Operation Mockingbird: New York Times confesses to role in subverting First Amendment

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2013/1978

Columns
Bob Fitrakis

July 17, 2013

For the NSA to succeed in spying on Americans and violating the Constitution without mass demonstrations you must first understand how the security industrial complex compromised the mass media. In the Monday, July 14, 2013 New York Times, we get a rare glimpse into that historical tragedy fittingly on its obituary page.

The death notice, “Austin Goodrich, 87, Spy Posing as Reporter,” detailed seldom seen facts about the legendary “Operation Mockingbird.” The aptly named “Mockingbird” was a covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) campaign to create a mass media echo chamber during the Cold War. The Times' lead is telling: “In the 1950s and ‘60s, Austin Goodrich was far from the only journalist doubling as a secret agent for the United States.”

Indeed. Alex Constantine, in his Mockingbird: The Subversion of the Free Press by the CIA, estimates “some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts.”