Operation Mockingbird /CIA propaganda directed at Americans part 1
Chain of Command for operation Mockingbird:
White House: President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Information Activities:
William Harding Jackson, II (1953 and 1954)
Nelson Rockefeller ( ?? to 1953)
Member: C.D. Jackson (Early 1953 to ??)
Special Assistant for National Security Affairs:
William Harding Jackson, II (1956-1957)
Administration assistant for psychological warfare :
Charles Douglas ("C.D.") Jackson (Early 1953 to Jan. 1954)
During WW II he served in propaganda operations and served in Radio Free Europe from 1951 to 1952. From 1954 through 1959 he returned to Time, Life, and Fortune magazines where he had a lifelong association.
Chief of Propaganda operations: Desmond FitzGerald (?? to 1963 )
Edgar Applewhite (Nov. 1954 To ??)
CIA officer: Wistar M. Janney
oversaw the CIA funding of groups such as the National Student Association, the Congress of Cultural Freedom, Communications Workers of America, the American Newspaper Guild and the National Educational Association. … provided the money for publishing the journal, Encounter… worked closely with anti-Communist leaders of the trade union movement such as George Meany of the Congress for Industrial Organization and the American Federation of Labor.
Contract agents: Irving Brown (AFL union boss
Jay Lovestone (Ladies Garment Workers Union boss)
He hired for his union's New York regional director, John Dioguardi, member of the Lucchese mafia family. He was blamed by US Attorney Paul Williams for blinding a labor journalist Victor Riesel and subsequent murder of the man who threw acid in Riesel's face.
CIA-front organizations: USIA's Radio Liberty
Congress for Cultural Freedom
Chief of Operation Mockingbird: Frank G. Wisner (1947 to 1957)
Information warfare/propaganda directed at Americans
Allen W. Dulles (4 Jan. 1951 - 23 Aug 1951)
CIA officer: Richard M. Helms
CIA officer: Robert "Bob" T. Crowley
He stated that the CIA used PR firms like the Hill and Knowlton's (H&K).
American reporter and contract agent: Priscilla Johnson
American reporter and contract agent: Arline Mosby
Johnson and Mosby interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald when he defected to the Soviet Union in October, 1959. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=8045
David Atlee Phillips joined the CIA as a part-time agent in 1950 in Chile, where he owned and edited The South Pacific Mail, an English-language newspaper that circulated throughout South America and several islands in the Pacific.
CIA officer Robert "Bob" T. Crowley stated that the CIA used PR firms like the Hill and Knowlton's (H&K) "to put out press releases and make media contacts to further its positions. ...H&K employees at the small Washington office and elsewhere distributed this material through CIA assets working in the United Stated news media." "Hill and Knowlton's overseas offices were perfect cover for the ever-expanding CIA. Unlike other cover jobs, being a public relations specialist did not require technical training for CIA officers." News organizations ordered their employees to cooperate with the CIA, including the San Diego-based Copley News Service.
Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the CIA were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, The Miami Herald, and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune. By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with The New York Times, CBS, and Time Inc.
William Colby exclaimed at one point to the Church committee's investigators. "Let's go to the managements. They were witting" In all, about twenty-five news organizations (including those listed at the beginning of this article) provided cover for the Agency... http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=8574
In 1958 the book, Masters of Deceit was published. It was supposedly written by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and it became a massive bestseller. In truth, the book has been written by four for five Bureau agents assigned to the job and is finally polished up by Fern Stukenbroeker, an agent with a Ph. D. who works in Crime Records. FBI agents all over the country are required to promote the book and to place "reviews" -- written in advance at the Bureau -- with friendly newspapers. A controlling interest in Henry Holt, the publisher, is owned by Clint Murchison. Murchison virtually instructs the company to buy the book and expresses his desire that Hoover be given an especially favorable contract. On February 9, 1958 J. Edgar Hoover announces that he intends to give all of his royalties from his book, to the FBI Recreational Association. No one thinks to ask Hoover what this association is. In reality, it is a slush fund established for Hoover, Clyde Tolson and key FBI aides. It is also a money laundering operation so Hoover will not have to pay taxes on his book royalties. When the television series "The FBI" premieres in 1965 and runs for nine years, Hoover receives a $500 payment for each episode. Every cent goes into the FBI Recreational Association.
CIA chain of Command for Mockingbird under other Presidents:
CIA Director William Colby (1973 to or Nov. 1975? or 30 January 1976 ??)
