Talk:Operation Mockingbird/Archive 1

World Tribunal on Iraq -- WTF?
pmj: Is it just me, or does User:Dr Debug's addition to this article seem out of place? Instead of facts or at best reports, it contains vague "findings". These many claims have only one reference -- a page on worldtribunal.org, which itself has no references. Hey, I appreciate Dr Debug's other input, but this just smells like propaganda. I suggest it be removed. --pmj 05:07, 3 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I think needs improvement. The reference is to Chalabi who received a million for faulty intelligence with regards to the WMDs. He was also the source for Judith Miller. worldtribunal is a very reliable source. Just check the names behind it. But they could have made the statement clearer. --Dr Debug 20:59, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Copyright information
Note: This entry has been written by the same person who wrote the article on the Spartacus Education website (John Simkin). It is therefore not a violation of copyright.

Wikipedia will lose much respect if they delete this article. The CIA wants this down. Maybe they should go round up some more retarded kids to frame terrorist activity on...like in Miami. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.219.192.46 (talk) 13:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Tag
I've added a OR tag. I might file for AFD. CIA already came under scrutiny for its propaganda in 1967, long before the conclusiosn were published of the Church report. The problem with this article, is, that no one, except for one author (Davis it seems), has described these efforts under "Operation Mockingbird." This is a synthesis not allowed under Wikipedia policy. Intangible2.0 21:56, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
 * See for a link describing her book's worries. In her book, she repeats the assertion that Richard Ober (some CIA operative), was deepthroat. Sigh. Intangible2.0 04:55, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The Davis book itself has been notable though, so I started an article on it, Katharine the Great. Intangible2.0 01:56, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Request for Comment: Notability of Operation Mockingbird

 * The article lacks reliable sources asserting the notability of Operation Mockingbird (and I can't find any) Intangible2.0 01:43, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Added some new external links, one directly from Carl Bernstein's site-which is obviously from a professional journalist. Also-if you read the Family Jewels file, you will find a sliver of evidence of Mockingbird. It should be noted that although the release of these documents was pursued for years, the actual release was heavily redacted-in some cases, more so than what had already been released. Much fanfare over little. more info here: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?pid=208296 kc —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.227.167.222 (talk) 17:13, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Please cite the source of this quote with a link (if possible): "Cord Meyer said that when he joined the operation in 1951 it was so secret that it did not have a name." thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.227.167.222 (talk) 18:30, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Added some more links -Invisible Government and a book review on E. Howard Hunt's American Spy, which details the Project Mockingbird disclosure. Also- I removed the Cord Meyer quote because no one responded and the only place I could find the quote was referencing this site as their source. If someone can find the originating source for the quote, please add it back in. kc —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.143.164.74 (talk • contribs)
 * Okay, the Hunt book helps a little bit to establish the subject's notability. However I should add some caution here. As Hunt seems to say: "Most interestingly, however, while employed by the CIA, I have to say I never heard about a specific Operation Mockingbird, although my projects would certainly have come under its umbrella. But even if there was no official project by that name, we did carry out the basic operations, and I cannot contradict the findings." Hunt only quotes the Church Committee report and the Bernstein article with Rolling Stone. The 2007 book adds nothing to what was already known 30 years ago. Intangible2.0 02:00, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

As far as the Hunt issue is concerned, you are correct- in part. Hunt begins by explaining how Operation Mockingbird was first exposed by Carl Bernstein in 1977. Nowhere does Hunt name Davis-probably didn't want to give her name any attention. Then Hunt proceeds to discuss how the Church Committee exposed the op and his role in it. He gives details of what they discovered he had done-which is obviously no longer classified. The quote you have used is then asserted-which is understandable-not every person involved in an op knows the name of the op-and neither did the Church committee. He actually didn't reveal any information not already known, probably for a reason- you think? But- he never denied anything; he supported it all in one way or another. He could have simply discussed the Church Committee findings-without ever naming the op. Anyway- he closes his "disclosure" describling how proud he was to have done it and Hunt continues on about how if CIA still had the ability to do this we wouldn't be in Iraq! HA! what a joke-- for many reasons. Number one reason is that the CIA has, for many years now, been able to contine along with this subterfuge: http://www.cpj.org/attacks96/sreports/cia.html
 * First off you complain about outside sourcing not being reputable-then when external links are added (the actual book online that is in the page "Invisible Government" and the source for the Hunt book, along with an interview that supports your assertion that she was the first to name the Op Mockingbird) All of these links have direct correlation with this page. I know you must have some issue with Spartacus, and that is not my battle, but I think if you want to complain about the lack of sourcing and then you remove links, something is wrong here.

