Operation Mockingbird

Operation Mockingbird was allegedly a large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that, beginning in the early 1950s, attempted to manipulate news media for propaganda purposes, and funded student and cultural organizations and magazines as front organizations.

According to writer Deborah Davis, Mockingbird recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network and oversaw the operations of front groups. CIA support of front groups was exposed after a 1967 Ramparts magazine article revealed that the National Student Association received funding from the CIA. Congressional investigations and reports in the 1970s also revealed Agency connections with journalists and civic groups. None of these reports, however, mentions an Operation Mockingbird controlling or supporting these activities.

A Project Mockingbird is mentioned in the CIA Family Jewels report, compiled in the mid-70s. According to the declassified version of the report released in 2007, Project Mockingbird involved wire-tapping of two American journalists for several months in the early 1960s.

The claim that CIA ran an "Operation Mockingbird" first appeared in Katharine the Great, a 1979 biography of Washington Post owner Katharine Graham, written by reporter Deborah Davis. According to Davis, Operation Mockingbird was established by Frank Wisner, director of the Office of Policy Coordination, a covert operations unit created by the U.S. National Security Council. Davis writes that Mockingbird was a response to the creation of a Communist front organization, the International Organization of Journalists, which "received money from Moscow and controlled reporters on every major newspaper in Europe, disseminating stories that promoted the Communist cause."

Wisner recruited Philip Graham from The Washington Post to run the project within the industry. According to Davis, "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of The New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."

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