While most people with an interest in the history of CIA will have heard of “Operation Mockingbird,” which weaponized the press for propaganda purposes through the “Office of Policy Coordination,” there is another side to program that’s much less well-known. A declassified memo from 1965 reveals a network of journalists that regularly received intelligence from Ray S. Cline, one of CIA’s senior analysts and at that time the Deputy Director of the Directorate of Intelligence. Several of these journalists were former intelligence officers and were not only involved in information and propaganda dissemination, but other ongoing CIA operations.

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/feb/15/memo-offers-look-cias-private-press-pool/

Public opinion was polarized over JFK’s assassination. Forty-six percent of Americans doubted the Warren Commission’s finding that Oswald “acted alone;” Garrison was becoming more vocal about Oswald’s alleged CIA connection; and independent journalists were asking potentially embarrassing questions. Nerves in Washington were frayed.

Then on April 1, the CIA circulated an extraordinary memo instructing agents how they could play the mainstream media in order to discredit all the speculation of CIA involvement. The top-secret memo—marked PSYCH for psychological warfare—read in part: “Employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.”

So the CIA instructed its media assets to plant book reviews designed to debunk conspiracy theorists. And lo and behold, almost five decades after the assassination, mainstream media reviewers in the daily and weekly press are still carrying out the CIA’s orders, willingly or unwillingly.

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The US Senate Church Committee disclosed in 1975 that more than over 400 government propagandists had infiltrated American corporate media to manipulate public opinion on key policies, including war. CIA Director William Colby testified that Operation Mockingbird had been operational since the late 1940s to control what was reported through American television, newspapers, and magazines. President Ford fired Colby after his testimony and replaced him with George H. W. Bush. Bush Sr. ended the CIA’s testimony, stating that there were no other programs of concern to disclose and promised that the CIA would no longer influence the media .

We know in the present that government propagandists appeared over 4,500 times as “experts” in the PR run-up to the current war in Iraq, corporate media refuses to clearly communicate the essential news that ALL the claims for war were known to be false at the time they were told and US wars are “emperor has no clothes” obviously unlawful. The American public is recognizing the propaganda in corporate media by deserting them to embrace alternative sources.

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THE CIA AND THE MEDIA- How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up
BY CARL BERNSTEIN»»

Over the years, the American Central Intelligence Agency has gained a reputation for being the most far-reaching, sophisticated, and effective government intelligence agency on the planet. At the same time, the CIA has also become known for its incredible paranoia and propensity to undertake costly, sometimes illegal, and often downright absurd projects in the name of gaining an edge on the competition. From spy cats to psychic hippies, the following are ten of the weirdest spy programs the government has proposed and funded over the years.

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In the first three installments of this series I examined the existence of the massive surveillance state database MAIN CORE and how similar tools of oppression are destroying American civil liberties. I also took a look at the criminality of many members of the Bush administration (especially Dick Cheney) and their crusade against The Constitution as well as Cheney's involvement in Continuity of Government programs. I wrote of the targeting of journalists by the rogue cabal operating out of Cheney's office (which is even more relevant with the news of CIA death squads) to crush dissent. In this installment I want to draw a bigger picture of how a network of Wall Street oligarchs, rogue intelligence operatives, organized crime figures and the mysterious alliances that have led to the hostile takeover of the United States. This conclusion to part four will focus on the vast influence Bush Crime Family and the Octopus Ascendant in Obama's America.

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PRIOR INSTALLMENTS

Main Core, PROMIS and the Shadow Government - Part One »»

Part 2 »»

Part 3 »»

Part 4a »»

In 1933, the American advertising industry proudly and publicly boasted that Hitler was copying their American propaganda techniques.

After Hitler and Goebbels gave a bad name to propaganda, Freud's nephew - psychologist Edward Bernays - simply re-branded propaganda as "public relations" and "professional journalism".

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The corporate media, at least at the level Walter Cronkite occupied, is rife with spooks, government agents, and disinfo operatives. The CIA has “important assets” inside every major news publication in the country, a fact established by numerous FOIA documents. A rare glimpse was also provided by Frank Church’s committee in the mid-70s.

Some of the journalists working the CIA’s side of the street “were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country,” Carl Bernstein wrote in an article published in Rolling Stone in October, 1977. “Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested it the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles, and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad.”

“It was not until 1982 that the Agency openly admitted that reporters on the CIA payroll have acted as case officers to agents in the field,” writes Alex Constantine in The Depraved Spies and Moguls of the CIA’s Operation MOCKINGBIRD. “Most consumers of the corporate media were — and are — unaware of the effect that the salting of public opinion has on their own beliefs.”

Cronkite was a trusted and valued part of that huge mass propaganda effort.

It is said Cronkite “somehow spoke for the nation he spoke to,” according to the Los Angeles Times, when in fact — like all corporate media figures — Cronkite was reading from a script provided by the CIA at the behest of the ruling elite.

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It is well known that William F. Buckley spent some time in the CIA before he went on to start National Review.

In certain libertarian circles, the charge has been made that Buckley never left the CIA and that, indeed, the CIA funded the launch of National Review.

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I think the best place to start would be the breakthrough article by Carl Bernstein,THE CIA AND THE MEDIA , on how America’s most powerful news media worked hand in glove with the CIA, and why the Church Committee covered it up. The piece was originally published by Rolling Stone in 1977. I know it’s long; very long indeed, but I urge you to take the time and read the entire 16-page piece. It’s worth it. Bernstein revealed that over 400 US journalists, over a twenty-five year period, had been employed by the CIA, as both freelancers and actual under cover CIA officers. Almost every major US news organization had CIA agents on their payroll with the full knowledge and cooperation of top management.

Read full article »»123 Real Change..Sibel Edmonds »»

THE CIA AND THE MEDIA »»