In any case, I would ask that you to return the links or we can ask Wiki to decide for us. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.143.164.74 (talk) 18:03, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

By Notability, I presume you mean noteworthy as an encyclopedia article. In my opinion it is, provided that Operation Mockingbird is verified by reliable sources. Such an operation illustrates the mindset of the CIA and of American presidential administrations at the given period in time, as well as illustrating why members of the United States Congress were so taken aback by the legal and ethical questionability of such operations. Things like Mockingbird eventually led to Congress passing laws prohibiting the operation of the CIA and other intelligence organizations within the United States. In turn, after 9/11, this led to accusations that such laws hobbled the intelligence gathering community and needed to be loosened or completely repealed.

To me, the article is, on its face, both noteworthy and timely. My only concern is that care should be taken to ensure accuracy. There are so many "fake facts" out there that sources should be surveyed very carefully and only that information that can be confirmed (preferably by multiple sources and by official sources, such as the Congressional Record) should be used. Also, in my opinion, preference should be given to sources that appear at the time the facts were revealed rather than years later. This is because such events are fodder for conspiracy theorists, etc., and factual errors become compounded over time.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Lsisson (talk • contribs) 22:54, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Original Research
I looked over this article for some research I'm performing for a client. I see lots of claims of extensive documentation, but I really can't find anything that directly connects a "project Mockingbird" to the US government other than opinion pieces and 3rd party books that don't list direct sources.

I grew up on the edge of Long island, NY and I had to endure silly questions from people asking if I saw the "Tesla force field tower", and where the Native American pyramid was. I lived there all my life & never saw any of that, but people that have never been there claimed they were there because they read it in a "In Search Of..." paperback that made lots of money.

I don't doubt that the CIA tried to use reporters for intelligence means, I simply doubt that Mockingbird was the project or is even an accurate description of how it operated.

I've found nothing on .gov websites, and nothing in the US Archives. Can someone here, now, post a direct reference to something that ties project Mockingbird in with the government? Thanks! Corwin8 (talk) 21:05, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

This thing was written by a Trotskyite
So, William Paley, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, etc. are "known for right-wing views"? I think not! It might seem that way however to somebody that writes for Spartacus Educational. Trotskyites are to the left of everybody. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.42.2.195 (talk) 06:26, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Petition
Please add your name and location if you would like Wikipedia to keep this entry.

Why do we have to add OUR name when the CIA controls the sensitive pages, such as 911, (and, undoubtedly, this one) and they do so with complete anonymity?! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.152.80.177 (talk) 06:50, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Mike Hobgood in Annapolis, MD USA —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.107.82.62 (talk) 02:04, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Eddie Lopez in St. Louis, Missouri, USA Scott in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.58.58.19 (talk) 17:31, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Please see Deletion policy on how the process works. Intangible2.0 23:26, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

to kill a mockingbird
does the book/movie 'to kill a mockingbird' have anything to do with this operation? if so, what parallels are there? - interested & lazy, bluepill

No.50.103.225.43 (talk) 18:52, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

1963?
So Operation Mockingbird goes right up to 1962, then goes completely inactive in 1963, the year Kennedy was murdered, and then picks up again in 1964. We are to believe that Mockingbird not only played no part in the Kennedy coverup, but actually literally skipped the year of 1963 altogether! Ha-ha, hilarious! You guys are very lousy storytellers but somehow very effective at it - the CIA is the Michael Bay of historical narratives! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.105.235.77 (talk) 18:24, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Was, or is?
On note of the opening sentence "Operation Mockingbird was..."

