The National Security News Service provided assistance to French documentary filmmaker Emilio Pacull for his new English-language film, Mr. President, which debuted September 29 on the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s Newsworld. Mr. President juxtaposes interviews with political journalists and Hollywood producers with clips from the many depictions of the U.S. president on film and TV—from Wag the Dog and The West Wing to Independence Day and 24.

Among the journalists appearing in the film was Public Education Center President Joe Trento, who was interviewed about the ways film and television fictionalize the power of the presidency. Trento also helped arrange interviews for and provided other assistance to Pacull and his production team. He previously contributed similar assistance for  Pacull’s 2005 production, Operation Hollywood, which examined Pentagon attempts to influence movie and television content.

“At PEC, we work with documentary filmmakers because a more fully told truth can be made through this kind of in-depth filmmaking,” Trento says. “We think it is vital to share the American story around the world by helping filmmakers understand how our country works, and that in turn gives viewers around the world a better understanding of who we are as a country and a people.”

Stories That Matter has posted one of the most useful lists circulating around Washington, a who's who of President-elect Obama's transition teams.  The list shows where in the federal government Obama's staffers are embedded before his takeover of the presidency.  Considering that some political appointees of the Bush administration are "burrowing" into permanent civilian positions across the federal government, the information below may be helpful in finding out what Obama's people are doing to counter that.

French documentary filmmaker Mathieu Verboud’s latest film, The Cabal, has debuted to acclaim from European critics. The generally conservative French morning daily, Le Figaro, called the documentary “exciting and enlightening."

The film examines the activities of a small group of policy advisers and analysts in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP) as they work to shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq. Under the direction of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the rogue OSP’s operations eventually came to rival those of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency.

Joe Trento was interviewed in The Cabal

D.C. District Court House

The story received wide attention from the new media but not the old. If it had not been for Courthouse News Service and The Huffington Post, the public would not know that the Navy was withholding documents that involved a presidential candidate. 

At the heart of the story we are investigating is how the Navy has kept files that should be available to the public hidden on behalf of politicians who have done favors for the Navy after once serving in the Navy.

Our request for documents under FOIA came after the traditional visits to the Navy historical archives and through Navy Public Affairs made it clear to us that the Navy would not release to NSNS what has always been public information. NSNS has been covering the military since 1989. We already possessed official Naval documents that demonstrated that the Navy was not being candid about what was in its records concerning our investigation. Because there was evidence that the Navy cover up was continuing and the records NSNS was requesting were considered publicly available information, NSNS asked the Senate Armed Services Committee to intervene. We were told that Senate oversight would not be applied because a senior member of the committee was involved. We were told cavalierly, “If the Navy does not want you to have the records, you are not going to get them.”