MKULTRA: CIA Tortured 300+ Orphaned Children and Destroyed The Evidence

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Amid all the videos released this month of CIA agents
candidly admitting to psyops...



Do These Documents Prove That Call Of Duty Is A Government PsyOp?

https://www.mintpressnews.com/call-of-duty-is-a-government-psyop-these-documents-prove-it/282781/
https://www.spyculture.com/7-years-of-reports-from-the-marine-corps-entertainment-liaison-office/
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2021/03/activision-blizzard-hires-bush-era-torture-apologist-as-chief-compliance-officer/


Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II has been available for less than three
weeks, but it is already making waves. Breaking records, within ten
days, the first-person military shooter video game earned more than $1
billion in revenue. Yet it has also been shrouded in controversy, not
least because missions include assassinating an Iranian general
clearly based on Qassem Soleimani, a statesman and military leader
slain by the Trump administration in 2020, and a level where players
must shoot “drug traffickers” attempting to cross the U.S./Mexico
border.

The Call of Duty franchise is an entertainment juggernaut, having sold
close to half a billion games since it was launched in 2003. Its
publisher, Activision Blizzard, is a giant in the industry, behind
titles games as the Guitar Hero, Warcraft, Starcraft, Tony Hawk’s Pro
Skater, Crash Bandicoot and Candy Crush Saga series.

Yet a closer inspection of Activision Blizzard’s key staff and their
connections to state power, as well as details gleaned from documents
obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Call of
Duty is not a neutral first-person shooter, but a carefully
constructed piece of military propaganda, designed to advance the
interests of the U.S. national security state.

    In the first five minutes the new Call of Duty has you pilot the
missile that kills Soleimani lol
    — sad because the female faceapp of me isnt fuckable
(@websiteidi0t) October 20, 2022

MILITARY-ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX

It has long been a matter of public record that American spies have
targeted and penetrated Activision Blizzard games. Documents released
by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA, CIA, FBI and Department of
Defense infiltrated the vast online realms such as World of Warcraft,
creating make-believe characters to monitor potential illegal activity
and recruit informers. Indeed, at one point, there were so many U.S.
spies in one video game that they had to create a “deconfliction”
group as they were wasting time unwittingly surveilling each other.
Virtual games, the NSA wrote, were an “opportunity” and a “target-rich
communication network”.

However, documents obtained legally under the Freedom of Information
Act by journalist and researcher Tom Secker and shared with MintPress
News show that the connections between the national security state and
the video game industry go far beyond this, and into active
collaboration.

In September 2018, for example, the United States Air Force flew a
group of entertainment executives – including Call of Duty/Activision
Blizzard producer Coco Francini – to their headquarters at Hurlburt
Field, Florida. The explicit reason for doing so, they wrote, was to
“showcase” their hardware and to make the entertainment industry more
“credible advocates” for the U.S. war machine.

“We’ve got a bunch of people working on future blockbusters (think
Marvel, Call of Duty, etc.) stoked about this trip!” wrote one Air
Force officer. Another email notes that the point of the visit was to
provide “heavy-hitter” producers with “AFSOC [Air Force Special
Operations Command] immersion focused on Special Tactics Airmen and
air-to-ground capabilities.”

“This is a great opportunity to educate this community and make them
more credible advocates for us in the production of any future
movies/television productions on the Air Force and our Special Tactics
community,” wrote the AFSOC community relations chief.

Francini and others were shown CV-22 helicopters and AC-130 planes in
action, both of which feature heavily in Call of Duty games.

Yet Call of Duty collaboration with the military goes back much
further. The documents show that the United States Marine Corps (USMC)
was involved in the production of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and
Call of Duty 5. The games’ producers approached the USMC at the 2010
E3 entertainment convention in Los Angeles, requesting access to
hovercrafts (vehicles which later appeared in the game). Call of Duty
5 executives also asked for use of a hovercraft, a tank and a C-130
aircraft.

This collaboration continued in 2012 with the release of Modern
Warfare 4, where producers requested access to all manner of air and
ground vehicles.

Secker told MintPress that, by collaborating with the gaming industry,
the military ensures a positive portrayal that can help it reach
recruitment targets, stating that,

    For certain demographics of gamers it’s a recruitment portal, some
first-person shooters have embedded adverts within the games
themselves…Even without this sort of explicit recruitment effort,
games like Call of Duty make warfare seem fun, exciting, an escape
from the drudgery of their normal lives.”

