Operation Mockingbird

Peter Phillips, Lew Brown, and Bridget Thornton, US Electromagnetic Weapons and Human Rights, Sonoma State University, Project Censored Media Freedom Foundation, 2006. <a href="http://globalresearch.ca/articles/ElectromagWeapons.pdf">http://globalresearch.ca/articles/ElectromagWeapons.pdf</a>

Under the first civilian CIA Director, Allen Welsh Dulles, the Company began to push forward with

its agenda of manufacturing consent from the American people for a new state of perpetual war

industrialization. Dulles was a well-connected individual, a successful spy for the OSS in

Switzerland during the war, related to three secretaries of state, and the chief advisor to Dewey

when he ran for President in 1948. Dulles had access to the highest echelons of policy making and his

influence was global in scope, counting among his close friends Henry Luce, publisher of

Newsweek. Relying heavily upon established circles of contacts within the nation’s media elites,

Dulles recruited key members of the media to work directly for the CIA under Operation Mockingbird.

Mockingbird was a psychological information campaign against the American people. In a campaign

that would lead to acceptance of blanket secrecy for “national security”, “the Red Scare” became

the excuse for spending vast sums of money on weapon systems and an increase in covert operations

both in foreign countries and within the United States. In the 1950s and 1960s, movies, news

articles, books, radio and television programs were carefully laced with anti- communist messages

and images designed to produce an acceptance of the policies being promoted by the defense elite’s

propaganda machine 29

“Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency 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.”30

One of the engineers of this deception was a former head of the stay-behind network, Edward W.

Barrett, director of the Interdepartmental Psychological Strategy Board (IPSB) and, not

coincidentally an editor at Newsweek. Barrett was seen as being very effective in his efforts to

manipulate public opinion. At the same time, CPD was a “non-political group of citizens of the

western coast” and launched a media campaign in favor of the urgent reinforcement of the national

defense. Among the organizers of the Committee were Frank Altschul (Director of the Council for

Foreign Relations), William Donovan (former head of the OSS during WWII) and General Dwight D.

Eisenhower 31

coincidentally an editor at Newsweek. Barrett was seen as being very effective in his efforts to

manipulate public opinion. At the same time, CPD was a “non-political group of citizens of the

western coast” and launched a media campaign in favor of the urgent reinforcement of the national

defense. Among the organizers of the Committee were Frank Altschul (Director of the Council for

Foreign Relations), William Donovan (former head of the OSS during WWII) and General Dwight

D. Eisenhower.31

All of this activity was more than enough to stoke the fears of the public and encourage policy

makers to accept the Cold War view of the world. This allowed Truman to convince Congress to

approve a tripled military budget that provided funding for secret research and development and turn

a blind eye (in the name of National Security) to “black operations” programs authorized under the

new Cold War rubric of “containment” and aimed at undermining otherwise peaceful nations and

fomenting war, torture and assassination in countries as diverse as Iran, Guatemala and Indochina.32

Post-war developments in Europe, especially the British withdrawal from Greece, led Truman to

decide it was necessary to have a permanent American presence in the old continent to counteract

the Communist influence.33 General George C. Marshall, Secretary of State, designed a vast plan that

mixed economic assistance and secret actions aimed at establishing democracies and making sure

that voters in foreign countries made “the right choice.” National Security Council directive NSC

10/2, essentially written by Kennan, made official the creation of an anti-Communist interference

network.34

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“The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.”

Senator Frank Church argued that misinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year.

See more at: http://yournewswire.com/cia-media-control-program-operation-mockingbird/#sthash.Zc1FVsYd.dpuf</div>

Operation Mockingbird

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