Spy v. Spy: BOB WOODWARD, the CIA's MOCKINGBIRD program

Todd Brendan Fahey

Spy v. Spy: BOB WOODWARD, the CIA's MOCKINGBIRD program

Mon Nov 21, 2005 23:55

Spy v. Spy: Robert Novak, the CIA's MOCKINGBIRD program, and
Plame/Wilson

http://sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2551

by Todd Brendan Fahey
July 17, 2005

Either Karl Rove or Robert Novak is lying. Both could be, of course;
but if the scandal that is the unveiling of a CIA no-official-cover
operative has turned into political blood-sport, the fallout will
transcend anything that happened during Watergate. Spooks war
against each other regularly. Usually, it doesn't hit the front
pages of the major-metro dailies. And such is how we know that
something has gone terribly awry in Washington and at Langley.

During the mid-to-late-1940s, with WWII now over and with the United
States government seeking to control communications and to shape
public thought in its aftermath, the Department of State and Central
Intelligence Agency cooperated--as they often do--in the creation of
a program to enlist aggressively U.S. Intelligence operatives (be
they State Dept. or CIA, was of little importance) within U.S.
media. Frank Wisner, an undercover State Department foreign service
officer, was to head the new project, known as Operation
MOCKINGBIRD.

Using a combination of flattery, the promise of comfortable and/or
exciting positions, and with dollars to burn, the State Department
and CIA recruited promising students with talents in both journalism
and the gregariousness necessary for any good human Intelligence
(HUMINT) agent to infiltrate under Government protection and
supervision enter the various media apparatus that keeps the
collective eyes of We The People glued to whatever our controllers
want us to look at, at any given moment. Such was the province of
the Office of Policy Coordination, MOCKINGBIRD's oversight office
within the CIA.

Philip Graham, longtime publisher of the Washington Post and
graduate of the Army Intelligence School, Harrisburg, PA, was tapped
by State Dept. officer/CIA-functionary Frank Wisner to direct the
program therefter-dubbed Operation MOCKINGBIRD.

We have been living in this world of Government covert oversight of
Our Media for nearly 60 years.

A former Village Voice reporter Deborah Davis wrote, "By the early
1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of the New York Times,
Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles, plus stringers,
four to six hundred in all, according to a former CIA analyst." CIA-
founder Allen Dulles oversaw the entire operation, with Wisner as
his disciple. And political points of view were evidently not a
prime concern: C.D. Jackson (Fortune) and Henry Luce (Time) were
known to hold conservative political opinions, as was one up-and-
coming MOCKINGBIRD agent: William F. Buckley.

The editor-emeritus of National Review and longtime television
fixture of The Firing Line, and just generally "Mr. Conservative"
had been stationed in Japan for the Central Intelligence Agency from
1951-1954, and, following his return Stateside, was congratulated
for his work with an unprecedented rise through the MOCKINGBIRD
maze.

How do I know this (you ask)? In 1986, and with hard-Right
Republican candidate Evan Mecham bucking for the Governorship of
Arizona, I had been working for a former Congressman (John B.
Conlan), who was defeated in a return-to-office bid by Jon Kyl. Mr.
Conlan might have lost the race, but his chief strategist Edith
Richardson was tapped by Evan Mecham, who had just won an unlikely 3-
way upset over then-Arizona Education Secretary Carolyn Warner.

I had performed some black tricks for Conlan, which backfired at a
quarter-to-midnight. Mrs. Richardson knew that I'd bled for Conlan,
and basically opened up the "List of Vacancies" and told me to pick
my next post. It wasn't much of a question: Newly tapped to the
Mecham administration was one Theodore L. "Ted" Humes, to some
meaningless state office that was quickly transformed into the nerve-
center of HUMINT for Evan Mecham, in his battle to rid the Arizona
state government as quickly as was possible of the holdovers from
eight years of Bruce Babbitt's governorship.

Having already worked with Lt. General Daniel O. Graham--Director of
the Defense Intelligence Agency and Deputy Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency--for his "Committee for Peace Through Strength,"
on a supposed "semester-abroad" program at University of London-
Union College, back in Arizona I came to know that "Ted" Humes was
born "Theodore L. Huminski," the son of Polish Catholic immigrants,
and spoke and wrote both Polish and Russian (Cyrrilic) and, to a
lesser extent, other Slavic languages. Following graduation from
university, he was quickly picked up by CIA, Division of Slavic
Languages, and sent to Japan from 1951-54.

Humes's CIA partner: William F. Buckley...

Ted Humes passed away several years ago, and, as Voltaire said
(paraphrasing...too lazy to track down the exact quote): "To the
living, one owes respect; to the dead, one only owes the truth." And
having just turned 70, and with a love for lunch-hour gin and
tonics, to which he would treat me every day at the Eagle's Nest
restaurant, atop a high-rise adjacent to the building in which he
and I worked, ostensibly for the Residential Utility Consumer Office
(RUCO), Ted's tongue would become well-oiled, and I learned more
from that man than from anyone else to-date.

It is the opinion of this writer, that Robert Novak has been part of
Operation MOCKINGBIRD for a very long time. (As has the Post's Bob
Woodward, and through which he gained the acumen for to reach and
sustain a relationship with "Deepthroat"--now known to be the FBI's
then-second-in-command, Mark Felt.) Someone (and it appears certain
now, that it is either Novak or Rove) knew definitively of Valerie
Plame's employment history. If the source was Novak, that he is also
a CIA agent, working within a long-standing media-infiltration
project, would be a winning bet.

If Robert Novak is employed by the Central Intelligence Agency via
Operation MOCKINGBIRD, and if for whatever reason he confirmed
Valerie Plame-Wilson's identity to Karl Rove, it appears now that
Mr. Rove is turning on his ultimate Source: a man who is very likely
to be CIA himself. Spooks will be spooks, and spooks--as with any
two humans--often don't like each other. But Federal statutes are
also Federal statutes. What's good for the goose, etc.

Both are screwed.

How this will end is anyone's guess. But the more information
put "out there," the better. The first amendment is not meant to be
tampered with by the State Department or CIA. The damage having been
done, let it bleed.

Todd Brendan Fahey has served as aide to former Congressman John B.
Conlan (R-AZ), Governor Evan Mecham (R-AZ); to CIA officer Theodore
L. "Ted" Humes (Division of Slavic Languages) and to the late Lt.
General Daniel O. Graham, among others.
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Main Page - Saturday, 8/06/05
http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/08-06-05/discussion.cgi.60.html

TIME.com -- Richard Corliss: The Long Goodbye II
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http://www.time.com/time/columnist/corliss/article/0,9565,1018821-2,00.html

Try searching for Bob Woodward "CIA LEAK" "MOCKINGBIRD" on Google Book Search

Congressman John Murtha - The weekend explodes with talk of getting out of Iraq
http://www.charlesgoyette.com/archive/media/2005-11-21-Charles-02.mp3

Washington Post's role in Operation Mockingbird —Cheryl Seal, Tue Nov 22 12:54