Shouldn't that be "is"? There's no note of the operation ending, and media is still being manipulated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.206.11.14 (talk) 14:49, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Encyclopedic value?
Just a question at the very beginning here. During the introduction it is stated,
 * "In 1948 Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects (OSP). Soon afterwards OSP was renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world." (1) (reference, Weise and Ross, Invisible Government)

However, how accurate is this? Did a single branch of the CIA, named the Office of Policy Corodination, control espionage and counter-intelligence? My general impression was that the whole mandate of the CIA and a permeating agenda is espionage (okay, foreign espionage is probably in a separate department) and counter-intelligence. Did CIA really decide to create a form of 'super-branch', "the espionage and counter-intelligence branch"? While the remainder of the organisation transferred its espionage and intelligence operations to them? Mostly a factual question - I don't have access to the source here, but it sounds implausible. Confirm?

Even if Operation Mockingbird is just an urban legend the fact that it has gained so much interest makes this worthy of noting. Sources may need to be cited, but Operation Mockingbird is definitely worth keeping tabs on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.217.120.8 (talk) 02:51, 7 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I came upon this issue through the fact that artists I was involved with in Germany had reason to believe they were blacklisted after one of them fell into the trap of an agent provocateur. I have always suspected that something like this existed, but the program might have had very little formality and an ad hoc organisational structure. There is a docu by the German TV station ZDF 'Benutzt und gesteuert' (Used and steered). It starts with archival footage and is from 2006. You need to find a German speaker to understand it, sorry. It is here: http://gloria.tv/?media=51937

58.174.224.3 (talk) 01:21, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

"Ramparts, another CIA-backed left-wing publication"?
I cannot find any verification that Ramparts was a CIA-backed left-wing publication as is claimed in the "First exposure" section. Kezza1947 (talk) 00:09, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree. I've tracked that change to this edit. I will remove it. A similar concern was raised in Talk:Thomas Braden back in 2012. - Location (talk) 00:36, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

The word Mockingbird was first used by Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great (1979). ... huh?
"The word Mockingbird was first used by Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great (1979)." This statement doesn't work. I'm not sure what is meant, but I know the word mockingbird was used at least 100 years prior. Could someone who knows what this is supposed to mean fix it so that it means what it should? User:Pedant (talk) 13:51, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Answer: Mockingbird is a method discovered by studying how psychopaths mimic, and mirror the truth to cover their covert operations to steer the society. Frequently, the mirror image of the truth appears in a psychopath’s lies. Most notably, they will accuse you of being guilty of their own transgressions, and they will slander others by accusing them of their own crimes. In psychological terms, it’s called “superimposing”. Psychopaths make their victims think that they are just like them, and that they have so much in common. They are experts at flattery and covert pretentiousness. The victims feel that they have found their savior.

Psychopaths seem to mirror our very souls. By mirroring you, psychopaths appeal to your narcissism while paradoxically negating your uniqueness. It is self-esteem that psychopaths envy. They bask in your admiration of their façade.

Public schools have even engaged in this programing which you see displayed by a bumper sticker on every narcissistic mother’s car! Destroying uniqueness and individual reward for specific accomplishment is the main objective of this program in order to make Communism possible. -Kevin Hancock- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.8.136.205 (talk) 16:15, 5 August 2016 (UTC)


