OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD

Operation Mockingbird was a secret Central Intelligence Agency campaign to influence domestic and foreign media beginning in the 1950s.

The activities, extent and even the existence of the CIA project remain in dispute: the operation was first called Mockingbird in Deborah Davis' 1979 book, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and her Washington Post Empire. But Davis' book, alleging that the media had been recruited (and infiltrated) by the CIA for propaganda purposes, was itself controversial and has since been shown to have had a number of erroneous assertions.^[1] More evidence of Mockingbird's existence emerged in the 2007 memoir American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond, by convicted Watergate "plumber" E. Howard Hunt and The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America by Hugh Wilford (2008).^[2]

In 1948, Frank Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic and foreign media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham from The Washington Post to run the project within the industry. Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great; "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of The New York Times, Newsweek, CBS

1951, Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord Meyer to join the CIA. However he was recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the liberal organizations in the later 1940s. Meyer became Mockingbird's "principal operative"

1977, Rolling Stone, journalists under the control was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists Stewart Alsop (New York Herald Tribune), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek), James Reston (New York Times), Charles Douglas Jackson (Time Magazine), Walter Pincus (Washington Post), William C. Baggs (The Miami News), Herb Gold (The Miami News) and Charles Bartlett (Chattanooga Times).

According to Nina Burleigh (A Very Private Woman), these journalists sometimes wrote articles that were commissioned by Frank Wisner. The CIA also provided them with classified information. After 1953 it was overseen by Allen W. Dulle, had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies

organizations run by people with well-known right-wing views such as William 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).

Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning of funds intended for the Marshall Plan to bribe journalists and publishers. In 1954, Wisner arranged for Animal Farm, the animated allegory.

Alex Constantine (Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA),

"some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees, could restrict newspapers from reporting about certain events. Richard Helms became his chief of operations

J. Edgar Hoover became jealous had been active in left-wing politics in the 1930s. info was passed to Joseph McCarthy. Wisner unleashed Mockingbird on McCarthy. Drew Pearson, Joe Alsop, Jack Anderson, Walter Lippmann and Ed Murrow all went into attack mode and McCarthy was permanently damaged by the press coverage orchestrated by Wisner

Guatemala. Henry Luce were able to censor

1964, Random House published Invisible Government by David Wise and Thomas Ross. Meyer's role accused of interfering with The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia by Alfred W. McCoy which was critical of the CIA's dealings with the drug traffic in Southeast Asia

Further detail revealed that Frank Church in 1975 there was network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world. Church argued cost was $265 million a year

February 1976, George H. W. Bush, a new policy, CIA would continue to "welcome" the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists.