Operation Mockingbird:
In the early years of the Cold War, efforts were made by the governments of both the United States and the Soviet Union to use media companies to influence public opinion internationally. In a 1977
Rolling Stone magazine article, "
The CIA and the Media," reporter
Carl Bernstein wrote that by 1953, CIA Director
Allen Dulles oversaw the media network, which had major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. Its usual modus operandi was to place reports, developed from CIA-provided intelligence, with cooperating or unwitting reporters. Those reports would be repeated or cited by the recipient reporters and would then, in turn, be cited throughout the media wire services. These networks were run by people with well-known liberal but pro-American-big-business and anti-Soviet views, such as
William S. Paley (CBS),
Henry Luce (Time and Life),
Arthur Hays Sulzberger (The New York Times),
Alfred Friendly (managing editor of The Washington Post),
Jerry O'Leary (The Washington Star),
Hal Hendrix (Miami News),
Barry Bingham, Sr. (Louisville Courier-Journal),
James S. Copley (Copley News Services) and
Joseph Harrison (The Christian Science Monitor).
Reporter
Deborah Davis claimed in her 1979 biography of
Katharine Graham, owner of The
Washington Post, (Katharine the Great), that the CIA ran an "
Operation Mockingbird" during this time. Davis claimed that the International Organization of Journalists that was created as a communist front organization
received money from Moscow and controlled reporters on every major newspaper in Europe, disseminating stories that promoted the Communist cause.
Davis claimed that
Frank Wisner, director of the Office of Policy Coordination (a covert operations unit created in 1948 by the United States National Security Council) had created Operation Mockingbird in response to the International Organization of Journalists, recruiting
Phil 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.
Davis claimed that after
Cord Meyer joined the CIA in 1951, he became Operation Mockingbird's "
principal operative."
