At the beginning of the cold war, American Intelligence agencies scrambled to keep the American public misinformed regarding communism and the secret war with the Soviet Union. Chief among these agencies was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which, in 1948 created a classified project tasked with creating propaganda, waging economic and social warfare against hostile states, and to assist in the support of indigenous anti-communist elements across the globe, this project was dubbed “Operation Mockingbird.”
“I don’t put any trust in the government, so the idea of the government doing that is not at all surprising to me,” said San Luis Obispo High School Journalism teacher Scott Nairne. CIA operative Frank Wisner oversaw the operation. Wisner was the director of the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination (OPC); the counter intelligence branch of the CIA. Wisner and other agents working within Operation Mockingbird contacted journalists working for major media outlets. The CIA operatives attempted to influence the journalists to distribute propaganda through bribery and intimidation. Many Operation Mockingbird Operatives became moles and infiltrated major news outlets like The New York Times, Newsweek, Time Magazine, The Washington Post and many others.
In the early 1950’s Senator Joseph McCarthy began investigating high-ranking CIA officials, especially Wisner and the OPC. Immediately after McCarthy began his investigation, journalists from Time, The National Broadcasting Company (NBC), and The Herald Tribune bombarded McCarthy with negative press. McCarthy’s political reputation never recovered.
With a stranglehold on major American media outlets, the CIA wielded immense power. Operation Mockingbird played a key role in influencing the public’s opinion on major foreign policy issues. With help from Operation Mockingbird, the CIA was able to successfully orchestrate plots to overthrow freely elected leaders in Iran (Operation Ajax) and Guatemala (Operation PBSUCCESS).
In 1975, Operation Mockingbird was uncovered and thoroughly investigated by Frank Church and his Church committee. Shortly after in 1976, future president George H.W. Bush (who was the current director of the CIA) announced that “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” but would instead “welcome the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists.”
That is exactly what happened. All the dealings between the CIA and major media outlets went off record. The latest evidence that Operation Mockingbird is alive and well came to light in 2012 when it was exposed that Mark Mazzetti; a national security correspondent for The New York Times had forwarded an article regarding the film “Zero Dark Thirty” and his criticisms of the Obama administration to CIA operative Marie Harf for editing. With such recent evidence of its activity, it is not far-fetched to speculate that Operation Mockingbird is still going strong, and the CIA has most if not all major media outlets under their thumb, but that… is merely a conspiracy theory.
Sources:
www.infowars.com/operation-mockingbird
www.freepress.org/article/operation-mockingbird
www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
