Operation Mockingbird

The Story

"Operation Mockingbird" is one of the most-quoted names in conspiracy culture: shorthand for the belief that the CIA secretly runs the American news. The real paper trail is stranger than the legend, and much smaller.

Start with the name. In 1973 the CIA compiled an internal list of activities that might have overstepped its charter, later nicknamed the 'Family Jewels.' It was released in 2007 and posted by the National Security Archive. Item three reads: 'Project MOCKINGBIRD -- During the period from 12 March 1963 to 15 June 1963, this Office installed telephone taps on two Washington-based newsmen who were suspected of disclosing classified information obtained from a variety of governmental and congressional sources.'

The Church Committee, 1976: the CIA 'maintained covert relationships with about 50 American journalists or employees of U.S. media organizations.'

A longer write-up in the same file says the taps were put on the newsmen's office and their homes with the help of a telephone company official, under the authority of CIA Director John McCone, in coordination with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Another memo in the file names the targets as columnists Robert S. Allen and Paul Scott. (That memo dates the decision to March 1962, while the project summary gives 1963.)

The eavesdropping, the CIA wrote, was 'particularly productive.' It identified sources including 12 senators, 6 members of Congress and 21 congressional staff members, and found that the newsmen 'actually received more classified and official data than they could use.'

So in the CIA's own files, Mockingbird was a wiretap on reporters, not a newsroom puppet show. But the bigger question, whether the CIA used American journalists, has an official answer too. It came from the Senate's Church Committee in 1976.

The committee found that until February 1976, 'the CIA maintained covert relationships with about 50 American journalists or employees of U.S. media organizations.' About half were paid, ranging from salaried operatives working under journalistic cover to people receiving 'only occasional gifts and reimbursements.' 'More than a dozen United States news organizations and commercial publishing houses formerly provided cover for CIA agents abroad,' the report said, and 'A few of these organizations were unaware' of it.

Books were a big part of it. A former clandestine officer told the committee that books are 'the most important weapon of strategic (long-range) propaganda.' Before 1967, the report says, the CIA 'sponsored, subsidized, or produced over 1,000 books.' In 1967 alone it published or subsidized more than 200, including a Swahili translation of Machiavelli's The Prince and a rival to Mao's little red book called Quotations from Chairman Liu.

Most of this was aimed abroad. The committee described the journalists as part of a network of 'several hundred foreign individuals' who gathered intelligence and tried to influence foreign opinion. Its worry was 'fallout': propaganda planted overseas that drifted back to American readers.

In February 1976, the CIA announced it would not enter into 'any paid or contractual relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.' The committee noted the gap: the rule did not cover unaccredited Americans or freelance writers, and fewer than half of the roughly 50 relationships would be ended by it.

That is the documented core. A broad CIA program called 'Mockingbird' that controlled the U.S. press does not appear in any released government record. The verdict here is 'Partly True': real ties, a real wiretap, and a famous name attached to the wrong thing.