Operation Mockingbird: CIA Media ManipulationMon Oct 17, 2005 14:1964.140.159.52
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.
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.
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MOCKINGBIRD
The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MOCK/mockingbird.html
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Other News Outlets With Documented CIA Ties
Management at the Christian Science Monitor admitted the paper had an ongoing relationship with the CIA throughout the 1950's and early 60's. Joseph Harrison, who became editor in 1950, said he discovered that agents paid frequent visits to the news office to get information on Monitor stories. "I inherited the situation and I continued it," he said of the arrangement, which included allowing the Agency access to uncut versions of stories and letters from Monitor foreign correspondents. While Johnson characterized such activities as "helping out as an American," he drew the line at pursuing stories at the Agency's behest or allowing his employees to moonlight with the CIA. "That," according to his distinction, "would have been espionage."
CIA files show that ABC News provided cover for agents throughout the 1960's. During the Church committee hearings the Agency refused to reveal whether its relationship with the network was ongoing. As with ties to other high profile news outlets, arrangements were made at the highest level, with the full knowledge of network executives. CIA officials claim that Sam Jaffe and one other unnamed correspondent performed clandestine tasks for the Agency. Jaffe admits that he was approached by agents who offered to get him a job with CBS, who would send him on assignment in Moscow if he agreed to cooperate, but claims he never agreed to the deal. Jaffe did go on to do some work for CBS, though, and said he believed that the CIA had a hand in getting him the assignment.
One of the more unusual accounts of the CIA-press connection involves the Louisville Courier-Journal. Undercover operative Robert H. Campbell spent three months at the paper as a reporter in 1964-1965 as part of an arrangement made by the Agency and Courier-Journal executive editor Norman Issacs. The first account of Campbell's tenure at the paper appeared in a front-page story in 1976 -- in the Courier-Journal (one of the few self-investigative pieces written on this topic).
James Herzog reported that Campbell had been hired in spite of the fact that he could not type and knew little about newswriting. "Norman said that when he was in Washington, he had been called to lunch with some friend of his who was with the CIA [who] wanted to send this young fellow down to get him a little knowledge of newspapering," the paper's former managing editor recalled in the article. CIA sources say that the Courier-Journal arrangements were made so that Johnson could amass a record of journalistic experience (he also worked briefly for the Hornell, New York Evening Tribune). The Agency even sent funds to the Courier-Journal to pay Johnson's salary. These same sources claim that the deal was made with Issacs and approved by the paper's publisher, but neither man recalls being involved. "All I can do is repeat the simple truth," Issacs said in response to Herzog's story, "that never, under any circumstances or at any time, have I ever knowingly hired a government agent." But, he added, "none of this is to say that I couldn't have been 'had.'"
But clues were there. No one looked into Johnson's credentials when he was hired, and his file included the curious notation "Hired for temporary work -- no reference checks completed or needed." Johnson's journalistic prowess (or lack thereof) should have given him away: his editors characterized his work as "unreadable" and it was never published. If that was not clue enough, his penchant for announcing to patrons at a bar a few steps from his office that he was a CIA agent should have done the trick.
Who else? Bernstein compiled the following list of additional organizations known to have provided CIA cover: the New York Herald-Tribune, the Saturday Evening Post, Scripps-Howard Newspapers, Hearst Newspapers, the Associated Press, United Press International, the Mutual Broadcasting System, Reuters and the Miami Herald.
The CFR Report on "Making Intelligence Smarter"
A Council on Foreign Relations task force thrust the CIA-media connection back into the spotlight this year with the release of their report on post-Cold War intelligence. "Making Intelligence Smarter," released in February 1996, stresses the importance of "human intelligence" in successful clandestine operations. But many of the "innovations" the CFR suggests for cases when "the targeted activity is not easily captured by reconnaissance or eavesdropping," are all too familiar. "Clandestine operations for whatever purpose currently are circumscribed by a number of legal and policy constraints," the report states. "These deserve review to avoid diminishing the potential contribution of this instrument. At a minimum, the Task Force recommended that a fresh look be taken at limits on the use of nonofficial 'covers' for hiding and protecting those involved in clandestine activities."
Though the task force doesn't explicitly address the use of the press as cover, the implication is obvious. If nothing else, the Church committee investigation showed CIA-press relationships to be among the Agency's most secret -- and most valuable -- operations for nearly two decades. And congressional scrutiny, however ineffectual, led the Agency to codify the constraints alluded to in the report.
Former CIA director William Colby claimed in 1973 to have scaled back covert media operations in response to mounting criticism of the practice. His successor, George Bush, issued a statement pledging that the Agency would not enter into "paid or contractual relationships with full- or part-time news correspondents from accredited news organizations" when he took the Agency helm in 1976. (The statement was ambiguous on stringers and other news staffers, and included a statement that the Agency would "welcome" journalists' voluntary, unpaid cooperation. Stansfield Turner, Bush's replacement, put these assurances in writing the following year.
Contrary to the report's implication that all "nonofficial" covers are currently off limits, there is a loophole in the policy Turner drafted in 1977 allowing for exceptions "with the specific approval" of the Director of Central Intelligence. An unnamed source brought the loophole to attention of the Washington Post last month, indicating that such exceptions had been made "in extraordinarily rare circumstances" in the past 19 years. At least one such exception was granted for a CIA agent posing as a reporter during the Iranian hostage crisis.
Spies R Not Us?
Reaction from the press to the CFR report has been mixed. Many have invoked the First Amendment and uttered platitudes about the separation of press and state, while remaining silent about the two institutions' sordid pasts. Notably absent from both the CFR's report and the media's reaction is any historical frame of reference: the issue is presented as a stand-alone current event, taken out of its context as a legacy of CIA meddling and media complicity.
