Filmmaker Alex Gibney
When asked about Alex Gibney’s in-progress documentary on himself, Elon Musk replied, “It’s a hit piece.” Gibney’s reaction to that was, “How would you know?”
The answer is more than apparent on this blog. Musk has done more than any other person to date to dismantle the burgeoning Censorship/Propaganda Industrial Complex. The very industry Gibney sucks the hind tit of for a living. Look no further than what Gibney did to Julian Assange and Wikileaks when they were at the forefront of restoring transparency and accountability to Big Brother.
When Wikileaks founder Assange exposed the sinister side of American empire in 2010, the national security state came unglued. Perhaps no one more accurately represented the security state (also known as IC “intelligence community”) at that time than Michael Hayden. Between 1998 and 2009 he had served on the three top spy positions on the planet, the head of the National Security Agency (NSA), the Director of the CIA and as the 1st Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence. Under his guidance the national security state was formed, including the passage of the Patriot Act and its systematic stripping of our civil rights. Incidentally, he remains atop the Big Brother console to this day as head of the Atlantic Council’s Censorship/Propaganda Industrial Complex.
Who did Hayden and company call upon when Assange and Wikileaks were awakening the world to the atrocities of the unbridled security state/IC? The documentarian who would give the head of the security state the platform from which to justify the horrendous conduct revealed by Wikileaks, while also viciously assassinating the character of Assange. The same guy who did principal Big Brother propaganda work for the COVID-19 roll out: Alex Gibney.
Nothing more graphically represented the importance of the 2010 Wikileaks disclosures than the following video. It captures US military personnel gunning down several innocent civilians, including a Reuter’s news agency employee a rescue worker and his two children. See,
The nation was shocked. And Gibney gave it his all to get the masses to cool their jets with his documentary “We Steal Secrets.” He featured Michael Hayden himself to tell us how to view this very leaked film. Haydn said he could understand how such abuses of imperial power bothers some people but not someone in the know like himself: “You’ve got this scene, some are evidently troubled by the scene – frankly, I’m not.” Gibney then invites Hayden to explain how Assange put so many more lives at risk than were wiped out in the video, that there really is nothing to see here folks. Clearly, Gibney wholeheartedly agrees with his master as he fails to even once push back on the single person most responsible for the conduct Wikileaks exposed.
And as is Gibney’s wont (see Big Brother Storyteller), he is so anxious to be the first to get the deep state’s spin released he doesn’t bother to examine any harm that Hayden alleges Assange’s releases will certainly do. In the final analysis, no one ever produced a single sliver of evidence that a single hair on a single head was harmed as a result of Wikileaks’ exposes. To the contrary one could easily imagine tens of thousands of lives being saved by the disclosures, by having its intended reform effect on the offenders.
Thus self-blinded, Gibney sets out to destroy the reputation of Assange. He strings together a chorus of clips from his favorite politicians toeing the CIA/NSA/Hayden line literally calling for Assange to be hung to death or assassinated.
The film largely consists of Gibney belittling and condemning Assange as a sociopath who might well be entitled to such treatment. In doing so, he also does a number on Chelsea (aka Bradley) Manning who was the military whistleblower who forwarded the leaked material to Wikileaks for publication. Gibney is a proud woke mind virus carrier. Nonetheless, he hypocritically devotes a great deal of time trying to smear Manning with his struggle over gender identity. Gibney ruthlessly paints Manning – a genuine American hero on the order of Daniel Ellsberg – as a psychotic sexual deviant. Gibney does so in order to create the invented picture that Assange took advantage of Manning and set him up to take the rap for the leak while hogging all the glory to himself. In doing so, Gibney kills two Ellsbergs with one stone.
