Operation Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate news media for propaganda purposes. It funded student and cultural organizations and magazines as front organizations. According to author Deborah Davis, Operation Mockingbird recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network and influenced the operations of front groups. CIA support of front groups was exposed when a 1967 Ramparts magazine article reported that the National Student Association received funding from the CIA. In 1975, Church Committee Congressional investigations revealed Agency connections with journalists and civic groups. None of the reports, however, mentions by name an Operation Mockingbird coordinating or supporting these activities.
History
In the early years of the Cold War, efforts were made by the governments of both the United States and the Soviet Union to use mass media to influence public opinion internationally. In a 1977 Rolling Stone magazine article, "The CIA and the Media," reporter Carl Bernstein wrote that by 1953, CIA Director Allen Dulles oversaw the media network, which had major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. Its usual modus operandi was to place reports, developed from CIA-provided intelligence, with cooperating or unwitting reporters. Those reports would be repeated or cited by the recipient reporters and would then, in turn, be cited throughout the media wire services. These networks were run by people with well-known liberal but pro-American big-business and anti-Soviet views, such as William S. Paley, Henry Luce, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Alfred Friendly, Jerry O'Leary, Hal Hendrix, Barry Bingham, Sr., James S. Copley and Joseph Harrison. In The Rising Clamor: The American Press, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Cold War, David P. Hadley wrote that the "continued lack of specific details proved a breeding ground for some outlandish claims regarding CIA and the press"; as an example he offered unsourced claims by reporter Deborah Davis. Davis asserted in her 1979 biography of Katharine Graham, owner of The Washington Post, , that the CIA ran an "Operation Mockingbird" during this time. Davis wrote that the International Organization of Journalists that was created as a communist front organization "received money from Moscow and controlled reporters on every major newspaper in Europe, disseminating stories that promoted the Communist cause." Davis wrote that Frank Wisner, director of the Office of Policy Coordination had created Operation Mockingbird in response to the International Organization of Journalists, recruiting Phil Graham from The Washington Post to run the project within the industry. According to Davis, "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of The New York Times,Newsweek,'' CBS and other communications vehicles." Davis wrote that after Cord Meyer joined the CIA in 1951, he became Operation Mockingbird's "principal operative." Hadley summarized, "Mockingbird, as described by Davis, has remained a stubbornly persistent theory”; and added, "The Davis/Mockingbird theory, that the CIA operated a deliberate and systematic program of widespread manipulation of the U.S. media, does not appear to be grounded in reality, but that should not disguise the active role the CIA played in influencing the domestic press's output."
Congressional investigations
After the Watergate scandal in 1972–1974, the U.S. Congress became concerned over possible presidential abuse of the CIA. This concern reached its height when reporter Seymour Hersh published an exposé of CIA domestic surveillance in 1975. Congress authorized a series of Congressional investigations into Agency activities from 1975 to 1976. A wide range of CIA operations were examined in these investigations, including CIA ties with journalists and numerous private voluntary organizations. The most extensive discussion of CIA relations with news media from these investigations is in the Church Committee's final report, published in April 1976. The report covered CIA ties with both foreign and domestic news media. For foreign news media, the report concluded that: For U.S.-based media, the report states:
CIA response
Prior to the release of the Church report, the CIA had already begun restricting its use of journalists. According to the report, former CIA director William Colby informed the committee that in 1973 he had issued instructions that "As a general policy, the Agency will not make any clandestine use of staff employees of U.S. publications which have a substantial impact or influence on public opinion." In February 1976, Director George H. W. Bush announced an even more restrictive policy: "effective immediately, CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station." By the time the Church Committee Report was completed, all CIA contacts with accredited journalists had been dropped. The Committee noted, however, that "accredited correspondent" meant the ban was limited to individuals "formally authorized by contract or issuance of press credentials to represent themselves as correspondents" and that non-contract workers who did not receive press credentials, such as stringers or freelancers, were not included.