 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/25098778@N03/2680308761/ Please Review This Information. Tracy Mapes (talk) 05:18, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Constantine claims deleted
Alex Constantine's Virtual Government: CIA Mind Control Operations in the United States was cited in the article for various claims. All these go. VG is the antithesis of a reliable source; it is a veritable font of EMF mind control nonsense. Reliable sources are needed for any claims found in this book. Rgr09 (talk) 03:04, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Removed Guatemala section
This section is quite baffling; it mentions Guatemala in only the first two sentences, and for the rest of the entire section not at all. The only relation of the Guatemala coup to Mockingbird is given in the first sentence. "Mockingbird was very active during the overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala during Operation PBSUCCESS." For this, no source is given. The rest of the section also has little to do with any claims about Mockingbird, except for two places: David K. E. Bruce "was also highly critical of Mockingbird," and after Richard Bissell was fired as DDP, " Tracy Barnes took over the running of Mockingbird." Neither of these gives any source for these claims. As noted above, Evan Thomas in "The Very Best Men" never once mentions Mockingbird. Given the total lack of sources and even relevance for any of these claims about a supposed "Operation Mockingbird", I've deleted the entire section. Comments here before restoring, please. Rgr09 (talk) 13:41, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Removed Directorate for Plans section
This section is connected with Operation Mockingbird in three places: In the first paragraph it states that following Allen Dulles's appointment as DCI, and the appointment of Wisner and Helms in the Directorate of Plans, "Mockingbird became the responsibility of the DDP." The reference cited, Ranelagh's "The Agency", mentions the personnel assignments, but says nothing about responsibility for any "Operation Mockingbird." The third paragraph then states that Cord Meyer "was still working for Operation Mockingbird", again without any source. The fourth paragraph then states that, apparently in order to protect Meyer from Joseph McCarthy's attacks, "Wisner was directed to unleash Mockingbird on McCarthy." Yet again there is not source for this claim. Without sources to support these claims, this paragraph is nothing more than fiction, which is not what Wikipedia is for. I have therefore deleted the whole section. Rgr09 (talk) 13:43, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Problems with First Exposure section
The description of the Ramparts story that exposed CIA funding for the National Student Association is mostly in error. (Hugh Wilford's book "The Mighty Wurlitzer" gives a detailed and reliable description of this event.) The Wikipedia article on Desmond Fitzgerald says that Fitzgerald became DDP in 1966, not 1965. There is no source for the claim that says he took over an "Operation Mockingbird." The claim that Fitzgerald knew about the story at the end of 1966 is wrong; according to Wilford and others, the leak did not occur until January 1967. There is no source for the bizarre claim that the magazine told Fitzgerald it had "lost control of the information." There is no source for the claim that Fitzgerald "ordered a plan to either neutralize the campaign and/or wind-down Mockingbird." The article exposed only the National Student Association funding, it did not expose "the wide system of anti-Communist front organizations in Europe, Asia, and South America." The article did not mention Cord Meyer, it did not mention Commentary magazine. There is no source for Edward Applewhite steering references away from leftist organizations or toward conservative organizations. I have left what little is not clearly wrong in the section, but another look is needed at whether this description belongs in this article at all. Rgr09 (talk) 11:40, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Revised version of the article
I have put up a completely revised version of the article. Please leave comments here if you find major problems or think large revisions are necessary. Rgr09 (talk) 01:46, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately an editor reverted the revised version without comment. I'll try partial revisions and see if I can at least get some comments. Rgr09 (talk) 00:19, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Citations needed
I have added a number of notes for citations needed. Except for the Davis book, none of the references cited support what is claimed in the article about Mockingbird. These sources include:
 * the 1976 Carl Bernstein article in Rolling Stone. This article, while dealing extensively with the CIA connections of various reporters, never once mentions Operations Mockingbird.
 * Evan Thomas's book about the early history of the CIA. This book never once mentions Operation Mockingbird.
 * John Ranelagh's history of the CIA. This book never once mentions Operation Mockingbird.
 * Jack Anderson's autobiographical book Confessions of a Muckraker. This book does not once mention Operation Mockingbird.
 * The Church Committee Report on the CIA. This very extensive report is available with a full-text index at maryferrell.org. It never once mentions Operation Mockingbird.

