It's not as if this is hidden information, it's all over the place, common knowledge to so many long, LONG ago. Example:
Operation Mockingbird
Operation Mockingbird was a secret Central Intelligence Agency campaign to influence foreign media beginning in the 1950s.
The activities, extent and even the existence of the CIA project remain in dispute: the operation was first called Mockingbird in Deborah Davis' 1979 book, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and her Washington Post Empire. Davis' book, detailing how the media had been recruited and infiltrated by the CIA for propaganda purposes, was controversial and not always accurate.<1> More evidence of Mockingbird's existence emerged in the 2007 memoir American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond, by convicted Watergate "plumber" E. Howard Hunt and The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America by Hugh Wilford (2008).<2>
~snip~
HistoryIn 1948, Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects (OSP). Soon afterwards OSP was renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the covert action branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."<3>
Later that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence foreign media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham from The Washington Post to run the project within the industry. According to Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great; "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of The New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."<4> Wisner referred to this apparatus as a "Mighty Wurlitzer", referencing the theater organ capable of controlling diverse pipes, instruments, and sound effects from a central console.<5>
In 1951, Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord Meyer to join the CIA. However, there is evidence that he was recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the liberal internationalist organizations he had been a member of in the later 1940s.<6> According to Deborah Davis, Meyer became Mockingbird's "principal operative".<7>
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird~~~~~Select Committee into Intelligence Activities
In 1975, Frank Church became the chairman of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. This committee investigated alleged abuses of power by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Intelligence.
~snip~
Frank Church showed that it was CIA policy to use clandestine handling of journalists and authors to get information published initially in the foreign media in order to get it disseminated in the United States. Church quotes from one document written by the Chief of the Covert Action Staff on how this process worked (page 193). For example, he writes: “Get books published or distributed abroad without revealing any U.S. influence, by covertly subsidizing foreign publicans or booksellers.” Later in the document he writes: “Get books published for operational reasons, regardless of commercial viability”. Church goes onto report that “over a thousand books were produced, subsidized or sponsored by the CIA before the end of 1967”. All these books eventually found their way into the American market-place. Either in their original form (Church gives the example of the Penkovskiy Papers) or repackaged as articles for American newspapers and magazines.
In another document published in 1961 the Chief of the Agency’s propaganda unit wrote: “The advantage of our direct contact with the author is that we can acquaint him in great detail with our intentions; that we can provide him with whatever material we want him to include and that we can check the manuscript at every stage… (the Agency) must make sure the actual manuscript will correspond with our operational and propagandistic intention.”
Church quotes Thomas H. Karamessines as saying: “If you plant an article in some paper overseas, and it is a hard-hitting article, or a revelation, there is no way of guaranteeing that it is not going to be picked up and published by the Associated Press in this country” (page 198).
By analyzing CIA documents Frank Church was able to identify over 50 U.S. journalists who were employed directly by the Agency. He was aware that there were a lot more who enjoyed a very close relationship with the CIA who were “being paid regularly for their services, to those who receive only occasional gifts and reimbursements from the CIA” (page 195).
More:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKintelligence.htm~~~~~Originally published in Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977.
How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up
THE CIA AND THE MEDIA
BY CARL BERNSTEIN
~snip~
The CIA’s use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress. The general outlines of what happened are indisputable; the specifics are harder to come by. CIA sources hint that a particular journalist was trafficking all over Eastern Europe for the Agency; the journalist says no, he just had lunch with the station chief. CIA sources say flatly that a well‑known ABC correspondent worked for the Agency through 1973; they refuse to identify him. A high‑level CIA official with a prodigious memory says that the New York Times provided cover for about ten CIA operatives between 1950 and 1966; he does not know who they were, or who in the newspaper’s management made the arrangements.
The Agency’s special relationships with the so‑called “majors” in publishing and broadcasting enabled the CIA to post some of its most valuable operatives abroad without exposure for more than two decades. In most instances, Agency files show, officials at the highest levels of the CIA usually director or deputy director) dealt personally with a single designated individual in the top management of the cooperating news organization. The aid furnished often took two forms: providing jobs and credentials “journalistic cover” in Agency parlance) for CIA operatives about to be posted in foreign capitals; and lending the Agency the undercover services of reporters already on staff, including some of the best‑known correspondents in the business.
In the field, journalists were used to help recruit and handle foreigners as agents; to acquire and evaluate information, and to plant false information with officials of foreign governments. Many signed secrecy agreements, pledging never to divulge anything about their dealings with the Agency; some signed employment contracts., some were assigned case officers and treated with. unusual deference. Others had less structured relationships with the Agency, even though they performed similar tasks: they were briefed by CIA personnel before trips abroad, debriefed afterward, and used as intermediaries with foreign agents. Appropriately, the CIA uses the term “reporting” to describe much of what cooperating journalists did for the Agency. “We would ask them, ‘Will you do us a favor?’”.said a senior CIA official. “‘We understand you’re going to be in Yugoslavia. Have they paved all the streets? Where did you see planes? Were there any signs of military presence? How many Soviets did you see? If you happen to meet a Soviet, get his name and spell it right .... Can you set up a meeting for is? Or relay a message?’” Many CIA officials regarded these helpful journalists as operatives; the journalists tended to see themselves as trusted friends of the Agency who performed occasional favors—usually without pay—in the national interest.
