40 years ago, the world learned about the grandiose CIA project
One of the largest covert operations of the US CIA (Office) was called "Mockingbird", Operation Mockingbird. Until now, most of the documents on this operation are classified. We do not know many details, but the general contours of the project can be restored from individual fragments. The purpose of the operation was to establish CIA control over the media in America and abroad by creating an extensive agent network in the leading publications and news agencies of the world, on radio and television.
One of the main sources of information on this topic is the book by American journalist Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and The Washington Post. The book was published forty years ago, in 1979, and it was given the name of the operation - "Mockingbird". The book talks a lot about Catherine (Catherine) Graham (1917-2001), owner of the Washington Post, and her personal involvement in the operation.
Almost three decades ago, I had to meet this lady in Washington. Then she was already retiring, and then for the first time I heard about Operation Mockingbird, but not from Catherine herself, but from another person who participated in the meeting and explained to me who this woman was. In fact, the leading American newspaper became an active participant in the CIA operation even during the time of Catherine's husband Philip Graham, who was in control of the WP wheel. In 1963, he committed suicide, and Katherine intercepted the helm, continuing and deepening cooperation with the secret service.
It is possible that Deborah Davis's decision to write a book on CIA control over the media was influenced by the publication on October 20, 1977 of a high-profile article by Carl Bernstein "The CIA and the Media" in the well-known opposition magazine Rolling Stone. Bernstein estimates that the CIA has recruited about 400 American journalists in a quarter of a century.
The release of Deborah Davis's book was like a bomb. On command from the very top, the publishing house was ordered to remove the book from the trading network and destroy it. Destroyed 20 thousand copies, but part of the circulation managed to reach the readers. Harassment began against Deborah Davis. There were "studies" in which the author was exposed of "inaccuracies" and "mistakes". However, all this did not cancel the existence of the Mockingbird project. As subsequent events showed, in the most important way, Deborah Davis's analysis was absolutely accurate.
In 2007, fragments of the CIA dossier, codenamed "Family Jewels", were released. The dossier, over 700 pages in volume, was prepared at the direction of James Schlesinger, who came to the post of CIA director in February 1973. He was extremely concerned about the activities of his predecessor, Richard Helms and other directors of the Office, as information about the "hard" ways of the CIA began to leak into the press. A congressional investigation was launched on them. Schlesinger demanded that his employees provide information on all transactions "that could be construed as a violation of the Office's charter." And in the Heirlooms dossier, there was an operation called Mockingbird.
In 2007, new details regarding this operation were revealed in Hugh Wilford's memoir, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond. … In 2008, the same author published The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America; it gives some more details of the Mockingbird project. There is very little biographical information about Hugh Wilford. Born and studied in England, later moved to the USA, became a CIA officer. As of 2015, he was a professor of history at the University of California (California State University, Long Beach). Wilford paid particular attention to Operation Watergate (the installation of listening devices during the 1972 presidential campaign at the headquarters of the Democratic Party; this ended with the impeachment of President Richard Nixon in 1974). This operation revealed numerous violations by the US CIA of the provisions of the agency's charter. Operation Mockingbird also came into view as Congress investigated the role of the CIA in this scandal.
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More and more facts were accumulated every year. In 1975, a special working group was created in the upper house of Congress, called the Church Commission, named after Senator Frank Church (Democrat from Idaho). The commission was later transformed into a permanent Senate intelligence committee. In the commission's work, Operation Mockingbird was no longer on the periphery, but in the center of attention. In 1976, the commission, together with various committees, prepared the Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Government Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities. Pages 191-201 of this document detail the CIA's invasion of US and foreign media outlets to misinform the public. Here is a snippet from the report:
According to this report, misinformation of the world community has cost American taxpayers about $ 265 million a year (data from 1976).
There is no exact record of when Operation Mockingbird began. Some associate her start with Cord Meyer Jr., who came to the CIA in 1951 and immediately prepared the concept of the project. And when Allen Welsh Dulles became the head of the CIA in 1953, the practical implementation of the project began. Some attribute the start of the project to the late 1940s and associate it with the name of Frank Gardiner Wisner; in 1948 he was appointed head of the CIA's Special Projects Office, which was soon renamed the Office of Policy Coordination, which became one of the CIA's key covert operations units.
One of Wisner's earliest recruits for Operation Mockingbird was Philip Graham, who ran the Washington Post.
Since 1953, Mockingbird has been in control of 25 of the largest American newspapers and news agencies. The operation involved 3,000 CIA officers and agents. Mockingbird's main strongholds were ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International (UPI), Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps Howard, and others.
One of the methods of work was to neutralize the activities of those journalists who do not correspond to the ideological guidelines of the "Washington Regional Committee". To this end, they resorted to discrediting and ridiculing unwanted persons. Hence the name of the operation - "Mockingbird". Ridicule implied the introduction of new words into circulation, giving the old words new shades and meanings. One example is the linguistic cliche “conspiracy theology” launched by the CIA. The word comes from the English word conspiracy, in old dictionaries its first meaning is “secrecy”. To discourage journalists and researchers from studying the activities of secret societies, the world behind the scenes and everything that is in every possible way hidden from the public eye by the global elite, the first meaning of the word conspiracy was made “conspiracy”. Turned into a stigma that they still put on everyonewho is trying to convey to people the truth about the world behind the scenes.
After investigations and hearings in the US Congress, it was decided to ban the CIA from continuing Operation Mockingbird. In 1976, George W. Bush, appointed director of the CIA, announced a new policy:
However, he added that the CIA will continue to "welcome" voluntary cooperation with journalists. It is well known that voluntary consent to cooperate with the CIA is always influenced by such an argument as money.
I will cite a fragment from the work of the famous philosopher Alexander Zinoviev “West. The Phenomenon of Westernism ", in which he shows how the world mass media function, and recognizes the existence of an" invisible hand "that controls them:
Experts are convinced that the complete collapse of Operation Mockingbird did not happen. The spearhead of the Mockingbird project in its current version is aimed at Russia. The CIA's tradition of working with foreign journalists is alive and well.
Author: VALENTIN KATASONOV