Operation Mockingbird

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This article is about the the alleged CIA program. For an overview of CIA influence on media, see CIA influence on public opinion.

Operation Mockingbird was a campaign by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to influence media in the US and internationally. It was reportedly organized as an independent office by Frank Wisner in 1948. After 1953, when Allen Dulles was appointed as head of the CIA, he took a strong role in overseeing the operation, which already had influence with 25 newspapers and wire agencies. The operation has been documented as operating at least during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

The unit recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network to help present the CIA's views. It funded some student and cultural organizations and magazines as fronts. As it developed, it also worked to influence foreign media and political campaigns, in addition to activities conducted by other operating units of the CIA. The CIA's use of journalists continued unabated until 1973, when the program was scaled back. When George H.W. Bush was appointed as director of the CIA in 1976, the program of paying journalists for cooperation was announced to have ended. Their voluntary cooperation was encouraged.[1]

In 1966 Ramparts magazine published an article revealing that the National Student Association was funded by the CIA. It was the first time the agency was revealed to have interfered with US domestic activities. The United States Congress investigated the allegations and published a report in 1976.

Other accounts of these activities have also been published. The media operation was first called Mockingbird in Deborah Davis's 1979 book, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and The Washington Post.[2]

History[edit]

In 1948, Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects (OSP) at the CIA. Soon afterwards, OSP was renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), which became the CIA's covert action branch. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on

"propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world".[3][not in citation given]

Later that year, Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence foreign media.[citation needed]

Wisner recruited Philip Graham from The Washington Post to run the project within the industry. According to Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great, "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of The New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."[4]

In 1951, Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord Meyer to join the CIA. According to Deborah Davis, Meyer became Mockingbird's "principal operative."[5]

After 1953, the media network was overseen by CIA Director Allen Dulles, by which time Operation Mockingbird had major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies.[6] The usual method was placing reports developed from intelligence provided by the CIA to cooperating or unwitting reporters. Those reports would be repeated or cited by the preceding reporters, which in turn would then be cited throughout the media wire services. These networks were run by people with well-known liberal but pro-American big business and anti-Soviet views, such as William S. Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (Time and Life Magazine), Arthur Hays Sulzberger (New York Times), Alfred Friendly (managing editor of the Washington Post), Jerry O'Leary (Washington Star), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Barry Bingham, Sr. (Louisville Courier-Journal), James Copley (Copley News Services) and Joseph Harrison (Christian Science Monitor).[6]

The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning off funds intended for the Marshall Plan. Wisner was constantly looking for ways to persuade the public of the dangers of Soviet communism. In 1954, Wisner arranged for the funding of a Hollywood production of Animal Farm as an animated work based on the novel of the same name written by George Orwell.[7]

Thomas Braden, head of the International Organizations Division (IOD) of the CIA, played an important role in Operation Mockingbird.[citation needed] In a 1975 interview, he said:

"If the director of CIA wanted to extend a present, say, to someone in Europe—a Labour leader—suppose he just thought, This man can use fifty thousand dollars, he's working well and doing a good job—he could hand it to him and never have to account to anybody... There was simply no limit to the money it could spend and no limit to the people it could hire and no limit to the activities it could decide were necessary to conduct the war—the secret war... It was a multinational. Maybe it was one of the first. Journalists were a target, labor unions a particular target—that was one of the activities in which the communists spent the most money."[8]

First exposure[edit]

In 1964, David Wise and Thomas Ross published Invisible Government, revealing the role of the CIA in US foreign policy. They described CIA coups in Guatemala (Operation PBSUCCESS) and Iran (Operation Ajax), and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. The authors revealed the CIA's attempts to overthrow President Sukarno in Indonesia, and the agency's covert operations taking place in Laos and Vietnam. The CIA considered buying up the entire printing of Invisible Government, but the publisher Random House said that if the agency did that, they would print a second edition.[3][not in citation given]

John McCone, the new director of the CIA, tried to prevent Edward Yates from making a documentary on the CIA for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). This attempt at censorship failed. NBC broadcast the documentary, which was critical of the CIA's activities.

