Everything You Need To Know About “Out Of Shadows," The Documentary Exposing The Link Between Hollywood And The CIA

Some people claim the government controls everything, not just the news but also our entertainment (movies, TV, and even the music we listen to), while others argue that these beliefs are just paranoid “conspiracy theories.” If you’ve ever even thought about this, what do you think? If you haven’t thought about it yet, maybe it’s about time you did.

On April 10, 2020, two videos were posted on YouTube that you probably missed unless someone told you about them. One was a documentary called Out of Shadows that has received over 22 million views. The other was an ad by Microsoft promoting their new product, HoloLens 2, a “mixed” reality device that has since been taken down. In just a few short hours of being posted, the ad received serious backlash from the public. First, Microsoft disabled all comments. Soon after that, “like” capabilities were removed. And then, the entire ad disappeared from the internet completely. What do these two videos have in common? Marina Abramovic!

Marina Abramovic, the “Spirit Cooker”

Have you ever heard of “spirit cooking”? Probably (and hopefully) not. Marina Abramovic is known for her disturbing performance art. In the documentary Out of Shadows, she is remembered from John Podesta’s infamous emails during Hillary Clinton’s campaign for presidency back in 2016. 

In these emails, Abramovic’s disgusting spirit cooking dinners were mentioned. The highest contributors to her “art institute building fund” on kickstarter  (which was never built) were invited to partake in such a ceremony at her home as a thank you. Marina has been referring to these “spirit cooking” rituals as an artform since the early 90’s, and she describes her dinners as “spiritual” while others call them satanic. In her own words she says, “the goal of the ceremony is to convert matter into energy so spirits can feed on it.”

The “recipes” for these meals are written on walls with pig’s blood; recipes that include bodily fluids that I won’t be repeating here. Marina Abramovic claims she is not a Satanist; however, it’s unclear exactly what spirits she believes these rituals are feeding. The Serbian artist was raised in a strict and religious home. In the Bible, God instructs His people not to eat or drink blood, “for blood is life” (Deuteronomy 12:23, no matter which version you read). It’s interesting, then, that in the new Microsoft commercial Marina Abramovic is wearing a deep red dress, (eerily resembling those of The Handmaid's Tale), and is revealing her newest work called “The Life.” You don’t have to reach far to see the symbolism. 

That Microsoft ad campaign has now been completely erased from Microsoft’s website after receiving over 25K dislikes and numerous hate comments.

That Microsoft ad campaign has now been completely erased from Microsoft’s website after receiving over 25K dislikes and numerous hate comments in just a matter of a few hours. The HoloLens 2 is what Microsoft calls the “ultimate mixed reality device,” providing the “most immersive mixed reality experience.” Marina stated the device was “the best way to preserve her art,” as it “transmits energy between viewer and host.”

If you Google the removal of the Microsoft commercial, you’ll see countless claims that it was removed due to “alt-right agendas.” Was the people’s response political or simply a matter of critical thinking? It doesn’t take much research on Marina Abramovic to ask why Microsoft would choose this kind of artist to be the face of their campaign. Microsoft has yet to give any explanation on why it pulled this ad.

It’s interesting that all controversy today immediately becomes politicized. Is that just a coincidence, especially when it’s our political differences that cause the most division among us? This campaign was launched and removed amid Bill Gates receiving extensive criticism for his ideas and funding surrounding a COVID-19 vaccine. And, we’ve seen Abramovic drudged up in politics before.

“Operation Mockingbird”

Unlike the Microsoft commercial, Out of Shadows can still be found on YouTube. The documentary, hosted on a private server, exposes Hollywood and the entertainment world’s sordid relationship with the CIA. 

Kevin Shipp, CIA whistleblower, gave “Operation Mockingbird” as an example of the CIA’s inappropriate involvement with the media. The CIA was paying journalists to print fake stories to the public. But after a committee within the United States Senate, (nicknamed the “Church Committee”), completed its hearings in 1976,  George H. Bush, CIA Director at the time, ordered, "effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station." 

This didn’t stop free-lance journalists, or even contract workers without press credentials, from bridging the gap between the CIA and our media.

However, this didn’t stop free-lance journalists, or even contract workers without press credentials, from bridging the gap between the CIA and our media. It has been confirmed that “covert use of U.S. journalists and Media Institutions” is still taking place today.

Harry S. Truman was quoted in the Out of Shadows documentary to have said in an article in The Washington Post on December 22, 1963 that “There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow on our historic position [of freedom] and I feel we need to correct it.”

Brad Martin and Mike Smith, famous stuntmen, spent decades in the inner circles of Hollywood and have seen it all. They describe the CIA’s presence in the entertainment industry. Brad Martin, stating that he “always had an idealistic view of the movie business,” now believes that Hollywood is just a content-building machine. Films like Zoolander desensitize the public to real CIA initiatives. Hollywood has taken real operations that the CIA has been found guilty of in the past, like MK-Ultra, and slipped them into comedies so that the public will think they’re too ridiculous to have ever happened.

Hollywood is just a content-building machine. Films like Zoolander desensitize the public to real CIA initiatives.

“Operation Paperclip” is an infamous project that involved the CIA bringing top former Nazi scientists to the U.S. to perform human experiments on unsuspecting individuals. “Project Bluebird,” later called MK-Ultra, was part of this operation and primarily focused on the role of psychologists in government mind-control experiments. 