Given the failure of the article's major sources to mention the subject of the article, a major rewrite is needed. I'll leave this up for a week or so for any comments, then start revising. Rgr09 (talk) 23:07, 30 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your comments; they explain much of the failure of this article. I started reading it and couldn't make sense even of what was on the page, before getting to the Talk page. Discussions above show huge problems; it seemed as if some editors were doing OR to reach the conclusions they wanted. If the sources don't support what is said, the content needs to be altered to reflect the sources.Parkwells (talk) 15:19, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Contradiction
The lead now includes the statement that Mockingbird, "Begun in the 1950s, it was initially organized by Cord Meyer and Allen W. Dulles, and was later led by Frank Wisner after Dulles became the head of the CIA." This contradicts the claim in the body of the article that "Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence foreign media." It also leaves the date of Mockingbird even more confused. Was it established before OPC was part of the CIA or after? Was it late 1940s or early 1950s? Davis is not precise on this. If the article attempts to be more precise, it must have a source. None is given. Rgr09 (talk) 00:27, 19 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree that this article needs to be backed up by sources. I changed the Lead to reflect what is in the body of the article currently, after the above changes. It seemed all wrong based on the body of the articleParkwells (talk) 15:38, 19 December 2016 (UTC).

AFD
Wikipedia has no credibility whatsoever anyhow. we know who edits it info and why, so go ahead and delete it. Only someone who is very uninformed would refer to wiki for information, especially of this nature. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.110.57.163 (talk) 00:29, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Propose deletion of this obvious troll of a comment.75.73.94.247 (talk) 00:44, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Agree (worthless comment) Historian932 (talk) 17:00, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Removed First Exposure section
Tracked down reference to CIA considering buying up entire printing of Invisible Government, this is from Evan Thomas's book. Ditto for McCone attempt to stop NBC documentary. These plus Fitzgerald against Ramparts, and Braden in Saturday Evening Post made up the whole section. None of these sources mention Mockingbird, nor is the claim that these sources somehow exposed Mockingbird documented. Deleted section. Rgr09 (talk) 00:32, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Yet another overview
I've spent two more weeks looking at the article and have done some major reading, including Deborah Davis's book, Carl Bernstein's Rolling Stone article, and Evan Thomas's The Very Best Men. I've also tried to read the introductory material to the State Department history, "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945–1950, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment" where at least one quote in the article came from, and which gives a clear overview of where OSP/OPC came from, who was involved, and what it was supposed to do.

This article suffers from a basic flaw: it says that there was a CIA program called Operation Mockingbird, but the ONLY basis I have found for this is Davis's book, where it is described only in the vaguest terms and for which her ONLY source mentioned in the book is an anonymous "former CIA analyst". Davis mentions Frank Wisner, Philip Graham, and Cord Meyer as participants in the program, and that's it. She mentions Allen Dulles as being in charge of CIA operations overall, but never attributes any specific actions to Dulles, either in Mockingbird or elsewhere. She gives no beginning date for Mockingbird, no ending date, and no specific actions. Mockingbird is mentioned fewer than seven times in Davis, and the descriptions given take up no more than two or three pages.

Starting from this extremely vague and poorly documented basis, the article attempts to graft a number of people and events onto the Mockingbird program, mostly using information from Evan Thomas's book. Thomas's book DOES NOT MENTION MOCKINGBIRD. NO OTHER WORKS MENTION OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD. (I except the book by Alex Constantine mentioned above, which is non-RS. I except the PROJECT MOCKINGBIRD which is mentioned in the Family Secrets report, because it is not related to Davis's claims.)

This total lack of support, other than Davis, for the existence of Operation Mockingbird is semi-acknowledged at the end of the lead section, which says "The media operation was first called Mockingbird in Deborah Davis's 1979 book, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and The Washington Post."

In fact, this is a bizarre statement. First called? Where did Davis get the name? Davis claims that WISNER (and later Cord Meyer) set up something called Operation Mockingbird. She does not say that she made up the name. She says that Wisner was responsible for Mockingbird, and that recruiting reporters was done by the personnel who ran Mockingbird. Is this the subject of the article or not? If so, it needs to be addressed in the article.