In early 1967 Desmond FitzGerald, Directorate for Plans, learned that the left-wing magazine Ramparts was going to publish an article exposing the CIA's secret funding of the National Student Association. He attempted to organize a covert campaign against Ramparts, but the article was published in March 1967.[9]

In May 1967, Thomas Braden published "I'm Glad the CIA is 'Immoral'," in the Saturday Evening Post. He defended the activities of the International Organizations Division unit of the CIA. Braden said that the CIA had kept these activities secret from Congress. As he wrote: "In the early 1950s, when the Cold War was really hot, the idea that Congress would have approved many of our projects was about as likely as the John Birch Society's approving Medicare."[10]

Church Committee investigations[edit]

In 1975 Senator Frank Church called for investigations into CIA activities, establishing the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. According to the Congress report published in 1976:

"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."[citation needed] This addresses the operation internationally but not within the US.

Termination of program[edit]

In February 1976, George H. W. Bush, the recently appointed Director of the CIA, announced a new policy ending the paid patronage of journalists: "Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract 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."[11] He added that the CIA would continue to "welcome" the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists."[11]

According an October 1977 article by investigative journalist Carl Bernstein, more than half of the relationships the CIA had with U.S. journalists continued. While Operation Mockingbird came to an end, many relationships between journalists and CIA sources were allowed to remain intact.[1]

Project Mockingbird[edit]

The Congressional investigations of the 1970s do not refer to any CIA program called "Mockingbird."

In 2007 a CIA report was declassified that is titled the Family Jewels.[12] Compiled by the CIA in 1973, it refers to a Project Mockingbird and describes a wiretap of journalists. The report was compiled at the request of then CIA director James Schlesinger, and was not declassified until 2007.

According to the report:

Project Mockingbird, a telephone intercept activity, was conducted between 12 March 1963 and 15 June 1963, and targeted two Washington based newsmen who, at the time, had been publishing news articles based on, and frequently quoting, classified materials of this Agency and others, including Top Secret and Special Intelligence.[13]

The wiretap was authorized by CIA director John McCone, "in coordination with the Attorney General (Mr. Robert Kennedy), the Secretary of Defense (Mr. Robert McNamara), and the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (Gen. Joseph Carroll)." [14]

David Robarge's 2005 internal CIA biography of McCone, made public under an FOIA request, addressed this incident, identifying the two Washington reporters as Robert Allen and Paul Scott.[15] Their syndicated column, "The Allen-Scott Report," appeared in as many as three hundred papers at the height of its popularity.[16]

See also[edit]

Further reading[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c Carl Bernstein, "CIA and the Media", People, 1977
  2. ^ Davis, Deborah (1979). Katherine The Great: Katherine Graham and The Washington Post. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0151467846. 
  3. ^ a b David Wise and Thomas Ross (1964). Invisible Government. 
  4. ^ Deborah Davis (1979). Katharine the Great. pp. 137–138. 
  5. ^ Deborah Davis (1979). Katharine the Great. p. 226. 
  6. ^ a b Carl Bernstein (20 October 1977). "CIA and the Media". Rolling Stone Magazine. 
  7. ^ Evan Thomas (1995). The Very Best Men: The Early Years of the CIA. p. 33. 
  8. ^ "Thomas Braden, interview". World in Action: The Rise and Fall of the CIA. Granada Television. 1975. 
  9. ^ Evan Thomas (1995). The Very Best Men: The Early Years of the CIA. p. 330. 
  10. ^ Thomas Braden (20 May 1967). "I'm Glad the CIA is 'Immoral'". Saturday Evening Post. 
  11. ^ a b Klein, Peter. "The Interview reinforces a negative view of US journalists", Columbia Journalism Review, 30 Dec., 2014. Retrieved 16 October 2016.
  12. ^ "Family Jewels". FOIA Electronic Reading Room. Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 2016-12-14. 
  13. ^ "Family Jewels" Report, p. 22
  14. ^ "Family Jewels" Report, p. 22
  15. ^ Robarge, David (2005). John McCone as Director of Central Intelligence, 1961-1965 (part 2). Center for the Study of Intelligence. pp. 328–329. Retrieved 2016-02-14. 
  16. ^ "Long-ago wiretap inspires a battle with the CIA for more information". Washington Post. Retrieved 2016-12-12. 

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