Secker’s documentary, “Theaters of War: How the Pentagon and CIA Took
Hollywood” was released earlier this year.

The military clearly held considerable influence over the direction of
Call of Duty games. In 2010, its producers approached the Department
of Defense (DoD) for help on a game set in 2075. However, the DoD
liaison “expressed concern that [the] scenario being considered
involves future war with China.” As a result, Activision Blizzard
began “looking at other possible conflicts to design the game around.”
In the end, due in part to military objections, the game was
permanently abandoned.
FROM WAR ON TERROR TO FIRST-PERSON SHOOTERS

Not only does Activision Blizzard work with the U.S. military to shape
its products, but its leadership board is also full of former high
state officials. Chief amongst these is Frances Townsend, Activision
Blizzard’s senior counsel, and, until September, its chief compliance
officer and executive vice president for corporate affairs.

Prior to joining Activision Blizzard, Townsend spent her life working
her way up the rungs of the national security state. Previously
serving as head of intelligence for the Coast Guard and as Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice’s counterterrorism deputy, in 2004,
President Bush appointed her to his Intelligence Advisory Board.

As the White House’s most senior advisor on terrorism and homeland
security, Townsend worked closely with Bush and Rice, and became one
of the faces of the administration’s War on Terror. One of her
principal achievements was to whip the American public into a constant
state of fear about the supposed threat of more Al-Qaeda attacks
(which never came).

Before she joined Activision Blizzard, Frances Townsend worked in
Homeland Security and Counterterrorism for the Bush White House. Ron
Edmonds | AP

As part of her job, Townsend helped popularize the term “enhanced
interrogation techniques” – a Bush-era euphemism for torturing
detainees. Worse still, Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the officer in
charge of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, alleged that Townsend put
pressure on him to ramp up the torture program, reminding him “many,
many times” that he needed to improve the intelligence output from the
Iraqi jail.

Townsend has denied these allegations. She also later condemned the
“handcuff[ing]” and “humiliation” surrounding Abu Ghraib. She was not
referring to the prisoners, however. In an interview with CNN, she
lamented that “these career professionals” – CIA torturers – had been
subject to “humiliation and opprobrium” after details of their actions
were made public, meaning that future administrations would be
“handcuffed” by the fear of bad publicity, while the intelligence
community would become more “risk-averse”.

During the Trump administration, Townsend was hotly tipped to become
the Director of National Intelligence or the Secretary of Homeland
Security. President Trump also approached her for the role of director
of the FBI. Instead, however, Townsend took a seemingly incongruous
career detour to become an executive at a video games company.
ENTER THE WAR PLANNERS

In addition to this role, Townsend is a director of the NATO offshoot,
the Atlantic Council, a director at the Council on Foreign Relations,
and a trustee of the hawkish think tank, the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, a group MintPress News has previously covered
in detail.

Funded by weapons companies, NATO and the U.S. government, the
Atlantic Council serves as the military alliance’s brain trust,
devising strategies on how best to manage the world. Also on its board
of directors are high statespersons like Henry Kissinger and
Conzoleezza Rice, virtually every retired U.S. general of note, and no
fewer than seven former directors of the CIA. As such, the Atlantic
Council represents the collective opinion of the national security
state.

Two more key Call of Duty staff also work for the Atlantic Council.
Chance Glasco, a co-founder of Infinity Ward developers who oversaw
the game franchise’s rapid rise, is the council’s nonresident senior
fellow, advising top generals and political leaders on the latest
developments in tech.

Game designer and producer Dave Anthony, crucial to Call of Duty’s
success, is also an Atlantic Council employee, joining the group in
2014. There, he advises them on what the future of warfare will look
like, and devises strategies for NATO to fight in upcoming conflicts.

Anthony has made no secret that he collaborated with the U.S. national
security state while making the Call of Duty franchise. “My greatest
honor was to consult with Lieut. Col. Oliver North on the story of
Black Ops 2,” he stated publicly, adding, There are so many small
details we could never have known about if it wasn’t for his
involvement.”

Oliver North is a high government official gained worldwide infamy
after being convicted for his role in the Iran-Contra Affair, whereby
his team secretly sold weapons to the government of Iran, using the
money to arm and train fascist death squads in Central America –
groups who attempted to overthrow the government of Nicaragua and
carried out waves of massacres and ethnic cleansing in the process.
REPUBLICANS FOR HIRE

Another eyebrow-raising hire is Activision Blizzard’s chief
administration officer, Brian Bulatao. A former Army captain and
consultant for McKinsey & Company, until 2018, he was chief operating
officer for the CIA, placing him third in command of the agency. When
CIA Director Mike Pompeo moved over to the State Department, becoming
Trump’s Secretary of State, Bulatao went with him, and was appointed
Under Secretary of State for Management.

There, by some accounts, he served as Pompeo’s personal “attack dog,”
with former colleagues describing him as a “bully” who brought a
“cloud of intimidation” over the workplace, repeatedly pressing them
to ignore potential illegalities happening at the department. Thus, it
is unclear if Bulatao is the man to improve Activision Blizzard’s
notoriously “toxic” workplace environment that caused dozens of
employees to walk out en masse last summer.

After the Trump administration’s electoral defeat, Bulatao went
straight from the State Department into the highest echelons of
Activision Blizzard, despite no experience in the entertainment
industry.

Trump stands with then-CIA Chief Operations Officer Brian Bulatao at
CIA Headquarters, May 21, 2018, in Langley, Va. Evan Vucci | AP

The third senior Republican official Activision Blizzard has recruited
to its upper ranks is Grant Dixton. Between 2003 and 2006, Dixton
served as associate counsel to President Bush, advising him on many of
his administration’s most controversial legal activities (such as
torture and the rapid expansion of the surveillance state). A lawyer
by trade, he later went on to work for weapons manufacturer Boeing,
rising to become its senior vice president, general counsel and
corporate secretary. In June 2021, he left Boeing to join Activision
Blizzard as its chief legal officer.

Other Activision Blizzard executives with backgrounds in national
security include senior vice president and chief information security
officer Brett Wahlin, who was a U.S. Army counterintelligence agent,
and chief of staff, Angela Alvarez, who, until 2016, was an Army
chemical operations specialist.

That the same government that was infiltrating games 10-15 years ago
now has so many former officials controlling the very game companies
raises serious questions around privacy and state control over media,
and mirrors the national security state penetration of social media
that has occurred over the same timeframe.
WAR GAMES

These deep connections to the U.S. national security state can perhaps
help partly explain why, for years, many have complained about the
blatant pro-U.S. propaganda apparent throughout the games.

The latest installment, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, is no
exception. In the game’s first mission, players must carry out a drone
strike against a character named

The latest installment, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, is no
exception. In the game’s first mission, players must carry out a drone
strike against a character named General Ghorbrani. The mission is
obviously a recreation of the Trump administration’s illegal 2020
drone strike against Iranian General Qassem Soleimani – the in game
general even bears a striking resemblance to Soleimani.

The latest Call of Duty game has players assassinate a General
Ghorbrani, a nebulous reference to Iranian General Qassem Solemani,
pictured right

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II ludicrously presents the general as
under Russia’s thumb and claims that Ghorbrani is “supplying
terrorists” with aid. In reality, Soleimani was the key force in
defeating ISIS terror across the Middle East – actions for which even
Western media declared him a “hero”. U.S.-run polls found that
Soleimani was perhaps the most popular leader in the Middle East, with
over 80% of Iranians holding a positive opinion of him.

Straight after the assassination, Pompeo’s State Department floated
the falsehood that the reason they killed Soleimani was that he was on
the verge of carrying out a terror attack against Americans. In
reality, Soleimani was in Baghdad, Iraq, for peace talks with Saudi
Arabia.

These negotiations could have led to peace between the two nations,
something that the U.S. government is dead against. Then-Iraqi Prime
Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi revealed that he had personally asked
President Trump for permission to invite Soleimani. Trump agreed, then
used the opportunity to carry out the killing.

Therefore,, just as Activision Blizzard is recruiting top State
Department officials to its upper ranks, its games are celebrating the
same State Department’s most controversial assassinations.

This is far from the first time Call of Duty has instructed
impressionable young gamers to kill foreign leaders, however. In Call
of Duty Black Ops (2010), players must complete a mission to murder
Cuban leader Fidel Castro. If they manage to shoot him in the head,
they are rewarded with an extra gory slow motion scene and obtain a
bronze “Death to Dictators” trophy. Thus, players are forced to carry
out digitally what Washington failed to do on over 600 occasions.

