In 1946, after the war, Hollywood was excited to produce a film about the O.S.S., America’s predecessor to the C.I.A. Here’s a description from Wikipedia about the studios scrambling to be the first one out with their O.S.S. movie:
Richard Maibaum had just served four years in the army. He returned to Paramount, where he had been a screenwriter, and became a producer. He was assigned the job of writing and producing O.S.S. “Every studio in Hollywood was racing to come out with the first OSS film,” says Maibaum. “When I was in Washington I knew some of the OSS people so I had a head start on the subject.”
The studio had hoped to cast Sterling Hayden who had served in the OSS in real life. However he was still in uniform in early 1946 so the film was assigned to Alan Ladd, whose casting was announced in January 1946. It was one of three movies being made about the OSS in Hollywood around this time, the others being 13 Rue Madeleine and Cloak and Dagger. This resulted in filming taking place in extreme secrecy.
While the filming for this movie took place in secret, the power of movies overall was definitely NOT a secret to those working at the Office of Strategic Services, so today, courtesy of the Decoding Culture Foundation and PsyOp Cinema, I’m highlighting one of the most fascinating documents I’ve come across so far in the archives of DCF:
In assessing the incredible power of motion pictures for the U.S. Government, the Office for Strategic Services clearly indicates a role for targeting U.S. Armed Forces AND civilians in order “to inform and instruct”, “to create attitudes”, “to stimulate or inhibit action”, and “to build morale”.
Jumping forward in time, one year before the C.I.A’s first tweet, Barack Obama got heat for supposedly allowing government propaganda to be disseminated domestically. Here’s how AP News deployed some factual damage control at the time:
I won’t be getting into all the ins and outs of how the Smith-Mundt Act came to be, and whether or not Obama’s move 13 years ago made it “perfectly legal for the media to purposely lie to the American people”, because those nuances don’t seem to matter when entire characters who don’t exist are just made up and inserted into REAL LIFE dramas, like the longest and most expensive hunt for the Unabomber.
To avoid getting distracted by the fake girl-boss character in the bullshit Netflix movie I watched a few days ago, let’s take one brief look at what the conversation surrounding the Smith-Mundt Act was like when this conversation seemed to be more relevant many decades ago:
There are three key restrictions on the U.S. State Department in the Smith–Mundt Act.
The first and most well-known restriction was originally a prohibition on domestic dissemination of materials intended for foreign audiences by the State Department. The original intent was the Congress, the media and academia would be the filter to bring inside what the State Department said overseas. In 1967, the Advisory Commission on Information (later renamed the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy) recommended the de facto prohibition on domestic distribution be removed noting that there is “nothing in the statutes specifically forbidding making USIA materials available to American audiences. Rather, what began as caution has hardened into policy.”
This changed in 1972 when Senator J. William Fulbright (D-AR) argued that America’s international broadcasting should take its “rightful place in the graveyard of Cold War relics” as he successfully amended the Act to read that any program material “shall not be disseminated” within the U.S. and that material shall be available “for examination only” to the media, academia, and Congress. In 1985, Senator Edward Zorinsky (D-NE) declared USIA would be no different than an organ of Soviet propaganda if its products were to be available domestically. The Act was amended to read: “no program material prepared by the United States Information Agency shall be distributed within the United States”.
Maybe I’m wrong in how I’m reading this excerpt, but my interpretation of this policy snapshot is that some degree of embarrassment existed among policy makers after WWII when they looked at the psychological warfare propaganda used in foreign theaters of war because, as the O.S.S. document shows, the targets considered by America’s war machine included pretty much EVERYONE involved, including allies and our own Armed Forces.
Since the end of WWII and the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, much has been done to project the power of U.S. intelligence operations across the globe, especially once America launched a war that can’t be won, since the enemy defined by the WAR ON TERRORISM is a tactic and not a nation or foreign organization.
This war against a tactic was launched at the same time society-changing technology was rapidly emerging and connecting people, turning kinetic wars on actual geographical terrain into information wars for the ultimate prize: mind control through narrative control.
To undermine their narrative control, it helps to see behind the curtain, so let’s do just that by examining what’s publicly available (again, brought to you by the Decoding Culture Foundation) to contextualize the C.I.A.’s first tweet:
By becoming aware of how these operators have developed their information operations from the vantage point of the 2026 info-slop we’re all now drowning in, I’m hoping to make it easier to deflate the projected power of these assholes as little enablers, like Sean Evins, moves up the ladder to capitalize on his Public/Private government access by landing at a tech-company with a very weird name:
While Sean Evins enjoys global reach from KEK street, the inhabitants of MAIN street don’t seem to be doing all that well, especially the “conversation” happening right now between men, civil society, and a pack of rabid hyenas who risk spreading cognitive dissonance by even approaching how they see the world.
To see how sex and rape were viewed by the O.S.S., I have one final example left to share, and it will be followed by the comedic illumination of Shane Gillis and the insanity he’s baited the hyenas into exposing. Buckle up buttercup!
From O.S.S. movie ops to information technology seeded by the C.I.A., my Gen X brain really can’t take much more of this crap, which brings me and my over-loaded mind to the final words of the program on the verge of destroying the world in the 1983 movie War Games:
A STRANGE GAME.
THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS
NOT TO PLAY.
Thanks for reading!