Director of Central Intelligence Lt. Gen Vernon A.Walters ( two months in mid-1973)
James Schlesinger (early 1973 to 1973)
Richard M. Helms (June 1965 fired Feb. 1973)
Angleton's deputy: Richard Ober Had an office in the White House
Deputy Director of CIA: Lt. Gen. Vernon A. Walters (May 1972 to July 1976)
William Colby (Dec. 1971 to May 1972)
Gen Robert E. Cushman, Jr. (May 1969 to Dec. 1971)
ViceAdmiral Rufus L. Taylor (Oct. 1966 to Feb 1969)
Assistant Deputy Director: Lt. Gen. Daniel Graham (1973 to 1974)
Ray S. Cline (Jan. 17, 1966 to 1969)
Deputy Director for Operation:(DDO)
William E. Nelson (Aug. 24, 1973 to May 14, 1976)
William E. Colby (Mar. 2, 1973 to Aug. 24, 1973)
Thomas H. Karamessines (July 31, 1967 - Feb. 27, 1973)
Assistant Deputy Director: Robert T. Crowley (?? To ??)
Ted Shackley (May 1976 to Dec. 1977)
Thomas Clines ?? (Nov. 1975 to Dec. 1976?)
Cord Meyer (July 31, 1967 to 1973)
Ted Shackley ?? (1971 to early 1973 ??)
Thomas "Tom" H. Karamessines (Apr. 1962 to 31 July 1967)
Lt. Gen. Marshall Carter, USA (Feb. 1962 to Apr. 1962)
Richard C. Helms (Jan 1959 to Feb. 1962)
Karasemmines and his trusted associate George Joannides
Chief of Operation Mockingbird: Unknown
E. Howard Hunt (1962 to 1966?)
Edgar Applewhite (?? To ??)
Hunt told the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973 that he had fabricated the cables to show a link between President Kennedy and the assassination of Diem, a Catholic, to estrange Catholic voters from the Democratic Party. JFK's orders were in fact for Diem to be kidnapped and moved to a third country.
Chief of Operation Mockingbird: Robert "Bob" T. Crowley (1961 to
Crowley served in the US Army in the Pacific theater during World War II in military intelligence and Naval Intelligence. After the war, he remained in the United States Army Reserve. He was a long-time liaison with corporations. Corporations like ITT were often used by the CIA as fronts for moving large amounts of cash off their books. Crowley's real expertise within the CIA was learning and knowing the make-up of the Soviet KGB. Crowley was a close friend of James Jesus Angleton.
Crowley stated that the CIA used PR firms like the Hill and Knowlton's (H&K) "to put out press releases and make media contacts to further its positions. ...H&K employees at the small Washington office and elsewhere distributed this material through CIA assets working in the United Stated news media." "Hill and Knowlton's overseas offices were perfect cover for the ever-expanding CIA. Unlike other cover jobs, being a public relations specialist did not require technical training for CIA officers." News organizations ordered their employees to cooperate with the CIA, including the San Diego-based Copley News Service.
American reporter and contract agent: Priscilla L. Johnson
In 1953 Johnson went to work for Senator John F. Kennedy.
On 6th May, 1958, the Chief of CI/OA submitted a request for operational approval on Johnson. The operation for which she was being considered is still classified.
American reporter and contract agent: Arline Mosby
Johnson and Mosby interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald when he defected to the Soviet Union in October, 1959. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=8045
A journalist possibly undercover CIA officer agent Priscilla Johnson As a student she was a member of the United World Federalists another front run by Meyer.
CIA friendly reporters and editors who covered Cuba in the mid-1970s
Hal Hendrix (AM/CARBON-1) Miami News in 1960s
And was the journalist for Latin America for the Scripps-Howard News Service in 1963.
Al Burt probably (AM/CARBON-2) was probably, Bohning's predecessor as Latin America editor at the Miami Herald.
Don Bohning (AMCARBON-3) (?? 1967 to ??) Latin America editors at the Miami Herald: he was a CIA contract agent/operative.
In 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 Espionage and Counter-intelligence 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
Later that year Wisner established operation Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic and foreign media. . The CIA wanted these journalists not only to relay any sensitive information they discovered- to spy for them, 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.
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.
According to Alex Constantine (Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA), in the 1950s, "some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts". Wisner was also able to restrict newspapers from reporting about certain events. For example, the CIA plots to overthrow the governments of Iran (Operation Ajax) and Guatemala (Operation PB-SUCCESS).
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
· United Press International
· Reuters
· 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.
After Philip's suicide in 1963, Katharine Graham took over the Post, she expanded her newspaper's relationship with the CIA. In a 1988 speech before CIA officials at Langley, Virginia, she stated: "We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things that the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows." This quote has since become a classic among CIA critics for its belittlement of democracy and its admission that there is a political agenda behind the Post's headlines.
