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.
Below the following essay on
Operation Mockingbird are a wealth of footnotes with links to verify and
explore further the information presented. This essay is taken from chapter
seven of the incredibly well researched and revealing online book Lifting
the Veil, available in its entirety on this webpage. If you want to be well informed of
all that is going on behind the scenes in our world, don't miss this masterful
exposé. And check out our "What you can do" section at the end of
this article to take action and make a difference.
With best wishes for a transformed
world,
Fred Burks for PEERS and WantToKnow.info
Former White House interpreter and whistleblower
Fred Burks for PEERS and WantToKnow.info
Former White House interpreter and whistleblower
Operation
Mockingbird
"About a third of the whole CIA
budget went to media propaganda operations... We're talking about hundreds of
millions of dollars a year just for that... close to a billion dollars are
being spent every year by the United States on secret propaganda." –
Testimony of William Schaap to Congress252
In 1948, the United States began the
Marshall Plan, an initiative to help the devastated Europe recover from the
War. The CIA decided to siphon funds to create the Office of Policy
Coordination, which would become the covert action branch of the Agency.253
It was under this program that Operation Mockingbird, a domestic propaganda
campaign aimed at promoting the views of the CIA within the media, began. From
the onset, Operation Mockingbird was one of the most sensitive of the CIA's
operations, with recruitment of journalists and training of intelligence
officers for propaganda purposes usually undertaken by Director Allen Dulles
himself or his direct peers.254
It is a false belief that the CIA
'infiltrated' unwitting media institutions. The recruitment of journalists
was frequently done with complicity from top management and ownership. Former
CIA Director William Colby claimed during the Church Committee investigative
hearings, "Lets go to the managements. They were witting." Among the
organizations that would lend their help to the propaganda efforts was the New
York Times, Newsweek, Associated Press, and the Miami Herald. Providing
cover to CIA agents was a part of the New York Times policy, set by
their late publisher, Arthur Hays Salzberger.255
The investigative committee of Frank
Church, officially titled “Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations
with Respect to Intelligence Activities”, uncovered a lot of evidence
concerning Operation Mockingbird and came to the conclusion that:
"The CIA currently maintains a
network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide
intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the
use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access
to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and
news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and
other foreign media outlets."256
Carl Bernstein, the reporter famous for his
excellent investigation into the Watergate scandal, wrote that:
“(Joseph) Alsop is one of more than
400 American journalists who in the past twenty-five years have secretly
carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to
documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships
with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation,
accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine
services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go betweens with
spies in Communist countries.
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. Most were less exalted: foreign
correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their
work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring-do of the
spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full-time CIA
employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents
show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of
the managements of America’s leading news organizations.”257
While a majority of Mockingbird
operations were overseas, the goal was to have important, hard-hitting stories
to be circulated in the American press. Relationships with major United States media institutions
certainly helped with this goal. Bernstein lists The New York Times, CBS and
Time inc. as the most productive relationships the agency cultivated.
They also created front organizations overseas who publicly maintained an
appearance of free press but privately were operated by the agency. An example
of this is the Rome Daily American, which was 40% owned by the CIA for
three decades.258
Another strategy was developing
relationships with major media owners who were known to harbor right-wing
views, such as William Paley of CBS, and then passing on information of
journalists, actors and screenwriters who harbored left-wing views. Information
was also passed on to friendly congressmen such as Joseph McCarthy. These men
and women would then be blacklisted from the industry. Lee J. Cobb was one such
actor who was blacklisted, and recalled his experience:
“When the facilities of the
government of the United States are drawn on an individual it can be
terrifying. The blacklist is just the opening gambit – being deprived of work.
Your passport is confiscated. That's minor. But not being able to move without
being tailed is something else. After a certain point it grows to implied as
well as articulated threats, and people succumb. My wife did, and she was
institutionalized. In 1953 the HCUA (House UnAmerican Activities Committee) did
a deal with me. I was pretty much worn down. I had no money. I couldn't borrow.