The controversy behind MK-Ultra was that the scientists administered these experiments on people without their consent. LSD was used to brainwash subjects; these subjects were given the drug without their knowledge and put on “sleep treatments,” in which they were kept in a sedative-induced sleep for 23 days straight, while the scientists played hypnotic repetition tapes and administered electric shocks to their victims. According to the documentary, a CIA memo explained that MK-Ultra used scientific methods to determine if it was possible to “control an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will.” It sounds ridiculous, but after much research, this really happened.

Nothing Is Ever What It Seems

Brad and Mike go on to explain the connections between the government and the media, and they describe how we tend to operate according to a confirmation bias. If the entertainment industry is desensitizing us to graphic images of death, sex, and gun violence, then we either begin to accept that all these things are either OK or we are led to believe information that simply isn’t true. 

The CIA has been using motion pictures as “psychological warfare” since the 1940’s. As it says in the document “The Nature of Psychological Warfare” that I took directly from the CIA’s website, “the development of mass communication-broadcasting world-wide wire news services, mobile printing presses, and motion pictures provides instruments of psychological warfare previously undreamed of compared to the small scale it was used in World War II.” So, as this form of manipulation has been used by the government beginning in the 1940s and in many different governmentally sponsored programs since, are we to believe that they have just simply stopped?

Celebrities are puppets, who are only allowed a platform as long as they say and do what they are told to by those who control them. 

Movies like Thunderball, the first of a series of pro-CIA themed movies, were created so that the American public would view the CIA as a group of superheroes. The CIA directly influenced the movie The Recruit, and as Al Pacino infamously says, “nothing is ever what it seems.”

As normal, trusting citizens, what are we to believe about the current entertainment industry? According to the documentary, “celebrities are puppets,” who are only allowed a platform as long as they say and do what they are told to by those who control them (the producers, directors, and the ones who hire them). “Good blue-collar people are electing rich politicians that don’t [care] about you. You think you have freedom of choice? You don’t. That’s the thing about the American Dream, you’d have to be asleep to believe it,” comedian George Carlin said. And we have mega stars like Kanye West proclaiming at concerts, “Google lied to you, Facebook lied to you, the radio lied.”

The Media Was in Bed with Jeffrey Epstein

When you think about what has happened recently, like the perverted and sickening actions of Jeffrey Epstein on his private resort island and his mysterious “suicide,” it’s difficult to ever know the truth about things we can only see through the lens of the media. Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted child molester. In 2008, he was charged with and served 13 months in prison for soliciting underage girls for prostitution. He was then arrested again in July 2019 on federal charges of sex-trafficking of minors, which allegedly involved some very famous politicians and Hollywood insiders, and only a few weeks later he was found dead in his jail cell.

We know that major celebrities, politicians, and even foreign royalty have all been found on his airplane Lolita Express’ flight logs and have traveled to his infamous Little St. James Island. Ricky Gervais had no problem speaking candidly at the Golden Globes specifically referring to Jeffrey Epstein saying, “I know he’s your friend, but I don’t care!” Gervais went on to say, “if you do win an award tonight, don’t use your platform to make a political speech. You’re in no place to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world.”

Epstein was hiding in plain sight. But no legal aspect would go after him. They were afraid of him.

Cindy McCain, Senator John McCain’s widow who works on anti-human trafficking campaigns, had this to say about Epstein at the State of the World 2020 conference: “You know, it’s like everything. It hides in plain sight. Epstein was hiding in plain sight. We all knew about him. We all knew what he was doing. But we had no one that was - no legal aspect that would go after him. They were afraid of him, for whatever reason they were afraid of him.” So why was Jeffrey Epstein so “untouchable?” 

Are “Honey Traps” Still Used for Blackmail Today?

MK-Ultra implemented a CIA controlled project conducted in San Francisco in the 50’s. In this operation,  prostitutes on the CIA’s payroll were used to lure ignorant victims back to their brothels where they were dosed with mind-altering drugs (like LSD) and filmed for later blackmail use. When the CIA was asked about these operations, commonly called “honey trapping” or “honey potting,” they simply said, “we have no answer to the moral question.” Wasn’t there a James Bond movie about this?

This documentary comes full circle by explaining “Pizzagate,” another so-called “conspiracy theory.” Liz Crokin, a journalist who has spent 20 years in the media and was well respected before she covered this story, uncovered more of John Podesta’s emails which frequently included the  code word “pizza.” It’s unclear what pizza means exactly, but it appeared evident to Liz Crokin that the emails were not actually referring to pizza, the food. Liz said that “pizza” is a well-known code word used by pedophiles. The media used the emails of John Podesta (Hillary Clinton's then campaign manager) to create a political war during the 2016 Presidential Campaign. This scandal drove a large political wedge between the Democratic and Republican parties that still exists today. Was this media story “fake-news” or should it be believed? Who knows anymore!

Closing Thoughts

Why is any of this even important? Because many years ago we quit thinking for ourselves. We have too much going on in our lives to spend time trying to figure out these kinds of things on our own, so we simply turn on the TV and turn off our minds. The problem with this is you start swallowing whatever garbage the media wants to feed you. Don’t either believe or disbelieve anything just because a certain politician you like or a famous Hollywood star tells you it’s the truth. 

Instead, if it involves an issue that you care about, think critically! Listen to your gut and remain open to the possibility that what you have just heard might be a lie told to you in an attempt to manipulate you one way or another.  This article isn’t trying to push any political agenda, it’s simply trying to get you to look at what’s being put on your spoon before you put it in your mouth.

“Where the people fear the government, you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people, you have liberty." — John Basil Barnhill, 1914