In the Room with Peter Bergen

The FBI has had a cozy relationship with Hollywood since the days of the Bureau’s first director, J. Edgar Hoover, working behind the scenes with filmmakers to burnish its image. We explore how the collaboration actually works, how extensive it is, and whether moviegoers are getting spoon-fed a sugar-coated version of the truth.

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Declaring something a matter of “national security” is a great way to get people to take it seriously — and Congress to fund it. After all, what matters more than keeping the United States and its citizens safe from foreign attack? But what about the economic security of the citizenry? Or their health? President Franklin Delano Roosevelt thought those should be included too — and that if the government didn’t prioritize them as national security issues, Americans might begin to look to autocrats to provide for their well-being. Was FDR right?

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After instigating violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, the alt-right movement seemed to crumble — but journalist Elle Reeve, who’s been talking with them for years, says that doesn’t mean their ideas have gone away. She says that their extremist ideology is actually on the rise — and has spread from the darkest corners of the internet to the heart of American politics.

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When the CIA got started in 1947 it recruited women for one type of job: typing and filing. Very few women were out in the field gathering intelligence and recruiting foreign agents. But once they finally got the chance, they proved instrumental to obtaining secret codes and tracking down terrorists — despite sometimes facing discrimination and harassment. Women also found ways to use gender stereotypes to their advantage in their spycraft. Peter speaks with a former agent who entered the CIA in 1968, another who got her start just before 9/11, and the author of The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA. (Originally published 6/4/2024.)

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Justin Roebuck, a county clerk in the swing state of Michigan, has a license plate that says ‘’I voted.” Roebuck first began volunteering as an election worker at age 16. Now, he oversees the election process in Ottawa County. But not everyone in his county shares his faith in the voting system. Like election officials all around the United States, he’s gotten accustomed to a high degree of skepticism about his integrity — and the elections he oversees. And he’s on a mission to restore the trust that’s been lost. So how did trust break down? And what’s at stake if it can’t be restored in a place like Ottawa County?

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One year ago, Maine experienced the worst mass shooting in its history. It turned out many people and institutions had known for months before that the shooter, Robert Card, was in a mental health crisis and heavily armed. One friend even alerted authorities that Card might “snap and commit a mass shooting.” Despite that knowledge — and the state’s “yellow flag” gun law — 18 people were killed. Emotional testimony from an official investigation reveals the failures in a system designed to prevent this kind of violence — and how they might be avoided in the future.

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For almost 40 years, Tom Blanton and the National Security Archive have used the Freedom of Information Act to dislodge and declassify U.S. government secrets, from Cold War backchannels to intelligence failures in the Middle East. Blanton’s “archival activism” is about seeing the full picture, in hopes that policy makers — and the American public — can learn from past blunders. Oh, and they unearthed the backstory behind that famous picture of President Nixon and Elvis Presley in the Oval Office.

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The moon landing was faked; 9/11 was an inside job — conspiracy theories like these seem to surround most major events now, even when the facts have been well established for years. These beliefs make plenty of headlines. There have also been some high profile cases of violence being committed by people espousing conspiracy theories. So why do people believe in conspiracy theories and when do they actually pose a threat?

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Ronald Reagan campaigned on a slogan to “Make America Great Again” and ushered in a new era of conservatism in America. That was more than forty years ago, and his Republican Party today looks very different with Donald Trump at its helm. Does the Reagan legend — a tax cutting, government shrinking, Cold War winning optimist — stand up to close scrutiny? And how did Reaganism pave the way for Trumpism? This week’s guest is Max Boot, who’s just written an authoritative, wide-ranging biography of the 40th President of the United States.

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Journalist and historian Anne Applebaum has been observing and writing about the rise of authoritarianism for years. And she’s sounding the alarm about a growing trend: how strongmen from Russia to Venezuela are collaborating with one another in an effort to maintain their power and undermine the influence of democratic countries like the United States. So, is there anything democratic nations can do about it?

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