“Sworn to Secrecy” Hollywood’s Pentagon Meetings | Sharon Weinberger

Link to full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJqsMBTAOXQ

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The Pentagon brought Hollywood screenwriters together after 9/11 to imagine terrorist attacks that military planners might overlook. Sharon Weinberger explains how she pursued the story after Variety reported on a secret Army session with major film writers. Participants were asked to keep the discussion quiet. Weinberger filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out what scenarios they produced. She says the government confirmed that records existed, then withheld them under an exemption for material prepared before a decision. She still wants to know what those writers proposed.

Danny Jones connects the meeting to a television plot about an aircraft heading toward the World Trade Center before the attacks. Weinberger considers why officials might turn to fiction writers after a failure to imagine a real threat. The exchange raises a question about how ideas move between entertainment and military planning. She acknowledges an argument for withholding possible attack scenarios in the immediate aftermath, while questioning why those records should remain out of reach decades later. The discussion describes the purpose of the exercise without claiming to reveal its secret proposals.

The conversation moves into the Pentagon’s attempts to predict insurgent activity through data. Weinberger recalls reporting on network science during the war in Afghanistan and a scientist’s admission that the Taliban was holding its own without comparable technology. She examines the financial incentives behind continued weapons development and explains why successful classified projects can become visible when they are used. Failed projects can disappear from public view much more easily. Her account ends with the Greenbrier facility prepared for Congress during a nuclear emergency, showing how government secrecy can persist even around a place where ordinary people work and visit.

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Written by Danny Jones Clips