Operation Mockingbird
The CIA's Operation Mockingbird
Manipulated Media
"Operation Mockingbird [was] a domestic propaganda
campaign aimed at promoting the views of the CIA within the media. Reporters
shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the
journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered
themselves ambassadors without portfolio for their country."
~~ From Lifting the Veil Chapter VII on Operation Mockingbird
~~ From Lifting the Veil Chapter VII on Operation Mockingbird
Dear friends,
Operation Mockingbird was a CIA
program that made a mockery of free press in the US. The existence of this
program which spread CIA propaganda through the media was flatly denied until
it was uncovered in Senate hearings in the mid-1970s. The CIA's claims that it
shut the program down in 1976 are undoubtedly a further deception. They simply
shifted the operation to other parts of the agency as they had been caught red-handed.
Before the US Senate Church
Committee revelations, the media and CIA colluded overtly in their media
propaganda campaigns, as you will read below. As the public was quite incensed
with these revelations, afterwards the collusion became covert and much more
sophisticated. Nowadays media executives or journalists are very careful keep
their CIA connections secret, yet there is plenty of evidence the techniques developed and used
under Operation Mockingbird continue to be common practice.