Monday, February 18, 2008

SourceWatch has Revised the History of the CIA's Operation Mockingbird

By Alex Constantine

From: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Talk:Operation_Mockingbird

"I have deleted the content of the page for a couple of reasons: there are numerous websites, mostly conspiracy sites, that refer to Operation Mockingbird but none cite the primary source or the name or where it was first disclosed ... "

The SourceWatch editor apparently neglected to look for the primary source, or he'd have found it easily enough. The first reporter to write about Operation Mockingbird - CIA control of the media - by name was Ms. Deborah Davis, in a biography of Washington Post editor Katharine Graham - a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient - Katharine the Great (1987) - a book that was printed, bound ... and all copies subsequently DESTROYED by the publisher - at CIA request. The book has since been reprinted.

I was the writer who brought it to the public's attention, in a chapter of Virtual Government: CIA Mind Control Operations in America (1997; the cold war initiative was conceived by Allen Dulles as a mind control program) posted on the Net as a public service by myself, and widely distributed on the Net.

No one has ever accused Deborah Davis of being anything less than credible, to my knowledge. The book is not of the "conspiracy" genre - but the information in the book about the CIA's grip on the media has been suppressed, the books burned, and Graham has an unjustified sterling reputation in the press, when in fact she was a CIA-fascist collaborator, like many others in the media-at-large.

Her husband Phil Graham committed suicide.

Before he shot himself, he spent his days downing impressive volumes of alcohol, burbling that the CIA was trying to kill him.

Phillp Graham oversaw Operation Mockingbird. He was institutionalized in the end at Chestnut Lodge, a CIA mind control psychiatric facility. He was released on a Thanksgiving day to be with his family, and took that opportunity to blow his head off.

Re: " ... none [of the websites] cite the primary source ... "

If this hard-working editor - who harshly censors the work of others without bothering to look up citations - had referred to Katharine the Great, the source cited in my article, he would have found that Davis drew from FEDERAL DOCUMENTS and CORRESPONDENCE between the Agency and editors of the Post in her book on Ms. Graham and Mockingbird - and then he wouldn't feel compelled to revise history for silly reasons.

Another justification SourceWatch gives for deleting any reference to Mockingbird is that information on the state propaganda program is found at "mostly conspiracy sites." For obvious reasons, the Washington Post and NY Times have no articles on CIA infiltration of the media to satisfy the editor at SourceWatch.

The following "conspiracy sites," among others, have posted articles on Mockingbird ...

The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051226/cockburn

Associated Content
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/377134/us_government_conspiracies_operation.html

National Expositor
http://nationalexpositor.com/News/215.html

Answers.Com
http://www.answers.com/topic/operation-mockingbird

Media Daily News
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=53404

Americans for Legal Immigration
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-101682.html

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

Political Friendster
http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php?id=2746&name=Operation-Mockingbird

UK Gay News
http://www.ukgaynews.org.uk/Archive/2006jan/0901.htm

Petition Online
http://www.petitiononline.com/6725/petition.html

And if one opens one's eyes and perceives, one can actually watch Mockingbird in operation - WHY THE HELL ELSE ARE WE IN IRAQ?

Marginal, media-trained thinkers are constantly calling me names, casting aspersions on my character - in defense of a corrupt and insane establishment - and getting everything wrong in the process of trashing research that I know to be accurate.

Also see: "Wikipedia Burns My Books - and Me"

2 comments:

bjporter said...

Here is Mockingbird on the CIA FOIA site:
http://www.foia.cia.gov/search.asp

Type in "operation mockingbird" and click on the search result "Family Jewels". Go to page 5. It mentions "project Mockingbird" and wiretapping news people. Thanks for your work Alex

Alex Constantine said...

bjporter: "'Family Jewels'. Go to page 5. It mentions 'project Mockingbird' and wiretapping news people. ... "

That is a project Mockingbird, and there are books that make mention of it. The Operation Mockingbird I've written about was a state propaganda program and it was, I've learned from Joe Trento's Secret History of the CIA, assembled by Allen Dulles in 1946, a year before the Agency was created by the National Security Act. Dulles considered the cold war propaganda machine so essential that it was his very first priority - for mind control purposes, as I've explained. Trento doesn't mention Mockingbird by name, but he does identify the media execs drawn by Dulles into the program, and they are already known.

Mockingbird was an off-the shelf operation, not an official Agency function. It's doubtful that FOIA could recover much paperwork that makes reference to the CIA's media operations, because in my experience, there always seems to be less documentation on file and accessible than there are covert operations, and sometimes nothing in the files gives a hint of an ongoing operation. For off-the-shelf programs structured around funding cut-outs and operational fronts, chances are all files are shredded before they can be accessed, because these are off the books - and highly illicit, eg. Iran-contra.

- AC