Operation Mockingbird

 Operation Mockingbird (propaganda)

Date	1950 - Present
Perpetrators	CIA
Exposed by	Carl Bernstein, Deborah Davis
Interest of	Joseph Alsop, Victor Lasky
Description	Operation Mockingbird is a CIA covert operation that began in the 1950's and is a continuing manipulation and control of the media by the CIA.

Origins

Operation Mockingbird began in the 1950's and was organized by Allen Dulles and Cord Meyer The CIA spent today's equivilant of one billion dollars a year hiring journalists from Corporate Media including CBS, The New York Times, ABC, NBC, Newsweek, Associated Press and others, to promote their point of view. The original operation involved some 3,000 CIA operatives and hired over 400 journalists.

Extent

The program is so far reaching that former CIA director William Colby was quoted as saying "The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."

"You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month."- CIA operative with Philip Graham of the Washington Post discussing availability of journalists to the operation.

"There is quite an incredible spread of relationships. You don't need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are [Central Intelligence] Agency people at the management level."- William B. Bader, former CIA intelligence officer

Implications

This ongoing CIA operation naturally raises problems with Wikipedia's policy of deeming commercially-controlled media as reliable.

Examples

"It was only in late 1947 - 2½ years after the end of World War II that the United States formally decided that clandestine intelligence collection activities had to be supplemented by what was described at the time as covert psychological operations. These were described as propaganda and manipulation of the press, and the like."

The CIA's best-known proprietaries were Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, both established in the early 1950s. The corporate structures of these two stations served as something of a prototype for other agency proprietaries. Each functioned under the cover provided by a board of directors made up of prominent Americans, who in the case of RFE incorporated as the National Committee for a Free Europe and in the case of RL as the American Committee for Liberation. But CIA officers in the key management positions at the stations made all the important decisions regarding the programming and operations of the stations.

"As far as propaganda is concerned, as revealed in the staff paper, the largest covert action activity in Chile in the decade 1963-73 was propaganda. The CIA station in Santiago placed materials in the Chilean media, maintained a number of assets or agents on major Chilean newspapers, radio, and television stations, and manufactured "black propaganda"--that is, material falsely purporting to be the product of a particular group. Let me give you an illustrative range of the kinds of propaganda projects that were undertaken in Chile during the years under discussion, 1963 to 1973: subsidization of two news services to influence Chilean public opinion; operation of press placement service; support of the establishment of a commercial television service in Chile; support of anti-Communist propaganda activity through wall posters, leaflets, and other street actions; use of a CIA-controlled news agency to counter Communist influence in Chile and Latin America; placement of anti-Soviet propaganda on eight radio news stations and five provincial newspapers. By far the largest-and probably the most significant in this area of propaganda, was the money provided to El Mercurio, the major Santiago daily during the Allende regime. " $12 million in total.

Investigation

The media received particular attention during this period. One project supported and operated wire services, equivalent to our AP and UPI. Another supported a right-wing weekly newspaper. The CIA also developed "assets" within the Chilean press. Assets are foreign nationals who are either on the CIA payroll or are subject to CIA guidance. One of these assets produced radio political commentary shows attacking the political parties on the left and supporting CIA selected candidates. Other assets placed CIA-inspired editorials almost daily in El Mercurio and, after 1968, exerted substantial control over the content of that paper's international news section. $11/2 million went to one opposition publication alone, the major Santiago newspaper, El Mercurio, Chile's oldest newspaper. The U.S. Government calculated that El Mercurio, under pressure from the Allende government, would not survive without covert U.S. support. At the same time, however, CIA documents acknowledged that only El Mercurio, and to a lesser extent, the papers belonging to the opposition parties were under severe pressure from the Chilean Government. Freedom of the press continued in Chile until the military coup in 1973. The 40 Committee authorized $700,000 for El Mercurio on September 9,1971, and added another $965,000 to that authorization on April 11, 1972. A CIA project renewal memorandum concluded that El Mercurio and other media outlets supported by the Agency had played an important role in setting the stage for the September 11, 1973, military coup which overthrew Allende.

Until February 1976, when it announced a new policy toward U.S. media personnel, the CIA 'maintained covert relationships with about 50 American journalists or employees of U.S. media organizations. They are part of a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence foreign opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of foreign newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.

Conclusion

On February 11, 1976, the CIA announced new guidelines governing its relationship with U.S. media organizations:

"Effective immediately, CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.

Of the approximately 50. U.S. journalists or personnel of U.S. media organizations who were employed by the CIA or maintained some other covert relationship with the CIA at the time of the announcement, fewer than one-half would be terminated under the new CIA guidelines.

Influence Abroad

In 2014 Whistleblower Udo Ulfkotte stated that the CIA bribed European journalists to write pro-American articles and publish CIA material them under their own names:

When you fly to the US again and again and never have to pay for anything there, and you’re invited to interview American politicians, you’re moving closer and closer to the circles of power. And you want to remain within this circle of the elite, so you write to please them. Everyone wants to be a celebrity journalist who gets exclusive access to famous politicians. But one wrong sentence and your career as a celebrity journalist is over. Everyone knows it. And everyone’s in on it.
Udo Ulfkotte, German journalist. Formerly an editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

References

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