The Spy Who Came In For The Cash

Seems Double G and Team Dudebro Defector made quite a nice deal for selling the rights to his new book to Sony Pictures.  Only one problem, as The AV Club points out:  He trashed Sony Pictures 18 months ago for the "propaganda film" Zero Dark Thirty.

Like a columnist jumping all over a movie he hasn’t seen, Sony Pictures has pounced on the movie rights to Glenn Greenwald’s new book, No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, The NSA, And The U.S. Surveillance State.

“I’m very happy to be working with Amy Pascal, Doug Belgrad and the team at Sony Pictures Entertainment, who have a successful track record of making thoughtful and nuanced true-life stories that audiences want to see,” said Greenwald of the same executives he had previously accused of producing “the ultimate hagiography of the most secretive arm of America’s National Security State” when they made Zero Dark Thirty, but now heartily endorses, because they’re giving him lots of money.

“We are extremely proud that […] Glenn chose Sony to bring this riveting story to the big screen,” added Belgrad, president of Columbia Pictures, the Sony subsidiary Greenwald likened to the Nazi propaganda machine a year and a half ago, but which now owns the rights to Greenwald’s book.

Odd.  Double G thought these same executives were pretty much human scum back in December 2012, effectively working for the CIA.

Indeed, from start to finish, this is the CIA's film: its perspective, its morality, its side of the story, The Agency as the supreme heroes. (That there is ample evidence to suspect that the film's CIA heroine is, at least in composite part, based on the same female CIA agent responsible for the kidnapping, drugging and torture of Khalid El-Masri in 2003, an innocent man just awarded compensation this week by the European Court of Human Rights, just symbolizes the odious aspects of uncritically venerating the CIA in this manner).

It is a true sign of the times that Liberal Hollywood has produced the ultimate hagiography of the most secretive arm of America's National Security State, while liberal film critics lead the parade of praise and line up to bestow it with every imaginable accolade. Like the bin Laden killing itself, this is a film that tells Americans to feel good about themselves, to feel gratitude for the violence done in their name, to perceive the War-on-Terror-era CIA not as lawless criminals but as honorable heroes.

AV Club leaves with this stinger:

The exact specifics of Greenwald’s deal remain unknown, but it is expected to be even more profitable than the time he changed his mind about the War on Terror.

Douchebag.  Forever and always. And like any intelligence agent trying to recruit human assets on the ground, money will make people do pretty much anything.