Ben Bradlee was the Post's managing editor during most of the Cold War. He 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. (9) Most Americans incorrectly believe that Bradlee personifies the liberal slant of the Post, given his role in publishing the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate investigations. But neither of these two incidents are what they seem. The Post merely published the Pentagon Papers after The New York Times already had, because it wanted to appear competitive. As for Watergate, we'll examine the CIA's reasons for wanting to bring down Nixon in a moment. Someone once asked Bradlee: "Does it irk you when The Washington Post is made out to be a bastion of slanted liberal thinkers instead of champion journalists just because of Watergate?" Bradlee responded: "Damn right it does!"
It would be impossible to elaborate in this short space even the most important examples of the CIA/media alliance. Sig Mickelson was a CIA asset the entire time he was president of CBS News from 1954 to 1961. Later he went on to become president of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, two major outlets of CIA propaganda.
The CIA also secretly bought or created its own media companies. It owned 40 percent of the Rome Daily American at a time when communists were threatening to win the Italian elections. Worse, the CIA has bought many domestic media companies. A prime example is Capital Cities, created in 1954 by CIA businessman William Casey (who would later become Reagan's CIA director). Another founder was Lowell Thomas, a close friend and business contact with CIA Director Allen Dulles. Another founder was CIA businessman Thomas Dewey. By 1985, Capital Cities had grown so powerful that it was able to buy an entire TV network: ABC.
In 1996, The San Jose Mercury News published an investigative report suggesting that the CIA had sold crack in Los Angeles to fund the Contra war in Central America. A month later, three of the CIA's most important media allies — The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times — immediately leveled their guns at the Mercury report and blasted away in an attempt to discredit it. Who wrote the Post article? Walter Pincus, longtime CIA journalist. The dangers here are obvious. http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-overclass.html
Mockingbird was very active during the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala during Operation PBSUCCESS (1953) People like Henry Luce, were able to censor stories that appeared too sympathetic towards the plight of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Allen W. Dulles was even able to keep left-wing journalists from traveling to Guatemala, including Sydney Gruson of the New York Times. [14]
In 1964, Random House published Invisible Government by David Wise and Thomas Ross. The book exposed the role the CIA was playing in foreign policy. This included the CIA coups in Guatemala (Operation PB-SUCCESS) and Iran (Operation Ajax) and the Bay of Pigs operation. It also revealed the CIA's attempts to overthrow President Sukarno in Indonesia and the covert operations taking place in Laos and Vietnam. The CIA considered buying up the entire printing of Invisible Government but this idea was rejected when Random House pointed out that if this happened they would have to print a second edition. John McCone the new director of the CIA, also attempted to stop Edward Yates from making a documentary on the CIA for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). This attempt at censorship failed and NBC went ahead and broadcast this critical documentary.
In June, 1965, Desmond Fitzgerald (CIA agent) was appointed as head of the Directorate for Plans. He now took charge of Mockingbird.
CIA began a mission in the late 1940s to recruit American journalists on a wide scale, a mission it dubbed Operation MOCKINGBIRD
Sources: (George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Chapter –XII)
The Origins of the Overclass by Steve Kangas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
http://home.att.net/~Resurgence/L-overclass.html
http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/subverting_the_media.htm
http://www.tarpley.net/bush12.htm
The CIA didsometimes try to use media assets to counter conspiracy theories. A dispatch of April 1, 1967 about using "propaganda assets" and "liaison and friendly elite contacts" to counter conspiracy claims was sent addressed to "Chiefs, Certain Stations and Bases." …to counter as anti-U.S. attacks and sell the idea "that there is no hard evidence of any such conspiracy." Here the Agency considers playing the "Communist card" — blaming Communists and allied leftists for attempts to blame it for the assassination. The CIA was attacking conspiracy theorists whose books had been issued in 1966 or earlier. Of course the Garrison investigation was moving alone at this time. http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/cia_garrison.htm
Pres. George W Bush Jr. tried to censor a State Department history by recalling every single truthful State Dept. history book from hundreds of libraries. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-68, Volume 26, covers Indonesia, Malaysia-Singapore, and the Philippines.