Instead, other events are dragged in. CIA cultural fronts, CIA publishing fronts, CIA funding for cultural activities and propaganda such as filming Animal Farm are real. Most of the material on these in the article is drawn from Thomas's book or from Bernstein's article. Just because they are real, this does not allow us to attribute them to Operation Mockingbird. There is no source for this claim. If they cannot be attributed to an Operation Mockingbird, why are they here?? These activities belong in another article, which can address how they were undertaken, when and by whom.

Having done the required reading, I will undertake to rewrite the article, as I did earlier. I expect the courtesy of comments before being reverted. Rgr09 (talk) 05:22, 4 January 2017 (UTC)


 * , is the book Katharine the Great written by Davis a reliable source? Based on its Wikipedia page, I suspect not. And if not, wouldn't this subject fail WP:GNG? I see there was an AfD back in 2007 that resulted in keep, but maybe it's time to revisit? --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 00:08, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I'll also add that the 2007 AfD was clearly distorted by sockpuppets, meatpuppets, or recruited editors. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 00:24, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I thoroughly agree that Davis 1979 is not RS. A classic case of 'no there there'; no sources, no details, just hand-waving. I see this article as basically a bloated footnote to a REAL article on cold war propaganda, describing Western and Soviet efforts in this area. Unfortunately, there is no such article now. The closest I've found is CIA influence on public opinion. THAT article is in a horrific state, however; no way I have time to mess with it. Just tracking down the real sources of THIS article took a couple of weeks. If there's consensus to get rid of this article, I have no objections, but I kind of doubt that consensus exists yet. The article gets plenty of hits, simply because the subject pops up on so many fringe internet sites.  Until a real article is available, I think it's okay to leave this up. Just make clear how anemic the basis of the claim is. Rgr09 (talk) 22:18, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
 * How about moving this article to CIA infiltration of the United States media or somesuch and reframing the content accordingly? --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 22:23, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

A conflict about the lead and history section
Most of the changes over the last few weeks, both mine and others, were reverted by DJNicke. I have reverted them back. I'll try and set up here the main changes under dispute. New users are often not aware of Wikipedia polices such as WP:NPOV, WP:V or WP:RS. Please make sure you understand these ideas. Please comment here before reverting again, or I'll take this directly to the edit wars page.

Change 1: Removes hat note to article on CIA influence on public opinion. This is a more general article on this subject, very hard to find because of its title. What's the problem here?

Change 2: Mockingbird "known for a fact to have operated at least during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s": POV wording "known for a fact", not backed up in the body of article. Who states it as a fact? Where does the article back up the claim that Operation Mockingbrid operated during 1960s and 1970s, or even existed at all?

Change 3: Statement "However this cannot be proven for a fact as the majority of documents pertaining to this operation were destroyed by the CIA while the Church Committee investigations were underway, undernining the credibility of the extent of the CIA's cooperation with investigators." is totally unsourced and POV.

Change 4: Statement "Begun in the 1950s, it was initially organized by Cord Meyer and Allen W. Dulles, and was later led by Frank Wisner after Dulles became the head of the CIA" This claims is flatly contradicted in material below which says it was initially organized by Wisner. This was discussed previously on the talk page and changed by another user!

Change 5: Statement "The media operation was first called Mockingbird in Deborah Davis's 1979 book, Katharine the Great." Deleted after discussion above. No response to the problems of this claim, just unilaterally reinstated.

Change 6: Reinstates the quote "economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world" and credits it to Wise's book "Invisible Government." This statement does not appear in this book, you cannot source like this!

Change 7: Reinstates the claim that "there is evidence that [Cord Meyer] was recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the liberal internationalist organizations he had been a member of in the late 1940s." and sources it to Meyer's own book! Meyer does not say this! What is your evidence.

Change 8: Deletes most corrected information about the real Project Mockingbird, leaving a confused mess.