Through outright sleaze and cheesy propaganda techniques Gibney invents the narrative that Assange baited Manning into releasing the material to Wikileaks. In reality, the New York Times and the Washington Post (the “liberal” fronts for Empire fuckery) turned down approaches from Manning before he turned to Wikileaks. Yet, Gibney’s expert use of the dark arts makes it appear as though if not for Assange’s fraudulent preying upon a weak, perverted mind, Manning never would be in the deep trouble he was by then in (in solitary confinement awaiting trial for Treason and worse before a US military tribunal).
The same techniques used to assassinate Manning’s character are applied by Gibney in pursuing Assange as prey. He ruthlessly explores Assange’s private sex life and goes to great length to indict and convict him for the alleged crime of intentionally breaking his condom during sex with more than willing partners (perhaps even sexual predators pursuing Assange). If you are wondering how that might constitute a prosecutable crime, Gibney’s invents the speculation that it would be a crime if Assange happened to knowingly be carrying around the AIDS virus. While the entire premise of Gibney’s prosecution (justification for the Swedish government pursuing Assange) hinged on that one invented possibility, Gibney (and no one else in the 14 years since) never presented a scintilla of evidence such was the actual case. Yet, through master use of the dark arts of cinematographic deception Gibney presents the picture of an AIDs ravaged madman travelling the world seeking to kill through sex.
With those false premises established, Gibney then virtually lobbies for the criminal punishment of Julian Assange. He accuses Assange of paranoia for suggesting that the U.S. government has Assange in its sights for the same treatment they were meting out to Chelsea Manning. Gibney appears to want Assange to take the punishment Manning is taking; all the while calling Assange paranoid for sensing that is exactly the intent of Gibney and his deep state sponsors.
The utter falsity of Gibney’s “paranoia” claims were more than proven over the next several years as the US ruthlessly pursued Assange through extradition (while its CIA director called for Assange’s assassination). Completely contrary to the entire premise of Gibney’s invented outrage, Assange would wind up spending more time in confinement than Manning did (without ever being convicted of a single crime). Of course, Gibney helped accomplish this feat by virtue of other state-controlled media parroting Gibney’s deep-state smear for years.
There is a pattern of Gibney’s over-anxious, impatient attack-dog work on behalf of the deep state. He did the very same thing concerning the COVID-19 pandemic panic (see Big Brother Storyteller). A rush to release the definitive government/big pharma COVID 19 narrative, followed by several years of the truth unfolding proving all his major premises to be wrong. He did the same with the Scientologists, tirelessly using his ‘documentary’ on them to lobby for removal of their IRS tax exemption, only for time to tell his invented premises for such draconian measures were fabrications. I have described before the fraud perpetuated and promoted by Larry Wright and Alex Gibney on that subject. (see blog posts between June 6 2017 through June 19 2017 and from July 16 2017 and August 8 2017).
As we shall later see, Gibney did the same with the Russia Hoax. The technique is, when chaos hits be the first to create a “documentary” to “prove” the deep state’s propaganda lines. Make the big lies look like truth through overboard dramatization in the guise of documentary film making. Use the ‘fact’ of the documentary to take designated targets down hard. While the facts begin to arise demonstrating the falsity of your work, dive into the next deep state crisis and rinse and repeat.
To demonstrate the 100% love, devotion and surrender nature of the deep state suck up, consider these facts. If the Manning/Assange leak were as expansive and potentially destructive as Gibney’s film claims, and Gibney is the flag-waving patriot he purports to be, then why did Gibney not investigate how two allegedly mentally ill, sex deviants managed to put the entire free world at risk all on their little lonesomes? That is, how could such alleged supermen as Michael Hayden be capable of such incompetent, treasonous insecurity? That, Gibney does not investigate. Instead, he only covers deep-state ass. Again, he turns to his master Hayden to explain away the pesky matter of how on earth such a massive breach could occur. Hayden blames reforms imposed in response to the deep state’s colossal incompetence (at best) demonstrated during the events leading to 911.
