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Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies

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While reading of this book would be a good education in propoganda for everyone, it could have been written in a far more educational manner.

I, like many, I would guess, did not realize that those credits at the end of the movie, thanking the armed forces, are more than a simple thank you. They indicate the Pentagon has approved the movie for propoganda purposes.

Most people realize that propoganda was a prevailing force in the movies of the World War II era. But the same propoganda continues today, in a much more subtle form.

A more interesting book would have covered the history of government propoganda in Hollywood releases, not just centered on mostly movies of the last 20 years. There was not a mention of the Disney movies seen on the DVD release "On the Front Lines", or of other movies of the era (such as Abbott and Costello's "Buck Privates"). This was propoganda at its peak.

Also, it would have been interesting to understand the logic behind how the Pentagon would think movies such as "The Swarm" and "Airport 77" would make individuals want to join the armed forces.

I also continue to wonder, as it wasn't mentioned in the book, why the Pentagon supported movies such as "Run Silent Run Deep" or "The Caine Mutiny", both of which deal with mutiny in great detail.

While I admire the author for tackling such a subject, and in bringing it to the public's attention, I just wish he had tackled it with a bit more fervor.

Operation Hollywood is an interesting book about the common practice in which studios alter scripts to meet military PR requirements in return for free access to both bases and equipment.

The book shows how pro-military movies leads to spikes in recruitment and as a result, the military wants to control everything that goes into a movie. All too often, Hollywood acquiesces to their demands. The military believes that they are only enforcing accuracy, but they also maintain that any film that does not reflect well on the military is "inaccurate."

This baleful influence has altered the view that Americans now have of the military. They believe that the U.S. military is intrincsically good and is incapable of doing anything wrong.

Operation Hollywood is an interesting and revealing book. As such it is recommended.

This book documents how the Pentagon and branches of the United States military bully filmmakers into revising scripts, editing scenes from movies and even rewriting factual history by denying them access to military bases, use of soldiers as extras and use of tanks, jets, helicopters, etc if they do not make the alterations to the films. There are multitudes of examples and firsthand accounts of this being done in this book. In fact there are so many that it gets monotonous after a while.

One thing that shouldn't be surprising is that the overwhelming majority of the films that catered to the Pentagon/Military were complete and total garbage and great films like Apocalypse Now, Platoon and An Officer and a Gentlemen received no help whatsoever. But really what films are there that aren't full of propaganda and attempts at brainwashing. They do it overtly and in subtle ways. Probably even subliminally for that matter. Whats documented in this book is the overt public relations type attempts at propaganda. The real social engineers and mind benders in Hollywood operate in a much more shadowy way.

Robb's book is an invaluable resource for those interested in the mechanics of propaganda from Hollywood. The author shows again and again how the Pentagon sanitizes its image through the raw power of institutional trade-off. Movie and tv producers simply do not get the Pentagon's money-saving goodies unless their scripts conform to the high command's self-serving demands. Unsurprisingly, the result is often a subtle but sometimes dangerous departure from reality which may benefit the Pentagon's recruiting program, but in turn witholds important facts from public scrutiny. In Vietnam, American troops experienced a particularly savage disconnect between the war they expected and the war they got. It's at least an open question whether the disconnect would have been as great had the post-war years featured more of the unsanitized realism of "Attack" or "Paths of Glory" instead of the relentless banality of stereotypes like "Battle Cry", "Operation Petticoat", or scores of other unchallenging recruiting posters for the Pentagon. I'm sure thousands of others like myself were similarly seduced into paying a personal price for Hollywood's deals with the Defense Department. (And In response to the anonymous reviewer from "Heartland"-- the 5th Amendment applies only to legal proceedings, which hardly applies in this case.)

On the downside--and I'm sorry to say there is one--the book would have benefitted from better editing. As far as I can tell, the chapters follow in no particular order, adding up to a loose format that scatters both focus and impact. I don't know whether the chapters could have been grouped around common themes, but some such would have helped sharpen the presentation. Moreover, facts tend to be needlessly repeated as though someone has lost track of the earlier text. In short, the text could use some honing and reorganizing.

Nonetheless, Robb has performed a genuine service by calling attention to this long-standing sweetheart arrangement. The chapters on "The Green Berets", "Battle Cry", and "Lassie", are particularly revealing of how the system works. In the future, I hope some enterprising researcher will go further back to produce a history of Hollywood's relation to the armed services, which would lend valuable perspective to Robb's findings, and perhaps open up options for reforming the process. At book's end, the author lists some Hollywood personalities notable for their resistence to Pentagon pressure, such as Clint Eastwood and Kevin Costner. With this book, Robb shows that his name deserves a place among them.

Operation Hollywood has come out at a time when the Pentagon's relationship with the American public is being evaluated -- at the height of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. Operation Hollywood gives us all a rare glimpse at the Pentagon's stealth tactics in shaping the content of television shows and films. Using the Pentagon's own documents, Robb expertly delves into the behind-the-scenes machinations of Hollywood producers kowtowing to Pentagon censors. The result is suprising and disturbing changes to a slew of films that include the box office blockbusters "Independence Day," "Top Gun," and the Harrison Ford-starrer "Clear and Present Danger." Robb also reveals how the Pentagon wanted to change history in the Nicolas Cage-starrer "Windtalkers" to the detriment of the Navajo Indians whose unbreakable codes saved this country in World War II. But, as Robb points out, it doesn't stop there. Who knew that even "The Mickey Mouse Club" and "Lassie" were not immune from military tinkering? Or that the Pentagon objected to a military man taking shots at a target that looked too much like Osama Bin Laden in the popular television show "JAG?" Or that, in our recent history, the military objected to exposing racial and religious prejudices against Hispanics and Jews? It's no wonder, as Robb writes, that his "heroes" Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner and Oliver Stone have rebuffed the Pentagon's requests to change the content of their scripts. Robb is not only my friend, but he is also a great investigative journalist. This book serves as a wake-up call to anyone who loves the very backbone of this country: The First Amendment.

One of the principles the USA was founded upon was the freedom of speech; no government entity can restrict the freedom of expression of a private individual. This however does not preclude government agencies from sponsoring their own speech, or supporting those whose speech reflects favorably on the actions of said agency. This latter intrusion of government into the mass media can be as harmful to society if not more so than outright censorship, primarily because it is less overt and more excusable.

This book deals with one form of such government - sponsored speech; the US military providing support to movie producers to make movies as long as the movies reflect favorably on the US military. The book gives a thorough and carefully-cited history of how Hollywood works with various branches of the US military to help get movies made. In turn, the military branch(es) in question have a say over the movie script, including the right to censor or rewrite entire scenes. The US military helps by providing access to military hardware, installations, and sometimes personnel to movie makers working on military movies. The result is often movies biased towards the US military, with a subtle goal of increasing recruitment. Products of this arrangement include Top Gun, Black Hawk Down, and Stripes. The unfortunate result is that parts of military life or military history that should be known are rewritten, whitewashed, or sometimes ignored altogether. This includes abuse of war prisoners by US servicemen, rapes of innocent women in and around battlefields by US servicemen, and substance abuse within the military.

This arrangement is supported at multiple levels in both Hollywood and the US government. In Hollywood, directors, producers, studio companies, and actors and actresses take part in this symbiosis. In the US government, soldiers, field officers, staff officers, and presidential administrative staff also take part in this symbiosis.

There are however, those who refuse to play by these rules. Two examples cited in the book are Kevin Costner and Oliver Stone. The military refused to support Costner's production of Dances With Wolves because the script shows US soldiers killing Native Americans...during the 1800s! This shows how ridiculous the censorship process has become. US soldiers killing Native Americans is a commonly known fact, and should be acknowledged by the federal government. The US military could have taken the initiative, owned up to their actions, sponsored the movie, and at the end of the movie's credits include an apology for their actions. Instead, they refused any help whatsoever unless all the scenes between Native Americans and US soldiers were cleaned up to protect the military's image.

