Episode 1
'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.
Animal Farm Cartoon 1954
Episode 2
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'.