Hayden:
“After 9/11 we were accused of not being willing to share information rapidly and facilely enough and we’ve pushed that very far forward. In terms of our focus the default option in a practical sense has been to share it, rather than caging in information and making it more difficult to flow.”
In other words, “any attempt to point out an error on the Intelligence Community will be met with glue meeting rubber. That is, your catching us out on a mistake will result in you being guilty of our next crime.”
Remarkably, not only does Gibney not push back on such haughty arrogance, he lets Hayden shore up alleged CIA infallibility with this:
“When they catch us making a mistake, we admit it. When they have a valid point—even when it’s buried deep below a heap of not-so-valid points—we try to pull it out, brush it off, and address it.”
With that Gibney enters the Orwellian ranks, “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.”
State-controlled media would of course cloyingly go along for the ride as per usual.
And that of course buried any dissent to Gibney’s propaganda work. But, at the time of its release many credible sources expressed outrage at Gibney’s servile cowardice.
The Nation had the following to say of “We Steal Secrets”:
“Unfortunately, just as today’s debate is already being diluted by focusing on Snowden’s psychology and motives, We Steal Secrets gets sidetracked by character issues… The debate that the film has stirred up consists mainly of an exchange of invective between Gibney and Assange, in which Gibney and his allies compare the WikiLeaks creator to a cult leader, while Assange and his allies accuse the director of mounting a smear campaign that benefits the US government. The upshot is that we have gotten neither the film nor the debate we need.”
Award winning researcher and journalist Alexa O’Brien wrote:
“What was Gibney relying on for his costly ‘string of pearls’ reportage, beyond his hackneyed entourage of unexamined glory-boats, bearing witness on the silver screen to their privileged punditry—that is, talking about themselves amongst themselves for their own benefit– certainly not the public’s—or future generations?”
“Gibney’s exercise discovers nothing, and reveals nothing. His tabloid motion graphic is a regurgitation of stock footage, unsubstantiated innuendo, and unexamined allegation.”
“What Gibney has done here is not art; it is a cheap trick.”
And veteran war correspondent Chris Hedges wrote the following:
“Alex Gibney’s new film, “We Steal Secrets,” is about WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. It dutifully peddles the state’s contention that WikiLeaks is not a legitimate publisher and that Bradley Manning, who allegedly passed half a million classified Pentagon and State Department documents to WikiLeaks, is not a legitimate whistle-blower. It interprets acts of conscience and heroism by Assange and Manning as misguided or criminal. It holds up the powerful—who are responsible for the plethora of war crimes Manning and Assange exposed–as, by comparison, trustworthy and reasonable.”
“The film at many points is a trashy exercise in tabloid journalism. Gibney panders to popular culture’s taste for cheap pop psychology and obsession with sex, salacious gossip and trivia.”
Finally, Hedges recognizes the illness underlying the propaganda techniques employed:
“The vast structural sin Assange and Manning fought is ignored. The primacy of personal piety over justice is the inversion of morality. It is the sickness of our age.”
Remarkably, on this rare occasion when Gibney was held to account for his demonstration of the sickness of our age he petulantly defended his tabloid appetites. Unfortunately for him he protested too much and as much as admitted to the truth of what the Nation, O’Brien and Hedges pointed out:
“Just because someone tries to right a wrong or just because somebody tries to hold powerful people to account, it doesn’t mean that person is above the law.” – Alex Gibney
Under that ‘rationale’, Gibney is free to pursue whistleblowers into their prison cells and beyond.
Given how Gibney approached whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, what are the odds he’ll take a deep dive into Elon Musk’s sex life? One thing is certain, Gibney will make the gullible afraid of Mr. Musk, very afraid.
I have seen up close and personal how deftly Gibney wields the art of cinematography to create realities that do no exist, and to dramatize them to the point of creating revulsion and terror in viewers. For a short lesson on Gibney’s trickery, see what he did to the Scientologists; creating a “guttural, deep emotional fear and terror of something that does not exist”, Going Clear Movie.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 