There is more, but I'll stop here. Please understand that you cannot simply keep reverting the article back to its previous condition. Rgr09 (talk) 21:50, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

There is an information war going on on this entry, so there should be an edit war. Get it out in the open.69.158.88.224 (talk) 14:19, 7 February 2017 (UTC)


 * 69.158.88.224, edit warring is a violation of Wikipedia policy. Please do not edit war. You ability to edit could be blocked by administrators if you do. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:14, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Defend Wikipedia
The attack on this subject is part of an emerging trend of deep state influence being applied to shape Wikipedia.69.158.88.224 (talk) 14:18, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
 * 69.158.88.224, if you disagree with the recent edits then you should explain why and seek consensus for your preferred version, rather than personally attacking your fellow contributors. That's how it works here. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:16, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
 * L'etat profond c'est moi! Rgr09 (talk) 23:32, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Origin of the term "Operation Mockingbird
References to "Operation Mockingbird" are mentioned in various sources, many of which might otherwise be considered "reliable secondary source". Unfortunately, almost none of them cite where that term originated. Our article circularly cites Davis to credit Davis with coming up with that term. For future reference, here is a Politico article that states: "The pushback followed Deborah Davis’ 1979 book 'Katharine the Great,' which targeted the Post, The New York Times and other prominent publications for their involvement in what Davis dubbed Operation Mockingbird, a secret CIA effort to influence the media." [emphasis mine]. If Wikipedia is even going to mention Operation Mockingbird, it would be nice to show that this term originated from Davis and was not slapped on some CIA document to be discovered by some Congressional investigation. -Location (talk) 16:25, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
 * How to prove that Davis's book was the first place to mention 'Operation Mockingbird' is a difficult question. Davis does not make this claim in Katharine the Great. She does, however, state this in a 1992 interview with Kenn Thomas, which appeared in the magazine Steamshovel Press, issue 6. The complete interview is not online, but there are quotes from it here and here.  A partial quote from the second source above: "So he (Philip Graham) helped to develop this operation and it subsequently spread to other newspapers and magazines. And it was called Operation Mockingbird. This operation, I believe, was revealed for the first time in my book...."


 * At least we can say then that the claim of intellectual priority is made by Davis herself. The interview, parenthetically, contradicts the book, which unambiguously attributes MOCKINGBIRD to Frank Wisner. In the interview, however, Davis says it was created by Dulles. This confusion has appeared repeatedly in edits to the article. Apparently it originates with Davis herself. Rgr09 (talk) 00:52, 28 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Normally I would write up the contradiction (i.e. Wisner v Dulles), however, I don't like to insert what would typically be viewed as unreliable sources into articles. -Location (talk) 00:25, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Udo Ulfkotte
To the editor using various IP addresses to add content about Udo Ulfkotte, please review our verifiability policy and stop adding content without citing a reliable source. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 20:36, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

General notability
I've added a reference to Routledge's 2004 Encyclopedia of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, which has a reference on this program, and removed the GNG tag.

I've also quoted from the first paragraph of that entry to provide the encyclopedia's summary of the program. Note that the encyclopedia doesn't treat this program as "alleged."

Lastly, please note that when this article was nominated for deletion in 2007, the result of the discussion was 19 in favor of keeping, 2 in favor of deleting. This article clearly meets WP:GNG requirements. -Darouet (talk) 18:41, 14 May 2018 (UTC)


 * There aren't many folks watching this page, and I don't think of us has an axe to grind. The AfD may have been valid at the time, but at least up until you added this new source it was inconsistent with current notability guidelines. There were no reliable sources. Now there might be., what do you think of this source?
 * Personally I'm on the fence. This is a reputable publisher but I don't understand how a program whose existence has literally no reliable sources as far as I've seen (exclusive of this one) could end up in an encyclopedia. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 21:57, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Personally I'm on the fence. This is a reputable publisher but I don't understand how a program whose existence has literally no reliable sources as far as I've seen (exclusive of this one) could end up in an encyclopedia. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 21:57, 14 May 2018 (UTC)


