{"id":68936,"date":"2017-03-17T13:50:33","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T17:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=68936"},"modified":"2017-03-17T13:50:33","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T17:50:33","slug":"american-corporate-msm-is-merged-with-cia-and-has-been-since-the-1950s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=68936","title":{"rendered":"American Corporate MSM Is Merged With CIA And Has Been Since The 1950s"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Brandon Turbeville
\nActivist Post<\/a>
\nBrandonTurbeville.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Hat tip to Washington\u2019s Blog<\/a> for collating much of this information. <\/i>
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\n<\/i>
\nWith the recent back and forth seemingly taking place between two different factions of the American Deep State and playing out before the entire country, a few alternative media outlets have begun to question whether or not certain mainstream media outlets are actually connected to the Deep State, most notably the CIA. With an unimaginable scale of disinformation being released and promoted throughout mainstream channels on a daily basis, all propagandizing the public to go along with the desired direction of the American establishment, few could assume otherwise. However, such connections between American mainstream outlets and the CIA are more than mere conjecture, they are well-known and have been documented for some time.<\/p>\n

For instance, back in the late 1940\u2019s and early 1950\u2019s, Operation Mockingbird, a plan known to many researchers today but known to virtually no one at the time it was originally being implemented, was a secret CIA effort to influence and control the American media and, thus, to influence and control the information received (as well as the opinions) of the American people. The first report of the program came in 1979 in the biography of Katharine Graham, the owner of The Washington Post, written by Deborah Davis.[1]<\/a>
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Davis wrote that the program was established by Frank Wisner, the director of the Office of Policy Coordination, a covert operations unit created under the National Security Council. According to Davis, Wisner recruited Philip Graham of the Washington Post to head the project within the media industry. Davis wrote that, \u201cBy the early 1950s, Wisner \u2018owned\u2019 respected members of The New York Times<\/a>, Newsweek<\/a>, CBS<\/a> and other communications vehicles.\u201d Davis also writes that Allen Dulles convinced Cord Meyer, who later became Mockingbird\u2019s \u201cprincipal operative,\u201d to join the CIA in 1951.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

But while Davis\u2019 book may have been the first mention of Operation Mockingbird by name, Carl Bernstein addressed the CIA influence over the media in 1977. According to Bernstein\u2019s Rolling Stone article<\/a>, after 1953, the media control program was overseen by Allen Dulles, the CIA Director. Bernstein says that, at that time, the CIA had influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. Bernstein wrote<\/a>,<\/p>\n

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier\u2011Journal, 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\u2011Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald\u2011Tribune.
\nBy far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The CIA\u2019s use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress. The general outlines of what happened are indisputable; the specifics are harder to come by. CIA sources hint that a particular journalist was trafficking all over Eastern Europe for the Agency; the journalist says no, he just had lunch with the station chief. CIA sources say flatly that a well\u2011known ABC correspondent worked for the Agency through 1973; they refuse to identify him. A high\u2011level CIA official with a prodigious memory says that the New York Times provided cover for about ten CIA operatives between 1950 and 1966; he does not know who they were, or who in the newspaper\u2019s management made the arrangements.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Agency\u2019s special relationships with the so\u2011called \u201cmajors\u201d in publishing and broadcasting enabled the CIA to post some of its most valuable operatives abroad without exposure for more than two decades. In most instances, Agency files show, officials at the highest levels of the CIA usually director or deputy director) dealt personally with a single designated individual in the top management of the cooperating news organization. The aid furnished often took two forms: providing jobs and credentials \u201cjournalistic cover\u201d in Agency parlance) for CIA operatives about to be posted in foreign capitals; and lending the Agency the undercover services of reporters already on staff, including some of the best\u2011known correspondents in the business.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the field, journalists were used to help recruit and handle foreigners as agents; to acquire and evaluate information, and to plant false information with officials of foreign governments. Many signed secrecy agreements, pledging never to divulge anything about their dealings with the Agency; some signed employment contracts., some were assigned case officers and treated with. unusual deference. Others had less structured relationships with the Agency, even though they performed similar tasks: they were briefed by CIA personnel before trips abroad, debriefed afterward, and used as intermediaries with foreign agents. Appropriately, the CIA uses the term \u201creporting\u201d to describe much of what cooperating journalists did for the Agency. \u201cWe would ask them, \u2018Will you do us a favor?\u2019\u201d.said a senior CIA official. \u201c\u2018We understand you\u2019re going to be in Yugoslavia. Have they paved all the streets? Where did you see planes? Were there any signs of military presence? How many Soviets did you see? If you happen to meet a Soviet, get his name and spell it right \u2026. Can you set up a meeting for is? Or relay a message?\u2019\u201d Many CIA officials regarded these helpful journalists as operatives; the journalists tended to see themselves as trusted friends of the Agency who performed occasional favors\u2014usually without pay\u2014in the national interest.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

. . . . .<\/p>\n

During the 1976 investigation of the CIA by the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church, the dimensions of the Agency\u2019s involvement with the press became apparent to several members of the panel, as well as to two or three investigators on the staff. But top officials of the CIA, including former directors William Colby and George Bush, persuaded the committee to restrict its inquiry into the matter and to deliberately misrepresent the actual scope of the activities in its final report. The multivolurne report contains nine pages in which the use of journalists is discussed in deliberately vague and sometimes misleading terms. It makes no mention of the actual number of journalists who undertook covert tasks for the CIA. Nor does it adequately describe the role played by newspaper and broadcast executives in cooperating with the Agency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