(Did Government Direct Book Recall? Reported by Susan DiMattia & Norman Oder http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA152783.html September 1, 2001)
CIA made the decision to take back from libraries a history book revealing the involvement of the United States in the massive killing of Indonesian communists in the 1960s. They decided to recall Volume 26, one in a series of history books called "Foreign Relations of the United States." The volume in question covers Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines and was recently published by the Government Printing Office. The book exposes the U.S. involvement in a 1965 Indonesian Army's anti-Communist campaign that led to the killing of an estimated 1 million people. According to Peter Dale Scott, the CIA's decision is directly linked to the Bush administration's new policy toward Indonesia.
"Very soon we're going to see the Bush administration resume aid to the Indonesian Army and to a group called Kopassus," said Scott in a telephone interview. Kopassus, he said is the Indonesian Army's Special Force and the main architect of the 1965 massacres. "What worries them is that it's a volume that details that aid to Kopassus in 1965."
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/d270.html)
CIA officer Haviland Smith, who was stationed in Beirut during the Six-Day War, says he was told that the transcripts were "deep-sixed," because the U.S. government did not want to embarrass Israel for their , June 8, 1967 attacked the USS Liberty
Equally telling is the fact that the National Security Agency destroyed voice tapes seen by many intelligence analysts, showing that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing.
Capt. Ward Boston, who was senior legal counsel to the Navy's original 1967 review of the attack. The Navy cover up by this review board called the Israeli air force attack was a case of "mistaken identity" despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In 2002, retired Capt. Boston wrote in a sworn statement that he stayed silent for years. In December 2002, following the publication of the book entitled, The Liberty Incident by A. Jay Cristol, Capt. Boston felt compelled to "share the truth", and stated, "This book continued the cover-up". Cristol wrote that the attack was unintentional. [2] [3]
The writer of this disinformation, Cristol, is a retired Captain from the U.S. Navy Reserve and a federal judge in Southern Florida. When Cristol lectured on his book at the Navy Yard in Washington on Dec. 17, 2002 six officials from the Israeli embassy were there to support him. [3]
The rest of this story:
The Johnson administration had given the green light for Israel to attack Egypt and only Egypt.
It was understood that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) would have to respond to Jordanian intervention if it happened, but on no account was Israel to seek to widen the war for the purpose of taking Jordanian or Syrian territory. The USS Liberty was on patrol, listening, because some in the Johnson administration perhaps Defense Secretary McNamara especially did not trust the Israelis to keep their word with regard to the scope of the war.
Through the CIA the Johnson administration was aware of the IDF's secret agreement with the Syrian regime. So it, the Johnson administration, was reasonably confident that the Syrians would not seek to widen the war by engaging the Israelis in any serious way. The name of the U.S. counter-intelligence game was therefore preventing Israel from attacking Syria.
When Israel went to war with Egypt, it would be assigning the bulk of its armor to the Egyptian front. The point was if Israel then decided to widen the war to grab the West Bank and Syrian territory, it would have to re-deploy, very quickly, from the Egyptian to the Jordanian and Syrian fronts. The orders for such redeployment would be given by wireless? from Dayan's Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv to the commanders in the field and they, naturally, would talk to each other. If there was such radio chatter, the Liberty would pick it up and pass it urgently to the NSA in Washington. President Johnston would then demand that the Israelis abort their intention to grab all of the West Bank and attack Syria. So long as the Liberty was on station and functioning, the U.S. would have some control of Israel.
From Dayan's perspective before he could have a completely free hand to take all of the West Bank and order an invasion of Syria for the purpose of grabbing the Golan Heights, the Liberty had to be put out of business.
Less than 15 minutes after the start of the Israeli attack, Captain Joseph Tully launched planes from the American aircraft carrier USS Saratoga to go to the aid of the Liberty. Johnson ordered the planes to be recalled. There was to be no engagement with the Israelis, even if that meant letting Americans die.
http://www.alanhart.net/the-liberty-affair-and-the-problem-with-the-truth-of-history/
The GI Rebellion during the Vietnam War – the poor will no long fight the rich man's wars
You didn't hear much about this in the US corporate media at that time.
* In early 1969 the 196th Light Infantry Brigade publicly sat down on the battlefield and refused orders to move out.
* Later that year a rifle company from the 1st Air Cay refused on CBS-TV to advance down a dangerous trail.
* Troops refused to cross the border into Cambodia during the invasion of May, 1970.
* During the Laos invasion, February 1971, Troop B of the 1st Cav refused to recapture their captain's command vehicle containing secret operation orders.
* Six men of the Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Cav were supported by 66 of their brothers at Firebase Pace when they refused to go on patrol October 9. In the next three days, two other units refused orders in solidarity with Bravo Company.
These are only the incidents that have broken through the tight shield of press censorship.
====================================================
FAIR USE NOTICE FAIR USE NOTICE. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
|
