Operation Mockingbird was a Central Intelligence Agency operation to influence domestic and foreign media, whose activities were made public during the Church Committee investigation in 1975 (published 1976).

The word Mockingbird was first used by Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great (1979). There is no evidence that the CIA called it this. Cord Meyer said that when he joined the operation in 1951 it was so secret that it did not have a name. Click here for more.

Contents:

1 History
2 See also
3 References
4 Notes
5 External links

Operation Mockingbird was a Central Intelligence Agency operation to influence domestic and foreign media, whose activities were made public during the Church Committee investigation in 1975 (published 1976).

History

In 1948, Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects (OSP). Soon afterwards OSP was renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. 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."^[1]

Later that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic and foreign media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham (Washington Post) to run the project within the industry. According to Deborah Davis ("Katharine the Great"): "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."^[2]

In 1951, Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord Meyer to join the CIA. However, there is evidence that he was recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the liberal organizations he had been a member of in the later 1940s.^[3] According to Deborah Davis, Meyer became Mockingbird's "principal operative".^[4]

In 1977, Rolling Stone alleged that one of the most important journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists alleged by Rolling Stone Magazine to have been willing to promote the views of the CIA included 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).^[5] 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 to help them with their work.^[6]

After 1953, the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. By this time Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. These organizations were run by people with well-known right-wing views such as William Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (Time Magazine 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).^[5]

The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning of funds intended for the Marshall Plan. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers. Frank Wisner was constantly looking for ways to help convince the public of the dangers of communism. In 1954, Wisner arranged for the funding the Hollywood production of Animal Farm, the animated allegory based on the book written by George Orwell.^[7]

According to Alex Constantine (Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA), in the 1950s, "some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts". Wisner was also able to restrict newspapers from reporting about certain events. For example, the CIA plots to overthrow the governments of Iran (See: Operation Ajax) and Guatemala (See: Operation PBSUCCESS).^[8]

Thomas Braden, head of the International Organizations Division (IOD), played an important role in Operation Mockingbird. Many years later he revealed his role in these events:

"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."^[9]

Top of Page

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone

of any significance in the major media."

- William Colby, Former Director, CIA

The Media Monopoly's 'Code of Silence'

Bill O’Reilly, the infamous right-wing TV host of The O’Reilly Factor,
asked one of his guests the other day an interesting question about the claim that
“9/11 was an inside job”.

O’Reilly: “If there were a shred of legitimate evidence for this story, it would be all over the place. … Why won’t any responsible news organization print this stuff? … This would be the story of the century. It’s no place.” More here.

Who Owns the Media?

Media Ownership Chart

Columbia Journalism Review's 'Who Owns What'
Colombia Journalism Review provides a clickable list of the major media companies and their holdings. This web guide demonstrates the exceedingly far reach of these companies.

The Nation's 'Big Ten'
Here's a clickable chart of the world's ten biggest media conglomerates. The 'Big Ten' shows that concentration of media owndership isn't just a problem here - it's happening worldwide.

The Incredible Shrinking Ownership Group
In 1985, there were 50 companies who owned media outlets. The graph on this site shows that between then and now, the number has dwindled to only six, and if the planned deregulation goes through it'll decline even further. Includes the major media reform advocacy groups.

FAIR's List of For-Profit Media
FAIR points out that most media outlets are owned by for-profit corporations, which by nature makes them more accountable to the stockholders than the public interest.

NOW's 'Who Controls The Media?'
This easy-to-read chart breaks it all down - even down to which cable outlets are controlled by which conglomerates.

Inside the world of Rupert Murdoch - Videos

Part 1: Countdown investigates the man behind one of biggest media monopolies

Part 2: Investigating the man behind one of biggest media monopolies

A Local Newspaper Endures a Stormy Backlash

'We had the opportunity to tell the story of powerless people who'd been hurt by powerful people who counted on the public never learning what they'd done.'

Last year, by exposing Boy Scout pedophiles and those who failed to kick them out of the scouting program, we energized three of our community's big forces against us, including those most able to punish our newspaper -- the community's majority religion, the richest guys in town, and the conservative machine that controls Idaho. More here.

A Year in Review - 9-11 Media Coverage in 2006

Only 16% Think Government Telling the Truth about 9-11

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Mind Control

* Also see Media Brainwashing category

Reflections on the "Family Jewels" From a Target of the CIA
The Killing Machine
By FIDEL CASTRO
July 9, 2007

Must See Link:

CIA Releases "Family Jewels", 15 Years After FOIA Was Filed

The CIA's Family Jewels - Click Here

Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years,
Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents

Update - Full Report Now Available and Key Word Searchable

CIA Announces Declassification of 1970s "Skeletons" File,
Archive Posts Justice Department Summary from 1975,
With White House Memcons on Damage Control

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 222
Edited by Thomas Blanton

For more information contact:
Thomas Blanton - 202/994-7000

In the News:

"Files on Illegal Spying Show C.I.A. Skeletons From Cold War"
By Mark Mazzetti and Tim Weiner
New York Times
June 27, 2007

"CIA Releases Files on Past Misdeeds"
By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus"
Washington Post
June 27, 2007