Overall, the primary conclusion I got from the book is that to watch Hollywood movies with a little suspicion. The story you are seeing has probably been tampered with and censored one or more government agencies, often with the purpose of furthering propaganda of one type or another. Another conclusion I got from reading this book is that ever since 1970, the war movies that have done the best in terms of critical acclaim and Academy Awards have been those completed without military support; Platoon and Apocalypse Now are the two best examples. In all, I am glad I read this book. I highly recommend it.

The strain of keeping the secrets that have been entrusted to me are today, too much to bare. They rip at my soul and are destroying my sanity. I can no longer eat. I cannot sleep. I am useless. I cannot bare it anymore and must tell the truth:

I worked for the United States government for twenty-four years. Exactly one year before 9/11, at exactly zero-nine-zero-three hours, Donald Rumsfeld convened a meeting in Room 1040-A at the Pentagon regarding Operation Empire. The mission was lead by G. Gordon Liddy, a sleeper agent who had been reactivated because of his willingness to be assassinated at the conclusion of the operation in order to protect the operatives. He actually made the same offer in the 1970s when he headed the White House's Plumbers unit in order to protect President Nixon). The mission was going to be financed with gold accumulated by Liddy. How, remains a secret. A plan was devised and when the time came one year, two days, three hours, and thirty-nine seconds later, it went off like clockwork. I know. I was there. And now here is the truth.

In a secret laboratory at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Rumsfeld engaged Las Vega's Siegfried and Roy to train genetically altered chimpanzees to fly commercial jetliners into buildings in New York City. Precisely twenty-three-point six hours before, teams of agents dressed as homeless people and Starbucks employees entered the buildings and strategically placed plastic explosives shaped as Cabbage Patch dolls at various locations to accelerate destruction after the airliners struck. The chimpanzees were trained at the Defense Language Institute to speak Arabic and Spanish, just in case they flew too far south. Over the air traffic control system, however, the chimps were required to speak in broken English with Arabic accents. After the buildings came down, the United States established a causes belli and exactly twenty-eight days, seven hours, twenty-two minutes, and eight seconds later, invaded the Arab World in retaliation. America took over the Middle East's oil fields, raised the price of crude, and took over the planet in order to spread the American values of freedom, democracy, and free enterprise. And to the woman in Professor Simmons's Historical Research Class at the University of Nebraska at Omaha who turned to me and in all seriousness said that the Jews had taken down the World Trade Center - I am now confessing - you got me. The chimpanzees were Jewish).

Now what's wrong with this story? Okay, part of it is true. I did work for the government for twenty-four years. But okay, yeah, I did exaggerate other parts of it. I was off on the times and using the chimps turned out to be a disaster. But that is what David L. Robb, the author of Operation Hollywood, would have us to believe - that the bureaucracies of the United States government, acting in unison; meticulously, methodically, and precisely are engaged in a diabolical plan to keep the masses in the dark concerning the military industrial complex. If ever there was a book that took itself far too seriously, this is it.

Central to the book, although not considered, should have been the question: what is a bureaucracy? On the one year anniversary of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing, my agency was out in force. Police cars. Tactical uniforms. Riot gear. We were ready for anything. During the month or so leading up to the anniversary, every nut group in the country seemed to have come out of the woodwork. "Patriots" faxed "arrest warrants" to federal leaders for usurping the authority of the counties, the only true authorities that the Founding Fathers had provided, etc. People were apprehensive and uneasy. I was stationed at a federal courthouse and the press, upon noticing our deliberately conspicuous presence, questioned us. And we answered as ordered: that our presence was normal; that there was nothing out of the ordinary; and that this was just another routine day. We looked ridiculous. It was the equivalent of making a show of force, but then saying, "We're not really here." We were not concealing anything. We were not engaged in some nefarious plan to deceive the public. None of that. Simply, someone up the food chain decided that we should say nothing so that he or she would not have to say something to somebody else above them. That is a bureaucracy. And that is what Robb simply does not understand.

As the book relates, in order to secure assistance, the Department of Defense requires that movie and television producers submit plots and scripts to the agency for approval. By DOD policy, any production approved must depict military life as feasible and authentic and support military recruiting and retention. What standard does the DOD use in determining whether or not a production meets those criterions? It uses a bureaucratic standard. Will their decisions make sense? No, of course not. That is not how bureaucracies work.

Robb lamented that the DOD declined to assist in the production of "Crimson Tide" because the Navy did not like showing mutinies aboard naval submarines; "Mars Attacks" because a bunch of kids figure out how to defeat the aliens rather than the might of the American armed forces; "Outbreak" because the epidemic was started by the military and that might not help in recruitment; "Memphis Belle" because the movie "didn't . . . accurately [portray] the real-life heroics of the crew;" "The General's Daughter" because the story was based on a staged rape and murder and generals' daughters do not do that; "Courage Under Fire" because Meg Ryan and Denzel Washington were the only good soldiers and everyone else was not nice; "An Officer and a Gentleman" because, according to the Pentagon, "production assistance offers no benefit to the service, rather, it is damaging to the Navy and to its recruiting effort," to say nothing of its naval aviation program. "Courage Under Fire?" "An Officer and a Gentleman?" "Memphis Belle?" They were kidding, right? No, they were not kidding.

The best though, was Forrest Gump and it really got Robb's dander up: "[T]he army's chief complaint was with Forrest Gump himself. The Army) felt that the half-witted lead character, to be played by Tom Hanks, was not the kind of solider the army would have recruited during the Vietnam War. According to an internal Army Department memo, the film's screenplay gives `the generalized impression that the Army of the 1960s was staffed by the guileless, or soldiers of minimal intelligence.' The impression `is neither accurate nor beneficial to the Army.'" The military also objected to Private Gump referring to Lieutenant Dan Taylor as "Lieutenant Dan" and to mooning President Lyndon Baines Johnson. "The `mooning' of a President," said the Army, "by a uniformed solider is not acceptable cinematic license."

Had the DOD assisted good ol' Forrest Gump, it is clear that he would have taken down the whole United States Army and probably the DOD to boot. While I thought that Forrest Gump was about an imperfect individual overcoming obstacles and adversities with his incredible gift, in retrospect the DOD was correct in assessing whether or not assistance was warranted when they applied the standard, "Stupid is as stupid does." Yeah, I think that they got it right here. Forrest was a menace.

Robb asserts that, "[T]he American people are paying the price - not only through their tax dollars, which are being used without their knowledge to give `approved' producers access to billions of dollars worth of military equipment at virtually no cost, but also through the insertion of military propaganda and recruiting messages into their movies and TV shows." Without DOD assistance, production companies incur fantastic expenses in making military themed shows. And the practice, according to Robb, needs to be stopped. He observed that to date, no one has challenged the DOD's policies in court and there has been no legislation or congressional hearings. With the book, Robb is hoping to provoke a public outcry in order to protect America's First Amendment rights. But is it worth it? And more importantly, is he right?

Many of the DOD decisions, as any reasonably thinking person would immediately know, are simply absurd. That is because bureaucracies are inherently risk adverse, many times to the point of incapacitation. Regarding 9/11, as a matter of established fact, the FBI knew in advance who the hijackers were; that they were learning to fly planes; and that an attack was probably imminent. The female agent who had figured it out, to say nothing of Able-Danger, was told to back off so that Muslims would not be offended. There was no intricate conspiracy and there is none at the Defense Department. Both are simply instances of bureaucratic bumbling. When the government was forced into creating a commission to investigate the 9/11 attacks, they came out in front of God and everyone and said that there had been no advanced knowledge - a flat out lie. The government did that not as part of some evil conspiracy, but as a matter of automatic bureaucratic functioning. Bureaucracies never accept responsibility for anything even when their culpability is irrefutable. And that is never going to change because risk adversity and not accepting responsibility is a matter of perennial organizational development, especially for bureaucracies. In short, Robb wants to provoke a public outcry about the tides of the ocean.

