The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA -Operation Mockingbird

Operation MOCKINGBIRD: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA


http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MOCK/mockingbird.html

The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA


"You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month." - CIA operative discussing with Philip Graham, editor Washington Post, on the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories. "Katherine The Great," by Deborah Davis (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991)

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Activists curious about the workings of MOCKINGBIRD have since been appalled to find in FOIA documents that agents boasting in CIA office memos of their pride in having placed "important assets" inside every major news publication in the country. It was not until 1982 that the Agency openly admitted that reporters on the CIA payroll have acted as case officers to agents in the field.


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Former Washington Post publisher Philip Graham "believing that the function of the press was more often than not to mobilize consent for the policies of the government, was one of the architects of what became a widespread practice: the use and manipulation of journalists by the CIA" (*81). This scandal was known by its code name Operation MOCKINGBIRD. Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein cites a former CIA deputy director as saying, "It was widely known that Phil Graham was someone you could get help from" (*82). More recently the Post provided cover for CIA personality Joseph Fernandez by "refusing to print his name for over a year up until the day his indictment was announced ...for crimes committed in his official capacity as CIA station chief in Costa Rica" (*83).

more..........


Distinguished investigative journalist Morton Mintz, a 29-year veteran of the Washington Post, now chairs the Fund for Investigative
Journalism. In the December issue of The Progressive, Mintz wrote "A
Reporter Looks Back in Anger -- Why the Media Cover Up Corporate
Crime". Therein he discussed the difficulties in convincing editors to
accept important news stories. He illustrated the article with his own
experiences at the Post, where he says he was known as "the biggest
pain in the ass in the office" (*93).

Would Harwood argue that grief endured by journalists at the hands of editors is a matter of random coincidence?

And that such policy as Mintz described is made independently by
editors without influence from fellow editors or from management?
Would Harwood have us believe that at the countless office "meetings"
in which news people are ever in attendance, there is no discussion of
which stories will run and which ones will find inadequate space? That
there is no advanced planning for stories or that there are no
cooperative efforts among the staff? Or that in the face of our
news-media "grayout" of presidential candidate Larry Agran, (*94) a
Post journalist would be free to give news space to candidate Agran
equal to that the Post lavishes on candidate Clinton? Let's face it:
these possibilities are about as likely as Barbara Bush entertaining
guests at a soup kitchen.


more..............

Journalism and the CIA: The Mighty Wurlitzer
Journalists at Work: Who's Watching the Watchdogs?
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8425/CIAPRESS.HTM

also lists journalist that have received Company cash via the Council on Foreign Relations--amazing who's who