Talk:Operation Mockingbird

VfD Archived Debate

Article listed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion Apr 26 to May 3 2004, consensus was to keep. Discussion:

No evidence this thing ever happened. --[[PaulinSaudi 02:50, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)]]

• A google search for Operation Mockingbird takes one deep into the echo chamber of conspiracy theory. I think ideally this should be kept and NPOVed, but I can't find any skeptical treatment, or any confirmation from a reliable source. The original claims seem to stem from a guy named Alex Constantine, who has written several books and an essay that's been widely reprinted on the internet. --Isomorphic 07:01, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
• "Echo Chamber" is exactly the right imagery. I only heard about this as someone on the Straight Dope asked about it. This story has a life of its own, but I know of no basis in fact. The CIA was established in 1948. Does anyone think that one of their earliest programs (under Harry Truman no less) was to influence American newspapers? Exceptional claims demand exceptional proof. I would like to see it.

--[[PaulinSaudi 11:54, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)]]

• It's true that a distressing number of articles about Operation Mockingbird (OM) also mention alien abductions and such. But despite this, the op may well have been legitimate. (It's verifiable that the CIA does have, and did have, at least some journalists on its payroll.) So did OM exist? Remember that we're deciding the legitimacy of the article itself (which, please note, does not mention Harry Truman}. Here's the evidence I can find:

1. The Alex Constantine Article (ACA) is a meandering, paranoid, POV text. It alleges a lot of CIA manipulation of the media, which is outside the scope of this specific decision about OM. All of the info it gives on OM, it gets from two sources:
   1. The book "Katherine the Great" by Deborah Davis, a former Village Voice reporter. I haven't read it. Davis says that by the 1950s, OM had arrangements with "respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all, according to a former CIA analyst." Aparently, Davis found this out through researching FOIA requests. Has anyone here read the book?
   2. John Loftus, a former attorney for the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations. According to ACA, John Loftus makes some sensational claims. "In 1952, at MCA, Actors' Guild president Ronald Reagan - a screen idol recruited by MOCKINGBIRD's Crusade for Freedom to raise funds for the resettlement of Nazis in the U.S., according to Loftus - signed a secret waiver of the conflict-of-interest rule with the mob-controlled studio, in effect granting it a labor monopoly on early television programming. In exchange, MCA made Reagan a part owner." This doesn't sound even remotely credible.
2. Google doesn't find any Straight Dope articles or Straight Dope Message Board posts on Operation Mockingbird.
3. There's a separate essay by Steve Kangas that claims "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." He names Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham as the designers. He cites as his sources the above-mentioned book by Deborah Davis, and a web site that no longer exists.
   • Kangas also claims that "at least 400 journalists would eventually join the CIA payroll, according to the CIA's testimony before a stunned Church Committee in 1975." This doesn't refer to OM specifically, but if true it at least shows there must have been a similar widespread operation in the 60s and 70s. That's all I can find. Does anyone else have any information about it? Quadell 14:20, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
     • This may have come from Carl Bernstein's Oct 1977 piece in Rolling Stone. --Kwantus 03:50, 2004 Dec 16 (UTC)

• Keep. The amount that can be said about it just above proves it's encyclopedic. Even if there never was such a thing as Operation Mockingbird, clearly there's a sufficient body of belief about it to make documenting THAT worthwhile. --—Morven 21:01, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • I agree that we should have an article on this, except that I don't know how we can make an NPOV article without a lot of research. If it's an unsubstantiated claim, that should be made clear in the article – but how can we call it unsubstantiated if we haven't read the sources of the claim, or seen any critical evaluation of them? If there's substantiation, it should be cited, but we can't find any. The origin of the name "Operation Mockingbird" isn't even clear from what I found. --Isomorphic 21:11, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
• Keep if can be made NPOV. --RickK 23:12, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • OK. I added a bunch of modifiers and weasel words. No matter how many conditionals I add, I still think we ought to delete it. [[PaulinSaudi 02:21, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)]]
• Keep. I just overhauled the article to make it NPOV. --Quadell 14:25, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. The statements in the article are not altogether implausible, and it appears that it has a following which makes the article worthwhile.

End discussion

Congressional investigations

After the Watergate scandal in 1972–1974, the U.S. Congress became concerned over possible presidential abuse of the CIA. This concern reached its height when reporter Seymour Hersh published an exposé of CIA domestic surveillance in 1975. Congress authorized a series of Congressional investigations into Agency activities from 1975 to 1976. A wide range of CIA operations were examined in these investigations, including CIA ties with journalists and numerous private voluntary organizations.

The most extensive discussion of CIA relations with news media from these investigations is in the Church Committee's final report, published in April 1976. The report covered CIA ties with both foreign and domestic news media.

For foreign news media, the report concluded that:

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.

For U.S.-based media, the report states:

Approximately 50 of the [Agency] assets are individual American journalists or employees of U.S. media organizations. Of these, fewer than half are "accredited" by U.S. media organizations ... The remaining individuals are non-accredited freelance contributors and media representatives abroad ... More than a dozen United States news organizations and commercial publishing houses formerly provided cover for CIA agents abroad. A few of these organizations were unaware that they provided this cover.

References

Bizarre inclusion of project mockingbird

They are associated by name only? Politically motivated inclusion? 72.53.215.109 (talk) 16:15, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

It is only mentioned because they get conflated. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 17:05, 8 October 2023 (UTC)