~snip~
In 1964 and 1965, Salant served on a super-secret CIA task force which explored methods of beaming American propaganda broadcasts to the People's Republic of China. The other members of the four‑man study team were Zbigniew Brzezinski, then a professor at Columbia University; William Griffith, then professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology., and John Haves, then vice‑president of the Washington Post Company for radio‑TV5. The principal government officials associated with the project were Cord Meyer of the CIA; McGeorge Bundy, then special assistant to the president for national security; Leonard Marks, then director of the USIA; and Bill Moyers, then special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson and now a CBS correspondent.
More:
http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/cia_press.html~~~~~Operation Mockingbird - Government Control of Mainstream Media
Operation Mockingbird
~snip~
Operation Mockingbird, as it was called, was exposed in 1975 during the Church Committee investigation, which then published its findings the following year. The full name of the committee which investigated and uncovered such activities was called, “The United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities” which was chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-ID).
Through this investigation it became clear that such a program was developed in the 1950s for the purpose of persuading American and foreign media, as well as to use the media as gate-keepers to prevent certain information from being published and reaching the masses.
In 1948 an espionage and counter-intelligence branch within the CIA was created for the purpose of “propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.” Later that year Operation Mockingbird was established to influence the domestic and foreign media. Philip Graham, the owner of The Washington Post, was first recruited to run the project within the industry and develop a network of assets.
After 1953, the network had influence over twenty-five newspapers and wire agencies and was overseen by Allen Dulles, who was director of the CIA. The Mockingbird program also involved major television broadcasters, including William Paley, the CEO of CBS broadcasting.
More:
http://www.markdice.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=113:operation-mockingbird-government-control-of-mainstream-media&catid=66:articles-by-mark-dice&Itemid=89~~~~~A great thread by NNN0LHI (1000+ posts) Sat Dec-01-07 03:24 AM
Original message
Here is when the CIA took control of our media
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2382678~~~~~kpete (1000+ posts) Wed Feb-13-08 08:11 AM
Original message
"The black arts of propaganda" - How the spooks took over the news (
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2856571~~~~~Church Committee information concerning CIA and U.S. media:
~snip~
The Media
Journalism is a perfect cover for CIA agents. People talk freely to journalists, and few think suspiciously of a journalist aggressively searching for information. Journalists also have power, influence and clout. Not surprisingly, the CIA began a mission in the late 1940s to recruit American journalists on a wide scale, a mission it dubbed Operation MOCKINGBIRD. The agency wanted these journalists not only to relay any sensitive information they discovered, but also to write anti-communist, pro-capitalist propaganda when needed.
The instigators of MOCKINGBIRD were Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham. Graham was the husband of Katherine Graham, today’s publisher of the Washington Post. In fact, it was the Post’s ties to the CIA that allowed it to grow so quickly after the war, both in readership and influence. (8)
MOCKINGBIRD was extraordinarily successful. In no time, the agency had recruited at least 25 media organizations to disseminate CIA propaganda. At least 400 journalists would eventually join the CIA payroll, according to the CIA’s testimony before a stunned Church Committee in 1975. (The committee felt the true number was considerably higher.) The names of those recruited reads like a Who's Who of journalism:
- Philip and Katharine Graham (Publishers, Washington Post)
- William Paley (President, CBS)
- Henry Luce (Publisher, Time and Life magazine)
- Arthur Hays Sulzberger (Publisher, N.Y. Times)
- Jerry O'Leary (Washington Star)
- Hal Hendrix (Pulitzer Prize winner, Miami News)
- Barry Bingham Sr., (Louisville Courier-Journal)
- James Copley (Copley News Services)
- Joseph Harrison (Editor, Christian Science Monitor)
- C.D. Jackson (Fortune)
- Walter Pincus (Reporter, Washington Post)
- ABC
- NBC
- Associated Press
- Hearst Newspapers
- Scripps-Howard
- Newsweek magazine
- Mutual Broadcasting System
- Miami Herald
- Old Saturday Evening Post
- New York Herald-Tribune
Perhaps no newspaper is more important to the CIA than the Washington Post, one of the nation’s most right-wing dailies. Its location in the nation’s capitol enables the paper to maintain valuable personal contacts with leading intelligence, political and business figures. Unlike other newspapers, the Post operates its own bureaus around the world, rather than relying on AP wire services. Owner Philip Graham was a military intelligence officer in World War II, and later became close friends with CIA figures like Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, Desmond FitzGerald and Richard Helms. He inherited the Post by marrying Katherine Graham, whose father owned it.
More:
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-overclass.html~~~~~There is a MOUNTAIN of information available on this subject for those who bother to look for it.
On edit, adding a snippet concerning the former publisher of the Washington Pssst, Phil Graham:
It is claimed that Graham had close links with the Central Intelligence Agency. He had a close relationship with Tracy Barnes and Frank Wisner. it has been claimed that Graham played an important role in Operation MB, the CIA program to infiltrate domestic American media. According to Katherine Graham, her husband worked overtime at the Post during the Bay of Pigs operation to protect the reputations of his friends who had organized the ill-fated venture.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKgrahamP.htm
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