The CIA spent 20 years promoting modern art as a propaganda tool: "We wanted to unite all the people who were writers, who were musicians, who were artists, to demonstrate that the West and the United States was devoted to freedom of expression and to intellectual achievement, without any rigid barriers as to what you must write, and what you must say, and what you must do, and what you must paint, which was what was going on in the Soviet Union. I think it was the most important division that the agency had, and I think that it played an enormous role in the Cold War."
posted by BZArcher on Nov 1, 2010 - 50 comments

Cocaine, The CIA, And The Unification Church: A History of Rev. Sun Myung Moon and The Washington's Times influence on Washington and South America by Robert Parry
posted by The Whelk on May 11, 2010 - 14 comments

Leaked CIA Report: "Public Apathy Enables Leaders To Ignore Voters" (pdf / Scribed link here) outlines possible public relations / propaganda strategies to shore up public support in Germany and France for a continued war in Afghanistan.
posted by zarq on Mar 29, 2010 - 18 comments

Bring down the government! Flickr collection of scans from a CIA published guide for revolutionaries in Nicaragua; many of the suggestions are universally applicable. I myself have been guilty of at least one...
posted by jonson on Dec 3, 2005 - 19 comments

"You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month" (PDF, 112k) "The Covert News Network", on Project MOCKINGBIRD - "Watergate muckraker Carl Bernstein uncovered a list of over 400 reporters and a coterie of publishers and media moguls who had basically been rubber-stamping CIA propaganda since the 1950s." Alex Constantine on Mockingbird. "Investigators digging into MOCKINGBIRD have been flabbergasted to discover FOIA documents in which agents boast (in CIA office memos) of  pride in having placed "important assets" inside every major news publication in the country. " ( from Geoff Metcalf on Mockingbird). Cheryl Seal on Mockingbird, with additional links. Enjoy the election!
posted by troutfishing on Jan 20, 2004 - 21 comments

Many know about the WWII propaganda films made by Warner Bros & Disney. But few know of the CIAs efforts to produce Cold War propaganda films. Like this take on George Orwells, Animal Farm.
posted by Dreamghost on Apr 17, 2003 - 5 comments

The CIA's Freedom Fighter's Manual is chock full of helpful hints like how to be lazy and how to screw things up at work! For more government comic hijinks, check out the FBI's Black Panther Coloring Book. Find out more information here via Social Design Notes.
posted by Stan Chin on Nov 23, 2002 - 11 comments