From First Days Of CIA And HUAC, It Was All About Compromise In LaLa Land
Historians who try to piece together the history of Hollywood with all its murders, drug overdoses, suicides, cults, Satanic rituals, and other sordid intrigues always seem to leave out the witch that stirs the brew, the Central Intelligence Agency.
Leaving the CIA out of Hollywood’s story is like leaving the witch out of the story of witchcraft. From the first days of the CIA and the House Unamerican Activities Committee in Hollywood, the CIA and Hollywood have been intertwined like DNA.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hollywood-Ten
Most people don’t remember the Hollywood Ten or why they were indicted. Still, the newly formed CIA wanted to send a shot over the bow of Hollywood for writers to write anti-Communist scripts, casting World World II ally, the Soviet Union, as the new enemy.
Any script which had “Communist undertones” was banned, and studio heads and writers were threatened with blacklisting. Of course, the CIA was not simply content with rounding up ten leaders and publicly indicting and blacklisting them for all to see with the Hollywood Ten.
But Central Intelligence also went underground with covert recruiting, compromise, and infiltration operations, techniques they had learned from the OSS training by the British SOE, the Special Operations Executive, in World War II. And the Eagle’s Nest of the OSS in World War II was Lookout Mountain Air Force Base in Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles.
The first motion picture unit of Lookout Mountain, with the authority to shut down all other motion picture units in Hollywood during World War II, was actually called the First Motion Picture Unit. The First Motion Picture Unit ruled the roost in Hollywood and had the right to censor all Hollywood giant studios if the studios’ films did not fit the “War Effort.” Also, the First Motion Picture Unit doled out the money for World War II propaganda movies. The Hollywood Ten was 1947’s reminder by the CIA of who still ruled the roost of Hollywood during the new Cold War.
In Part Two of this series, we will show how this same CIA Eagle from Lookout Mountain AFB, ruling the roost of Hollywood in the Cold War, would go on to fashion the first Hollywood Union President as the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. I will also discuss how every counterculture band you knew in the 1960s came from this same Lookout Mountain CIA Eagle perch.
Additional recommended reading:
Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops, and the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream
