protecting classified information were breached when three lawyers showed their clients the photographs, the sources said. The lawyers were apparently attempting to identify CIA officers and contractors involved in the agency's interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects in facilities outside the United States, where the agency employed harsh techniques.

If detainees at the U.S. military prison in Cuba are tried, either in federal court or by a military commission, defense lawyers are expected to attempt to call CIA personnel to testify.

The photos were taken by researchers hired by the John Adams Project, a joint effort of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers...

washingtonpost.com

[ETWolverine]

When Tom Clancy wrote The Hunt for Red October, he was called in to a Congressional intelligence committee for questioning. Apparently many of the details in his story actually happened or were similar to stuff that had happened. The USA really did get their hands on a Russian Akula-class sub, and really did hide it in some lake somewhere to study it. And Congress was afraid that someone had given Clancy the information, because his story was so similar to reality.

As it turned out, Clancy, who happens to be an expert on military history, military hardware and military operations (and has written non-fiction books on these subjects) just took his knowledge and built a plausible fictional story that just so happened to match something that really happened.

So yes, sometimes reality really does mirror art. And sometimes it's the other way around.

Elliot

[paraclete]

So yes, sometimes reality really does mirror art. And sometimes it's the other way around.

Elliot

Great, so if I want to know what's going on in the US, I will just read the latest fiction it won't be as outlandish as what is actually happening

[tomder55]

Even strange than that ; in his book Debt of Honor ,a Japanese pilot flys his jet into the Capitol Building during a Joint Session of Congress that the President ,his cabinet ,the Joint Chiefs of Staff ,and most of SCOTUS was attending .This was written in 1994.

[ETWolverine]

Great, so if I want to know what's going on in the US, I will just read the latest fiction it won't be as outlandish as what is actually happening

Yep. Sometimes this stuff is just to crazy to make up.

Seriously, though, if you are methodical about your research for a story and have a good understanding of the FACTS that you have researched, the story you come up with can be very realistic... so much so that SOME of it could happen. And very well might happen (or did happen).

Elliot

[ETWolverine]

Even strange than that ; in his book Debt of Honor ,a Japanese pilot flys his jet into the Capitol Building during a Joint Session of Congress that the President ,his cabinet ,the Joint Chiefs of Staff ,and most of SCOTUS was attending .This was written in 1994.

True. The similarities to 9/11 are scary.

On the other hand, just months before 9/11 took place, best-seeling science fiction author David Weber wrote a story called "Flag in Exile" in which a terrorist acct takes place as well... the destruction of a sky-scraper that was just opening to the public. While it wasn't airplanes that did it (it was religious terrorists hidden in the construction crews) the similarities to 9/11 were pretty stark. Weber said that when he was writing the book he was trying to think of the worst thing that he could imagine happening as a terrorist attack against civillians and then wrote it down. Then 9/11 happened, and he realized that his imagination was no real match for the reality of what sick people could actually come up with. He delayed the book's release by a few months, and also put a statement in the book honoring the 9/11 victims, the heroism of the first responders (cops, firefighters, EMTs, etc.) and decrying the terrorists.

In any case, my point is how life does sometimes imitate art, and vice versa. It did in this case.

Elliot

[excon]

Hello:

I heard the CIA wrote a memo telling GW Bush that Bin Laden was going to attack the US... He used the memo for toilet paper...

Yup. Truth IS stranger than fiction.

excon

[tomder55]

Speaking of the CIA. It looks like Leon Penyata threatened to quit over the debate in the Administration over prosecuting CIA interrogators who apparently went beyond Bush administration guidelines . AG Holder has appointed special prosecutor John Durham to go after them
In this case it may be justified... although I question the timing of this announcement... seems the Dems start yelling "torture " and "Bush" every time things get a little tough for them . However ;in the same report that Holder cites as evidence is the proof that the interogations produced "intelligence that has enabled the identification and apprehension of other terrorists and warned of terrorist plots planned for the United States and around the world."

It appears that the President ;like he is won't to do... is going to set up a parallel czar and unit under his direct control to handle future Q and A of terror suspects (fully Mirandized no doubt) .It will be called the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG. This unit will be located at the FBI ;so it's Penyata out and Robert Mueller in.The Czar most likely will come from the FBI ranks .
Clearly the President has completely bought into this notion that the war against jihadistan can be fought in the court room.

Now ; it also appears that General Petraeus at Centcom is unhappy with the intel that the CIA provides and is setting up his own parallel intel service for the Afghan/Paki Theater .
Petraeus to open intel training center - Washington Times

One has to wonder what relevance the CIA has left ?

I for one was a frequent critic of the CIA in the last decade over it's many failures ,and it's culture of bureaucratic shadow warriors who seemingly did their job or not based on their own self interests and political biases.
On the other hand ;it is Congress who has turned this agency into a shadow of what it is capable of .

[excon]

In this case it may be justified....

Hello tom:'

Don't let the Wolverine hear you saying that... So, do YOU want to start the torture redux #9 thread, or should I?

excon

[ETWolverine]

Hello:

I heard the CIA wrote a memo telling GW Bush that Bin Laden was going to attack the US... He used the memo for toilet paper....

Yup. Truth IS stranger than fiction.

excon

I hear that the CIA gave Clinton a target for OBL. Clinton decided not to take the shot. He figured OBL wouldn't be a problem for the USA anyway... and 3000 people died because of it. Now Clinton is lauded as an international relations guru, just for doing the two things he does best... picking up women and paying off Asians for favors.

Meanwhile, Bush, who managed to stop terrorist attacks on the USA for 2,905 days so far, is looked at as a dufus.

Yeah, life is sometimes stranger than fiction.

Elliot

[tomder55]

Ex I said may be justified because in the cases cited if true ;the interrogators exceeded guidelines. A soldier got disciplined for using similar techniques in Iraq as has been described in the report.