I had the expenses of taking care of the children. Why am I subjecting my loved
ones to this? If it's worth dying for, and I am just as idealistic as the next
fellow. But I decided it wasn't worth dying for, and if this gesture was the
way of getting out of the penitentiary I'd do it. I had to be employable
again.”259
The CIA went as far as to write
scripts for Hollywood. One interesting example is the funding of the movie
version of Animal Farm in 1954, a book written just less than a decade earlier
by George Orwell which enjoyed large commercial success. The problem for the
CIA was that Orwell was a socialist, and his book attacked both capitalism and
communism. To avoid this conflict, the CIA changed the ending of the Hollywood
version to portray capitalism in a more positive light.260
Domestic surveillance was also used
on journalists who had published classified material. In one example, a
physical surveillance post was set up at a Hilton Hotel in view of the office
of Washington Post writer Michael Getler.261 The operation
defied the CIA's charter, which specifically prohibits domestic spying. The
operation was directed towards numerous members of the Washington press corp,
and was signed off by John F. Kennedy himself, in coordination with CIA
director John McCone.262
One CIA document states: “Get books
published or distributed abroad without revealing any U.S. Influence, by
covertly subsidizing foreign publicans or booksellers... Get books published
for operational reasons, regardless of commercial viability”. The Church
Committee concluded that over 1000 books were published under this directive.263
Some investigative journalists have
claimed that Operation Mockingbird did not end in 1976 as the CIA claims. For
example, in 1998, researcher Steve Kangas claimed that conservative billionaire
Richard Mellon Scaife, who ran 'Forum World Features', a foreign news
organization, was a CIA asset and used the organization to disseminate
propaganda for circulation in the United States.264 Kangas ended up
dead with a bullet hole in his head, in the office of Richard Scaife. It was
ruled a suicide, although there were discrepancies in the police report and the
autopsy.265
The Church Committee's conclusion
accurately reflects the problems associated with Operation Mockingbird:
“In examining the CIA’s past and
present use of the U.S. media, the Committee finds two reasons for concern. The
first is the potential, inherent in covert media operations, for manipulating
or incidentally misleading the American public. The second is the damage to the
credibility and independence of a free press which may be caused by covert
relationships with the U.S. journalists and media organizations.”266
While it is deplorable for citizens
of countries to be subjected to a state-owned media, at least they can be aware
of the biases and filter information accordingly. We have been taught a lie
from birth that the U.S. press is free from government meddling. In a situation
where the manipulation is completely covert, the American public has been left
unaware of the propaganda they have been ingesting for decades.
––––––––––––––––––
255 Ibid.
256 Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Government Operations
With Respect to Intelligence Activities. April 1976.
262 Ibid.
263 Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Government Operations
With Respect to Intelligence Activities. April 1976.
266 Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Government Operations
With Respect to Intelligence Activities. April 1976.
* * * *
Food for Thought:
1. Why were the owners and
management of large media institutions so willing to participate in a program
that violated their journalistic integrity?
2. Has the increasingly consolidated
media industry made it easier for news to be manipulated to fit 'the agenda'
discussed in the One Party State?
3. Have MK-ULTRA entrapment or mind
control techniques ever been used to target the press?
Finding Balance: WantToKnow.info Inspiration Center
WantToKnow.info
believes it is important to balance disturbing cover-up information with
inspirational writings which call us to be all that we can be and to work
together for positive change. For an abundance of uplifting material, please
visit our Inspiration Center.
·
Contact your media and political representatives to inform them of this vital
information on Operation Mockingbird and media propaganda. Urge them to study
and bring publicity to this important topic. Invite them to read this article
and explore the links included.
·
Explore
our excellent Mass Media Information Center filled with reliable resources on media manipulation,
including links to key revealing videos, essays, news articles, and much more.
·
Read
the riveting personal stories of award-winning journalists
describing how major stories which should have made front page news were shut
down and buried, likely by hidden operatives like that of Operation
Mockingbird.
·
For
a powerful online lesson on media deception, public perception, and how we can
transform our world using the power of the Internet, see this Insight Course lesson.
·
Spread
this news on Operation Mockingbird to your friends and colleagues, and bookmark
this article on key social networking websites using the "Share" icon
on this page, so that we can fill the role at which the major media is sadly
failing. Together, we can make a difference.
Please support this important work: Donate here
Explore the mind and heart expanding websites managed by the
nonprofit PEERS network:
www.peerservice.org - PEERS websites: Spreading
inspiration, education, & empowerment
www.momentoflove.org - Every person in the world has a heart
www.personalgrowthcourses.net - Dynamic online courses powerfully expand your horizons
www.WantToKnow.info - Reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups
www.weboflove.org - Strengthening the Web of Love that interconnects us all
www.momentoflove.org - Every person in the world has a heart
www.personalgrowthcourses.net - Dynamic online courses powerfully expand your horizons
www.WantToKnow.info - Reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups
www.weboflove.org - Strengthening the Web of Love that interconnects us all
Subscribe here to the WantToKnow.info email list
(two messages a week)
Subscribe here to our free email list for two
information-packed emails per week.
WantToKnow.info
is a PEERS empowerment website
"Dedicated to the greatest good of all who share our beautiful world"
"Dedicated to the greatest good of all who share our beautiful world"
No comments:
Post a Comment