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 1947-21/2 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. "

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
"Disinformation"	“On 28 September 2023, the US Department of State released a landmark report on how the People’s Republic of China seeks to reshape the global information environment to its advantage by investing billions of dollars to construct a global information ecosystem that promotes its propaganda and facilitates censorship and the spread of "disinformation".<a href="#cite_note-4">[4]</a> :China responded: "The US Department of State report is in itself disinformation as it misrepresents facts and truth. In fact, it is the US that invented the weaponizing of the global information space. The relevant center of the US State Department which concocted the report is engaged in propaganda and infiltration in the name of “global engagement”. It is a source of disinformation and the command center of “perception warfare”. :"From Operation Mockingbird which bribed and manipulated news media for propaganda purposes in the Cold War era, to a vial of white powder and a staged video of the 'White Helmets' cited as evidence to wage wars of aggression in Iraq and Syria earlier this century, and then to the enormous lie made up to smear China’s Xinjiang policy, facts have proven time and again that the US is an 'empire of lies' through and through. :"Even some in the US, such as Senator Rand Paul, acknowledged that the US government is the greatest propagator of "disinformation" in the history of the world."<a href="#cite_note-5">[5]</a>”	Ministry of Foreign Affairs The People's Republic of China	30 September 2023
George Carlin	“Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins. It's as simple as that. The CIA doesn't kill anybody anymore, they neutralize people, or they depopulate the area. The government doesn't lie, it engages in disinformation. The Pentagon actually measures nuclear radiation in something they call sunshine units. Israeli murderers are called commandos, Arab commandos are called terrorists. Contra killers are called freedom fighters. Well, if crime fighters fight crime, and firefighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight?”	George Carlin
Warren Hinckle	“While the ADA-types and the Arthur Schlesinger model liberal kewpie dolls battled fascism by protecting their right flank with domestic Red-baiting and Cold War one-upmanship, the Ivy League delinquents who fled to the CIA – liberal lawyers, businessmen, academics, games-playing craftsmen – hatched a master plan of Germanic ambition that entailed nothing less than clandestine political control of the international operations of all important American professional and cultural organisations: journalists, educators, jurists, businessmen, et al. The standing CIA subsidy to the National Student Association was but one slice of a very complex pie.”	Warren Hinckle	1967
Theodore Shackley	“Bill Casey was one of the key men in the acquisition of media after WW2. It was one of his proteges (a young German immigrant to the US) who was sent back to Germany after the war to take over Bertelsmann and build it up. Rupert Murdoch was very tight with Shackley, which is how he got launched on his global acquisitions and has now taken over the WSJ. Murdoch was running a failed national newspaper in Australia while Shackley was station chief in Oz. Then suddenly he becomes a US citizen literally overnight and goes on an endless buying spree. Shackley's pockets were infinitely deep. At the time, Murdoch was facing the likely closure of his newspaper The Australian. His ticket out was Shackley. This also explains why Murdoch was allowed to break all the rules in acquisition of media in America.”	Theodore Shackley Sterling Seagrave	2007
Merriman Smith	“Reporters struggled to find pay phones or other phones so they could get out the story. A few, like UPI reporter Merriman Smith — an unparalleled hustler — had amazing access to the scene. Smith got right next to the blood-spattered presidential limousine outside Parkland Hospital even before Kennedy was taken to the emergency room, and later witnessed Lyndon Johnson's historic swearing-in aboard Air Force One.”	Merriman Smith
Time Magazine	“You don't need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are [Central Intelligence] Agency people at the management level”	William Bader	1976

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
CIA Media Operations in Chile, Jamaica, and Nicaragua	Article	16 March 1982	Fred Landis	How the CIA takes over the major newspaper in a country targeted for regime change, and uses it as an instrument of destabilization. The method is still very much used in 2021.
Document:Covert Action in Chile, 1963-73	report	1976	Church Committee	A Church committee report of the hearings before them to study governmental operations with respect to intelligence activities of the United States Senate. A very thorough, but lengthy, investigation into CIA activity in Chile. Includes numerous instances of media manipulation and propaganda in the millions of dollars.
Document:Operation Mockingbird	webpage	20 August 2011	John Simkin

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