Jun 212017
 
Ex-Nazis and the CIA

Mike Burke was the head of CIA operations in Germany during the Cold War. A few years later he was hired by CBS to buy and sell ideas and programming in Europe for a new organization, CBS Europe, a front useful to both CBS and the CIA. For the network, the European arm would have Read More

Jun 162017
 
La Guerre Inconnue

The Belgian project helped finance two feature-length documentaries made from Airpower: La Guerre Inconnue (the Unknown War), and Kamikaze. I bought the footage from CBS and cleared the rights. To distribute in France I needed a co-producer who recommended technical facilities and personnel. The editor was Jeanne Gilot, a woman in her thirties who was technically Read More

Jun 142017
 
Belgian Waffles

We were in Paris at the time Liz Taylor and Richard Burton were living in sin in Rome and filming Cleopatra. The scandal was worth millions in box office revenue to Spyros Skouras, the head of Twentieth Century Fox. At that time Skouras had partially underwritten a documentary for Baudouin, the fifth King of the Read More

May 032017
 
I was Never in the CIA

CBS and Mike Burke paid for the move from Posillipo to Paris. He saw that the Paris news bureau found us an apartment and arranged to have our baggage moved into the building.  It took four months before I discovered his reason for wanting me nearby. One night he took me to meet an old Read More

Apr 192017
 
Michael Burke

We were still in Italy when Mike Burke, the head of CBS Europe, asked me to evaluate a pilot film made by David Schoenbrun, the Paris bureau chief. David very much liked himself and his job. When David summoned government officials he had himself announced as le télévision americain: he was all three networks in Read More

Apr 142017
 
Air Power: Red Scares

In 1956 the Air Force public relations machine was pleased to re-tell its history in World War II, but the war on Washington’s mind was the Cold War with the Soviet Union. There was a notion that American Stalinists worked in the media. By clever distortions of story lines, narration, and dialog, it was thought Read More

Apr 132017
 
Air Power: Japan

Because I needed access to classified footage on the atomic and hydrogen bombs, I was given a Q clearance — the United States Department of Energy (DOE) security clearance that is roughly comparable to a United States Department of Defense Top Secret clearance with Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Access (TS-SCI). I requested the Order of Battle Read More

Apr 122017
 
Air Power: Schweinfurt

Target Ploesti gave me trouble with the Air Force and Cronkite. A program on a raid on Schweinfurt  gave me trouble with Ed Murrow, Truman Capote and Bill Paley. Schweinfurt manufactured ball bearings for the German military. The military logic for bombing the plant seemed impeccable: without ball bearings, German rolling stock would be stopped. Read More

Apr 112017
 
Air Power: Script for the Battle of Britain

World War II had ended eleven years earlier, and Vietnam was yet to come. The emotions of our victory had lessened and faded. The fateful style of the commentators of World War II gave to simpler voices in the ‘50’s. Yet there were moments of heightened prose that could not be forgotten. Winston Churchill’s most Read More