A mission from “Call of Duty: Black Ops” has players assassinate a
hostage-taking Fidel Castro

Likewise, Call of Duty: Ghosts is set in Venezuela, where players
fight against General Almagro, a socialist military leader clearly
modelled on former president Hugo Chavez. Like Chavez, Almagro wears a
red beret and uses Venezuela’s oil wealth to forge an alliance of
independent Latin American nations against the U.S. Washington
attempted to overthrow Chavez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro,
multiple times. During the sixth mission of the game, players must
shoot and kill Almagro from close range.

The anti-Russian propaganda is also turned up to 11 in Call of Duty:
Modern Warfare (2019). One mission recreates the infamous Highway of
Death incident. During the First Iraq War, U.S.-led forces trapped
fleeing Iraqi troops on Highway 80. What followed was what then-Joint
Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell described as “wanton killing”
and “slaughter for slaughter’s sake” as U.S. troops and their allies
pummeled the Iraqi convoy for hours, killing hundreds and destroying
thousands of vehicles. U.S. forces also reportedly shot hundreds of
Iraqi civilians and surrendered soldiers in their care.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare recreates this scene for dramatic effect.
However, in their version, it is not the U.S.-led forces doing the
killing, but Russia, thereby whitewashing a war crime by pinning the
blame on official enemies.

A mission in “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” has players recreate the
infamous highway of death

“Call of Duty, in particular, has been flagged up for recreating real
events as game missions and manipulating them for geopolitical
purposes,” Secker told MintPress, referring to the Highway of Death,
adding,

    In a culture where most people’s exposure to games (and films, TV
shows and so on) is far greater than their knowledge of historical and
current events, these manipulations help frame the gamers’ emotional,
intellectual and political reactions. This helps them turn into more
general advocates for militarism, even if they don’t sign up in any
formal way.”

Secker’s latest book, “Superheroes, Movies and the State: How the U.S.
Government Shapes Cinematic Universes,” was published earlier this
year.
GAME OVER

In today’s digitized era, the worlds of war and video games
increasingly resemble one another. Many have commented on the
similarities between piloting drones in real life and in games such as
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Prince Harry, who was a helicopter
gunner in Afghanistan, described his “joy” at firing missiles at
enemies. “I’m one of those people who loves playing PlayStation and
Xbox, so with my thumbs I like to think I’m probably quite useful,” he
said. “If there’s people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then
we’ll take them out of the game,” he added, explicitly comparing the
two activities. U.S. forces even control drones with Xbox controllers,
blurring the lines between war games and war games even further.

The military has also directly produced video games as promotional and
recruitment tools. One is a U.S. Air Force game called Airman
Challenge. Featuring 16 missions to complete, interspersed with facts
and recruitment information about how to become a drone operator
yourself. In its latest attempts to market active service to young
people, players move through missions escorting U.S. vehicles through
countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, serving up death from above to
all those designated “insurgents” by the game.

Players earn medals and achievements for most effectively destroying
moving targets. All the while, there is a prominent “apply now” button
on screen if players feel like enlisting and conducting real drone
strikes on the Middle East.

U.S. Armed Forces use the popularity of video games to recruit heavily
among young people, sponsoring gaming tournaments, fielding their own
U.S. Army Esports team, and directly trying to recruit teens on
streaming sites such as Twitch. The Amazon-owned platform eventually
had to clamp down on the practice after the military used fake prize
giveaways that lured impressionable young viewers onto recruitment
websites.

Video games are a massive business and a huge center of soft power and
ideology. The medium makes for particularly persuasive propaganda
because children and adolescents consume them, often for weeks or
months on end, and because they are light entertainment. Because of
this, users do not have their guards up like if they were listening to
a politician speaking. Their power is often overlooked by scholars and
journalists because of the supposed frivolity of the medium. But it is
the very notion that these are unimportant sources of fun that makes
their message all the more potent.

The Call of Duty franchise is particularly egregious, not only in its
messaging, but because who the messengers are. Increasingly, the games
appear to be little more than American propaganda masquerading as fun
first-person shooters. For gamers, the point is to enjoy its
fast-paced entertainment. But for those involved in their production,
the goal is not just making money; it is about serving the imperial
war machine.