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Operation Mockingbird: CIA Media Manipulation

By Mary Louise

The CIA's secret activities, covert missions, and connections of control 
are all done under the pretense and protection of national security with 
no accountability whatsoever, at least in their minds.  Considering the 
public is held accountable for everything we think, say, and do there is 
something seriously wrong with this picture.  The CIA is the President's 
secret army, who have been and continue to be conveniently above the 
law with unlimited power and authority, to conduct a reign of terror 
around the globe.  

The "old boy network" of socializing, talking shop, and tapping each 
other for favors outside the halls of government made it inevitable
that the CIA and Corporate America would become allies, thus the 
systematic infiltration and takeover of the media.  

Under the guise of 'American' objectives and lack of congressional 
oversight, the CIA accomplish their exploits by using every trick
in the book (and they know quite a few) that they actually teach
in the notorious "School of the Americas", nicknamed the "School of 
Dictators" and "School of Assassins" by critics. The Association for 
Responsible Dissent estimates that 6 million people had died by 1987 
as a result of CIA covert operations, called an "American Holocaust"
by former State Department official William Blum. In 1948, the CIA 
recreated its covert action wing called the Office of Policy Coordination 
with Wall Street lawyer Frank Wisner as its first director. Another early 
elitist who served as Director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961 was Allen 
Dulles, a senior partner at the Wall Street firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, 
which represented the Rockefeller empire and other trusts, corporations, 
and cartels.  

Starting in the early days of the Cold War (late 40's), the CIA
began a secret project called Operation Mockingbird, with the
intent of buying influence behind the scenes at major media outlets
and putting reporters on the CIA payroll, which has proven to be
a stunning ongoing success. The CIA effort to recruit American news
organizations and journalists to become spies and disseminators of
propaganda, was headed up by Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, Richard Helms,
and Philip Graham (publisher of The Washington Post). Wisner had
taken Graham under his wing to direct the program code-named
Operation Mockingbird and both have presumably committed suicide.  

Media assets will eventually include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek,
Associated Press, United Press International (UPI), Reuters,
Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service, etc.
and 400 journalists, who have secretly carried out assignments
according to documents on file at CIA headquarters, from intelligence-
gathering to serving as go-betweens. The CIA had infiltrated the nation's 
businesses, media, and universities with tens of thousands of on-call 
operatives by the 1950's. CIA Director Dulles had staffed the CIA almost 
exclusively with Ivy League graduates, especially from Yale with figures 
like George Herbert Walker Bush from the "Skull and Crossbones" 
Society.  

Many Americans still insist or persist in believing that we have a free 
press, while getting most of their news from state- controlled television, 
under the misconception that reporters are meant to serve the public. 
Reporters are paid employees and serve the media owners, who usually 
cower when challenged by advertisers or major government figures. 
Robert Parry reported the first breaking stories about Iran-Contra for 
Associated Press that were largely ignored by the press and congress, 
then moving to Newsweek he witnessed a retraction of a true story for 
political reasons. In 'Fooling America: A Talk by Robert Parry' he said, 
"The people who succeeded and did well were those who didn't stand 
up, who didn't write the big stories, who looked the other way when 
history was happening in front of them, and went along either 
consciously or just by cowardice with the deception of the American 
people."  

Major networks are primarily controlled by giant corporations that are 
obligated by law, to put the profits of their investors ahead of all
other considerations which are often in conflict with the practice of 
responsible journalism. There were around 50 corporations a couple of 
decades ago, which was considered monopolistic by many and yet 
today, these companies have become larger and fewer in number as the 
biggest ones absorb their rivals. This concentration of ownership and 
power reduces the diversity of media voices, as news falls into the 
hands of large conglomerates with holdings in many industries that 
interferes in newsgathering, because of conflicts of interest.
Mockingbird was an immense financial undertaking with funds flowing
from the CIA largely through the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF)
founded by Tom Braden with Pat Buchanon of CNN's Crossfire.  

Media corporations share members of the board of directors with a 
variety of other large corporations including banks, investment 
companies, oil companies, health care, pharmaceutical, and
technology companies. Until the 1980's, media systems were generally 
domestically owned, regulated, and national in scope. However, 
pressure from the IMF, World Bank, and US government to deregulate 
and privatize, the media, communication, and new technology resulted 
in a global commercial media system dominated by a small number of 
super-powerful transnational media corporations (mostly US based), 
working to advance the cause of global markets and the CIA agenda.  

The first tier of the nine giant firms that dominate the world
are Time Warner/AOL, Disney/ABC, Bertelsmann, Viacom/ CBS, Rupert 
Murdoch's News Corporation/Fox, General Electric/NBC, Sony, 
Universal/Seagram, Tele- Communications, Inc. or TCI and AT&T. This 
is just the head of the octopus which has its second and third tier 
tentacles working together in unison or feigned division. This would 
include The Washington Post/Newsweek, The New York Times/Weekly 
Standard, Tribune Co., US News, Gannett/USA Today, Dow Jones/Wall 
Street Journal, Washington Times, Knight-Ridder, etcetera.

A good site to visit for more information is Fairness and Accuracy
in Reporting, a public interest media watchdog group, at
www.fair.org/index.html, www.fair.org/mediafiles/index.html and 
www.fair.org/extra/9711/gmg.html. Media propaganda tactics include 
blackouts, misdirections, expert opinions to echo the Establishment 
line, smears, defining popular opinions, mass entertainment 
distractions, and Hobson's Choice (the media presents the so-called 
conservative and liberal positions).  

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