Moreover, in his righteous indignation, Robb never acknowledges that in some instances, the DOD is correct. In Jerry Bruckheimer's "Pearl Harbor," General Jimmy Doolittle, played by Alec Baldwin, "was originally portrayed as an idiot, a vulgar and crude man," which to anyone who studies history knows, is untrue. Robb asks, "Should the Pentagon have that kind of control over whether or not a motion picture gets made?" He repeatedly fails to acknowledge that the Pentagon never decides what pictures are going to be made. They simply decide whether or not a producer will have access to military assets. While most of the declinations have been based on stupidity, in the case of "Pearl Harbor," many people would agree that Hollywood should not have the license to depict a national hero, let alone anyone else, as something that they were not.

In demonstrating the seriousness (and I would say fanaticism) with which he views the topic, Robb recalled the DODs involvement with the Mickey Mouse Club during a commemoration ceremony at the USS Arizona Memorial: "The collaboration between the Pentagon and the Mickey Mouse Club may have been good both for ratings and recruiting, but it raises many serious questions. Should the Pentagon be allowed to target young children as future recruits? Does Hollywood have a responsibility to keep military propaganda out of children's programming? Don't parents have a right to know that the shows their children are watching contain military recruiting messages? And most importantly, don't children have the right to watch cartoon shows without being subject to military propaganda?" While Robb is correct in expressing outrage regarding the military's attempt to subvert unsuspecting children, more horrific to me was Disneyland's plot not to make Mickey Mouse a transgendered person which would have been a lot more inclusive. And where were the Pride Flags! The hate! The hate!

Overall, Operation Hollywood is a good book and an enjoyable read. But in claiming that the DOD is engaged in mind control is a bit much. The Pentagon cannot control its own bureaucracy, let alone someone else's mind. Robb is giving them far too much credit and in focusing in on a nonexistent conspiracy, he failed to adequately address the problem; bureaucratic decision making, not an orchestrated plot. Because of that, he defeated his own argument and diminished the importance of the book.

David L. Robb has a bone to pick with the Pentagon. He thinks the Pentagon policy of witholding military cooperation to movie producers who don't portray the military in a positive way is wrong. Operation Hollywood is filled with entertaining examples of how producers have butted heads with the various branches of the military.

While Ivan Reitman practically rewrote his movie comedy Stripes to accomodate the Army, Clint Eastwood refused to give in to the Army's demands for change. Eastwood even wrote to his friend President Reagan for help, but no dice. The Marines did not demand the fundamental changes the Army had, so Eastwood was able to make Heartbreak Ridge with only minor changes, such as making his character a Marine.

Robb's argument is that the military services are for the benefit of the people, not the propagandists at the Pentagon, so they should not be able to exercise so much control over Hollywood. But if the producers don't want to play ball with the Army, they can build their own military sets and buy their own tanks and hire their own soldier extras. It's just a lot more expensive that way, and many producers would like to find a way of making the movie they want (within reason) while taking advantage of the huge cost savings of using military bases and personnel.

What's important for the viewer of movies and television to realize is how much control the producers do allow the military. When you watch Jag on TV or see Saving Private Ryan at the theater, it's a mistake to forget the deal with the devil the producers may have made to save a bundle. It's nothing new - Shakespeare rewrote history to make his plays palatable to those in power.

In the end, what we have is another reminder that what you see on the screen ISN'T REAL. Who would've thought?

With his new book, Operation Hollywood, Dave Robb demonstrates why he continues to be Hollywood's best investigative journalist. Taking a subject that has never been addressed, Robb unveils the film industry's dirtiest secret--that movie producers have been allowing the Pentagon to censor movies while placing propaganda into films and television shows for more than fifty years.

Congress needs to take a hard look at Robb's outstanding book and his overwhelming evidence.

In the wake of the terrible abuses of prisoners in Iraq, I can't imagine a more important book than this, showing how the Pentagon is concerned with creating an image that is often so far removed from the truth. One hopes that Operation Hollywood will wake the politicians in Washington up to an abuse of the legitimate public relations functions of the military that simply must stop. As we are tragically finding out, the war in Iraq is not a Hollywood feature, and thanks to the Pentagon Hollywood features sometimes only barely touch the truths of the military life. Thank you Dave Robb for going where no one has gone before and coming back with an important story that should concern all Americans..