"CIA discloses past abuses"
By Richard Willing
USA Today
June 27, 2007

"CIA Releases 700 Pages of 'Family Jewels'"
All Things Considered (National Public Radio)
June 26, 2007

"CIA to Air Decades of Its Dirty Laundry"
By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
Washington Post
June 22, 2007

"CIA Kidnapping, Wiretapping of '60s, '70s Revealed"
Morning Edition (National Public Radio)
June 22, 2007

"C.I.A. to Release Documents on Decades-Old Misdeeds"
By Scott Shane
New York Times
June 22, 2007

Agency's Strangeloves Altered the Mind of a Girl Aged 4
Robert Lusetich, Los Angeles correspondent
June 28, 2007

EASILY lost, on page 425, in the mass of the CIA's notorious "Family Jewels" files is a short paragraph outlining "potentially embarrassing Agency activities".

"Experiments in influencing human behaviour through the administration of mind- or personality-altering drugs to unwitting subjects."

Of all the heinous acts committed by the CIA in the name of national security, these experiments, done on the agency's behalf by prominent psychiatrists on innocent victims - including children as young as four - may be the darkest.

"We have no answer to the moral issue," former director Richard Helms infamously said when asked about the nature of the projects.

The release of the Family Jewels documents revealed the CIA handsomely funded these real-life Dr Strangeloves and engaged pharmaceutical companies to help its experiments.

The agency appealed to Big Pharma to pass on any drugs that could not be marketed because of "unfavourable side effects" to be tested on mice and monkeys. Any drugs that passed muster would then be used, according to an internal memo, on volunteer US soldiers.

The Family Jewels files do not provide further detail into the numerous mind-control programs, such as MKULTRA, covertly propped up by the agency. In 1953, MKULTRA was given 6per cent of the total CIA budget without any oversight.

Only the tip of a large iceberg had been previously released by the CIA under Freedom of Information Act provisions.

Yesterday's acknowledgments will comfort those who have long campaigned for truth and restitution.

The nature of the experiments, gathered from government documents and testimony in numerous lawsuits brought against the CIA, is shocking, from testing LSD on children to implanting electrodes in victims' brains to deliberately poisoning people with uranium.

"The CIA bought my services from my grandfather in 1952 starting at the tender age of four," wrote Carol Rutz of her experiences.

"Over the next 12 years, I was tested, trained, and used in various ways. Electroshock, drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and other types of trauma were used to make me complain and split my personality (to create multiple personalities for specific tasks). Each alter or personality was created to respond to a post-hypnotic trigger, then perform an act and (I would) not remember it later.

"This Manchurian Candidate program was just one of the operational uses of the mind-control scenario by the CIA.

"Your hard-earned tax dollars supported this."

The US began these experiments after World War II when it made a grab for hundreds of Nazi scientists and doctors who had been researching mind control in concentration camps, fearing they would fall into Soviet hands.

US military intelligence leaders were paranoid that they were falling behind the communist bloc in the brainwashing race.

The programs, though carefully hidden, continued into the 1970s - when Helms ordered much of the documentation to be destroyed.

Some conspiratorial theorists believe the CIA completed its goal, initially outlined in the early 1950s, of altering a personality and having someone "perform an action contrary to an individual's basic moral principles".

The attorney for Sirhan Sirhan, Lawrence Teeter, has said his client was programmed to assassinate Robert Kennedy in 1968.

Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, volunteered to take part in CIA mind-control experiments when he was a student at Harvard University in the late 50s.

Note from Melissa:

The article above states,

"The programs, though carefully hidden, continued into the 1970s - when Helms ordered much of the documentation to be destroyed."

These programs have NOT stopped, contrary to what this article states.

Much more on the recently released CIA "Family Jewels" files here.

Refresh page frequently to get the latest information

TOMMY THOMPSON: THE "CHIPPER" PRESIDENT?
Election Bid Raises Specter of RFID Implant Threat -

He is on the board of Verichip Corporation

Audio clips from radio broadcasts

Books and Excerpts from Books:

Acid Dreams. The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond Sample readings, documents, timeline,
author information for the book by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain.
See also the detailed table of contents:
The Trip Guide

LSD, The CIA, and Your Brain
more excerpts from Acid Dreams, from Lycaeum Drug Archives

The Search for the Manchurian Candidate
The CIA and Mind Control, by John Marks

Top of Page

Chapters from The Last Circle by Carol Marshall
(Details on the CIA involvement in MKULTRA)

Chapter 15 part 1

Chapter 15 part 2

Chapter 15 part 3

Bluebird
Description of Dr. Colin A. Ross's forthcoming book on Project Bluebird (MKULTRA)

Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on our Children and
Other Innocent People

CKLN-FM Mind Control Series

Tom Porter's Web Site:
Government Research into E.S.P. and Mind Control

Tom Porter has built a comprehensive web site on mind-control which, like this one and Martti Koski's, will be continually growing. He has nifty clickable graphics.
On my initial visit I found that I could link to the entire text of Martin Cannon's classic article, The Controllers, in typeset quality html. It's well worth downloading, and if you read nothing else about mind control for your entire life you'll find this text to be an adequate foundation to understand what's going on!
Tom has a current legislation page there.
To reach Tom Porter, click on his email address: txporter@mindspring.com