THE AGENCY\u2019S DEALINGS WITH THE PRESS BEGAN during the earliest stages of the Cold War. Allen Dulles, who became director of the CIA in 1953, sought to establish a recruiting\u2011and\u2011cover capability within America\u2019s most prestigious journalistic institutions. By operating under the guise of accredited news correspondents, Dulles believed, CIA operatives abroad would be accorded a degree of access and freedom of movement unobtainable under almost any other type of cover.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

American publishers, like so many other corporate and institutional leaders at the time, were willing to commit the resources of their companies to the struggle against \u201cglobal Communism.\u201d Accordingly, the traditional line separating the American press corps and government was often indistinguishable: rarely was a news agency used to provide cover for CIA operatives abroad without the knowledge and consent of either its principal owner, publisher or senior editor. Thus, contrary to the notion that the CIA insidiously infiltrated the journalistic community, there is ample evidence that America\u2019s leading publishers and news executives allowed themselves and their organizations to become handmaidens to the intelligence services. \u201cLet\u2019s not pick on some poor reporters, for God\u2019s sake,\u201d William Colby exclaimed at one point to the Church committee\u2019s investigators. \u201cLet\u2019s go to the managements. They were witting.\u201d In all, about twenty\u2011five news organizations including those listed at the beginning of this article) provided cover for the Agency<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In addition to cover capability, Dulles initiated a \u201cdebriefing\u201d procedure under which American correspondents returning from abroad routinely emptied their notebooks and offered their impressions to Agency personnel. Such arrangements, continued by Dulles\u2019 successors, to the present day, were made with literally dozens of news organizations. In the 1950s, it was not uncommon for returning reporters to be met at the ship by CIA officers. \u201cThere would be these guys from the CIA flashing ID cards and looking like they belonged at the Yale Club,\u201d said Hugh Morrow, a former Saturday Evening Post correspondent who is now press secretary to former vice\u2011president Nelson Rockefeller. \u201cIt got to be so routine that you felt a little miffed if you weren\u2019t asked.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

. . . . .<\/p>\n

From the outset, the use of journalists was among the CIA\u2019s most sensitive undertakings, with full knowledge restricted to the Director of Central Intelligence and a few of his chosen deputies. Dulles and his successors were fearful of what would happen if a journalist\u2011operative\u2019s cover was blown, or if details of the Agency\u2019s dealings with the press otherwise became public. As a result, contacts with the heads of news organizations were normally initiated by Dulles and succeeding Directors of Central Intelligence; by the deputy directors and division chiefs in charge of covert operations\u2014Frank Wisner, Cord Meyer Jr., Richard Bissell, Desmond FitzGerald, Tracy Barnes, Thomas Karamessines and Richard Helms himself a former UPI correspondent); and, occasionally, by others in the CIA hierarchy known to have an unusually close social relationship with a particular publisher or broadcast executive.1<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

James Angleton, who was recently removed as the Agency\u2019s head of counterintelligence operations, ran a completely independent group of journalist\u2011operatives who performed sensitive and frequently dangerous assignments; little is known about this group for the simple reason that Angleton deliberately kept only the vaguest of files.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The CIA even ran a formal training program in the 1950s to teach its agents to be journalists. Intelligence officers were \u201ctaught to make noises like reporters,\u201d explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management. \u201cThese were the guys who went through the ranks and were told \u2018You\u2019re going to he a journalist,\u2019\u201d the CIA official said. Relatively few of the 400\u2011some relationships described in Agency files followed that pattern, however; most involved persons who were already bona fide journalists when they began undertaking tasks for the Agency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Forty years later, Bernstein\u2019s article is still a must read for understanding the CIA\u2019s relationship to the corporate media.<\/p>\n

Indeed, a declassified memo from 1965<\/a> confirms much of what Bernstein wrote about in 1977. This memo was addressed to the Deputy Director of the Directorate of Intelligence, Ray S. Cline, and revealed the names of several high profile journalists who were \u201creceiving intelligence\u201d from Cline. By \u201cintelligence,\u201d however, one can read simply that reporters were receiving their marching orders for publication and print from the CIA. The memo contained the names Joseph C. Hersch, Walter Lippmann, John Scott, Joseph Alsop, Wallace Carroll, Cy Sulzberger, Henry Gemill, Charles Bartlett, Max S. Johnson, Harry Schwartz, Bill Shannon, Jess Cook, Stewart Alsop, William S. White, Chalmers Roberts, Murrey Marder, Charles J.V. Murphy, Russell Wiggins, Alfred Friendly, Tad Szulc, and Kay Graham. The outlets listed include Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, NBC, TIME, Publishers\u2019 Newspaper Syndicate, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, Saturday Evening Post, United Features Syndicate, Washington Post, Fortune, and Newsweek.<\/p>\n

Even the U.S. government\u2019s official summary<\/a> of the overthrow of the elected President of Iran in the 1950s admits that the CIA was planting stories in the American Press. It reads, \u201cIn cooperation with the Department of State, CIA had several articles planted in major American newspapers and magazines which, when reproduced in Iran, had the desired psychological effect in Iran and contributed to the war of nerves against Mossadeq.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1975, the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect To Intelligence Activities found that the agency did indeed submit stories to the press. Chair of the Church Committee, Senator Frank Church, stated publicly, \u201cI thought that it was a matter of real concern that planted stories intended to serve a national purpose abroad came home and were circulated here and believed here because this would mean that the CIA could manipulate the news in the United States by channeling it through some foreign country.\u201d In other words, the type of propaganda that was supposed to be relegated to use against overseas enemies and target foreign populations was now being used at home.<\/p>\n