Evan Thomas, an assistant editor at Newsweek told the Post that while there were "inherent conflicts" in using the press as cover, "You would not want to rule out forever an opportunity in which a journalist might be the only one who could help in a desperate situation."
But Jim Naureckas, editor of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's journal Extra!, seemed to have a better appreciation of the underlying implications. "Under no circumstance should CIA agents pose as journalists," he said. "Given the CIA's record in setting up fake press organs and manipulating the press, they have really lost the right to get involved with journalists. You can't combine their work with journalism, which is about the free and open exchange of ideas."
Washington Times columnist Ken Adelman charged that the uproar was much ado about nothing. "That such verbal waffling aroused such a ruckus says a great deal," he wrote in his March 6, 1996 column. "Not so much about the Council or the CIA -- but about the narcissism of today's journalists."
Contrary to the policy of his predecessors, Post executive editor Leonard Downie, Jr. said he was disturbed by the possibility that the CIA had either used journalistic organizations for cover or recruited journalists. Independence from the government, he said, was essential for both credibility and the safety of correspondents.
The CFR, the CIA, the Media and the New World Order
Will economic warfare replace the Cold War in the New World Order? In the wake of the Cold War, debate has erupted over the future use of intelligence agencies by the U.S. government. Many of America's political and business elite want to see a shift towards economic intelligence, to counter other nations' economic intelligence ops, as well as to further the goals of international capitalism.
It is therefore especially noteworthy that the CFR issued the report on "Making Intelligence Smarter." The roster of the Council on Foreign Relations is a Who's Who directory of the political, military, and economic elite in the United States. President Clinton's administration is staffed by nearly 100 of the CFR's 3,000 members. It has been said by political commentators on both the left and the right that if you want to find out what U.S. foreign policy will be next year, you should read the CFR's periodical Foreign Affairs this year.
Members of the CFR exert influence over a gigantic portion of the media in America. Many of the newspeople who operated with the CIA in the past were or are CFR members. The chief directors and news anchors of CBS, ABC, NBC, Time Inc., Public Broadcast Service, CNN, Newsweek, and many other major media outlets are CFR members. So are many CEOs and board members at Chase Manhattan Corp., Chemical Bank, Citicorp, Shell Oil, AT&T, General Motors, General Electric, and other multinational corporations.
It is also worth noting that three of the Task Force panel members who wrote the "Making Intelligence Smarter" report included past or present journalists. Leslie Gelb, CFR president, is a former foreign affairs columnist and Op-Ed page editor for The New York Times. Henry Grunwald is former Editor-in-Chief of Time magazine, and Jessica Mathews is a Post columnist.
Critics of the CFR on both sides of the political spectrum voice strong opposition to the Council's agenda of expansion of multinational capitalism and world government -- what has become known as the New World Order. A report from the CFR such as "Making Intelligence Smarter" will therefore make plenty of waves. The fact that the report was composed in part by members of the working press who are also CFR members is a brazen conflict of interest, in light of the CFR's history.
Will there be a shift in CIA/media operations towards global economic intelligence and propaganda? Only time will tell as the debate rages on. But if history serves as any sort of lesson, we could be standing on the threshold of a new flap of covert media manipulation.
Sources
"The CIA and the Media: How America's Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered it Up," Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977, p.55-67. "CIA in America," CounterSpy, Spring 1980, p. 42-43. "Washington Post -- Speaking for Whom?" CounterSpy, May-July 1981, p. 13-19. Loch K. Johnson, America's Secret Power: the CIA in a Democratic Society, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 182-311. "'Loophole Revealed in Prohibition on CIA Use of Journalistic Cover," New York Times, February 16, 1996, p. A24. "Making Intelligence Smarter," report of a task force of the Council on Foreign Relations, 1996. "Disinformation and Mass Deception: Democracy as a Cover Story," Covert Action Information Bulletin, Spring-Summer 1983, p. 3-12. "The CIA's use of the press: a 'mighty Wurlitzer,'" Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 1974, p. 9-18.
http://www.911-strike.com/CIAinmedia.htm
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The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA
"You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month." CIA operative discussing with Philip Graham, editor Washington Post, on the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories. "Katherine The Great," by Deborah Davis (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991)
As terrible as it is to live in a nation where the press in known to be controlled by the government, at least one has the advantage of knowing the bias is present, and to adjust for it. In the United States of America, we are taught from birth that our press is free from such government meddling. This is an insideous lie about the very nature of the news institution in this country. One that allows the government to lie to us while denying the very fact of the lie itself.
The Alex Constantine Article
Tales from the Crypt
The Depraved Spies and Moguls of the CIA's Operation MOCKINGBIRD
by Alex Constantine
Who Controls the Media?
Soulless corporations do, of course. Corporations with grinning,
double-breasted executives, interlocking directorates, labor squabbles
and flying capital. Dow. General Electric. Coca-Cola. Disney.
Newspapers should have mastheads that mirror the world: The
Westinghouse Evening Scimitar, The Atlantic-Richfield Intelligentser .
It is beginning to dawn on a growing number of armchair ombudsmen that
the public print reports news from a parallel universe - one that has
never heard of politically-motivated assassinations, CIA-Mafia banking
thefts, mind control, death squads or even federal agencies with
secret budgets fattened by cocaine sales - a place overrun by lone
gunmen, where the CIA and Mafia are usually on their best behavior. In
this idyllic land, the most serious infraction an official can commit
__is a the employment of a domestic servant with (shudder) no
residency status.
This unlikely land of enchantment is the creation of MOCKINGBIRD.
It was conceived in the late 1940s, the most frigid period of the cold
war, whe
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