1940s-present, International: "Mockingbird," Buying the Media

By Steve Kangas

 In the late 1940s, the CIA began a mission called Operation Mockingbird  to recruit American journalists.  The CIA wanted them to relay sensitive information and to write anti-communist, pro-capitalist propaganda.

      Mockingbird was extraordinarily successful.  The CIA recruited at least 25 media organizations to disseminate propaganda.  At least 400 journalists joined the CIA payroll, according to the CIA's testimony before a stunned Church Committee in 1975, which felt the true number was considerably higher.

      Operation Mockingbird was instigated the CIA's Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles and Richard Helms.  Perhaps no newspaper is more important to the CIA than the Washington Post.  It maintains valuable contacts with leading intelligence, political and business figures, and operates bureaus around the world.  The Post's owner, Philip Graham, was a WWII military intelligence officer. 

      Ben Bradlee, the Post's managing editor during most of the Cold War, worked in the U.S. Paris embassy from 1951 to 1953, where he followed orders by the CIA station chief to place propaganda in the European press. 

      Sig Mickelson, a CIA asset while he was president of CBS News between 1954 and 1961, later became president of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, two major outlets of CIA propaganda.

      The CIA also bought and created its own media companies.  It own-ed 40% of the Rome Daily American when communists threatened to win the Italian elections.  The CIA also bought many U.S. media companies.  Capital Cities was co-founded in 1954 by CIA businessman William Casey (Reagan's CIA director), Lowell Thomas, a close friend and business contact of CIA Director Allen Dulles, and CIA businessman Thomas Dewey.  In 1985, Capital Cities bought ABC TV.

A Few CIA Media Recruits:

•  Philip and Katharine Graham (Publishers, Washington Post)

• William Paley (President, CBS)

• Henry Luce (Publisher, Time & Life)

• Arthur Sulzberger (Publisher, New York Times)

• Jerry O'Leary (Washington Star)

• Hal Hendrix (Pulitzer Prize winner, Miami News)

• Barry Bingham Sr. (Louisville Courier-Journal)

• James Copley (Copley News Service)

• Joseph Harrison (Editor, Christian Science Monitor)

• C.D. Jackson (Fortune)

• Walter Pincus (reporter, Washington Post)

• ABC

• NBC

• Associated Press

• United Press International

• Reuters

• Hearst Newspapers

• Scripps-Howard

• Newsweek magazine

• Mutual Broadcasting System

• Miami Herald

• Old Saturday Evening Post New

• York Herald-Tribune

 Source: "The Origins of the Overclass" home.att.net/~Resurgence/L-overclass.html

Frank Wisner  (1909-1965) Wall Street lawyer

 "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles, plus stringers, 400 to 600 in all" a former CIA analyst, told Washington Post  publisher, Philip Graham.

•  station director for the Office of Strategic Services in Turkey and then Romania (1944)

•  As the first director, Office of Policy Coordination (CIA's covert action arm) he worked with Reinhold Gehlen to plan armed insurgencies in eastern Europe

•  was involved in rigging the Italian elections (1948)

•  was the main instigator, Operation Mockingbird (late 1940s)

•  created Radio Free Europe as a CIA propaganda outlet (1949)

•  as the CIA's Deputy Director for Plans (1951-1959) he worked closely with the Agency's LSD experimenter, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb; was involved in overthrowing the elected government of Guatemala (1954), used radio propaganda to spark a revolt in Hungary (1956) and led the attempted overthrow of the Indonesian government (1958).

•  was the CIA's  station chief in London, U.K.

•  was fired by the CIA (1962) and committed suicide (1965)

 Sources:

home.att.net/~Resurgence/L-overclass.html

www.webcom.com/ctka/pr700-ang.html

members.nbci.com/1spy/Wisner.html

Quotations:

 "You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month" a CIA operative (cited in Katherine the Great, 1991, by Deborah Davis).

 "In the 1950s, outlays for global propaganda climbed to a full third of the CIA's covert operations budget.  Some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts.  The cost of disinforming the world cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year by 1978, a budget larger than the combined expenditures of Reuters, UPI and AP." (from "Who Controls the Media?" by Alex Constantine.)

 "The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media." (former CIA Director William Colby.)