 * OK - just to be clear, I didn't feel like you had an axe to grind in adding the tag and hope I didn't give that impression. The article does seem poorly sourced. In my view that warrants a sources tag, not a GNG tag. I did a brief look on my U's library today and a few things popped up, first and foremost the Routledge source, that I added. I'm quite busy the next few days but I'm pretty interested in this issue and hope we can find and discuss more sources. -Darouet (talk) 22:02, 14 May 2018 (UTC)


 * It is indeed an interesting and important issue provided it can be reliably sourced. The notability tag, along with "alleged," was added back early 2017 (I believe it was me?) because we couldn't find any reliable sources that referenced the program. See the "Yet another overview" and "Alledged" discussions above. If we accept that the Routledge source is reliable then I agree that the notability tag should be switched to a sources tag, and we should remove "alleged." (The content would still need to be cut way down as most of the content is not reliably linked to Project Mockingbird.) However I'd like to see what Rgr09 has to say about this before we remove "alleged." --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 22:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks to Darouet for the reference, which I'll abbreviate EIC. There is a review of EIC here by Hayden Peake and also a useful preview, including the Mockingbird article, on Amazon. The EIC MB article cites three sources: Davis's Katharine the Great (KTG), Bernstein's Rolling Stone article (RS), and Marchetti and Marks Cult of Intelligence (COI). The latter two do not mention Mockingbird once, thus the entire article, including the totally bogus claims about Frank Wisner, is based on KTG. The EIC article on John F. Kennedy references the real "Project Mockingbird" (a wiretap on reporters Paul Scott and Robert Allen in 1963), and even includes a see also to Mockingbird, Project. This is probably what editor Carlisle expected the Mockingbird article to be, but then he went ahead and accepted an article that doesn't even mention the wiretap MB, so it's on him.


 * Davis remains the SOLE source for the existence of an 'Operation Mockingbird' that employed hundreds of US journalists to make propaganda for the US, and she is nowhere close to a reliable source. Just because EIC has carelessly repeated her claims, falsely attributing them also to Bernstein and Marchetti, does not make them reliable, or justify removing the 'alleged' label.


 * Stripped of all this nonsense, however, there is real content in this article that should be in Wikipedia, just not labeled Operation Mockingbird. As I've argued before, it belongs in a hypothetical article called Cold War propaganda. This would cover the US government's covert sponsorship of civil groups such as Congress of Freedom, and use of foreign media in propaganda efforts. This was a broad US and UK policy effort lasting decades, not just one single project, program, or operation (see Information Research Department for some of the UK side). Was US domestic media used, or even indirectly influenced, by this propaganda effort? This is the real subject of the chapter on CIA use of US civilian groups in the Church Committee's report. I note AGAIN that the Church committee report does not ONCE mention the word Mockingbird.


 * Lacking the hypothetical Cold War propaganda page, I don't know where to put this real information. I tried to clean up the CIA influence on public opinion article to put it there, but this is still not an ideal solution, implying that the CIA was the main, even the sole US tool for Cold War propaganda. That is quite untrue. I'll give some further thought to possible solutions to handling the Mockingbird article. Rgr09 (talk) 01:29, 15 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Can you please link to the Amazon preview that includes the Mockingbird article? --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 05:48, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Amazon previews difficult to link to, here is a link to the Amazon book page, the Mockingbird article is on page 432. There is also a Google books preview, which has the Kennedy article mentioning Project Mockingbird on p. 336, but not the Mockingbird article on p. 432. The articles in EIC are all signed and there are references at the end of every article. This is very professional, and shows us where the article's content came from. Rgr09 (talk) 08:39, 15 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Both: I see I'm not quite up to speed on this. I'll go back through the discussion and try to replicate Rgr09's research. Suffice to say for now that the word alleged does seem justified? -Darouet (talk) 11:53, 15 May 2018 (UTC)


 * For whatever reason Amazon isn't giving me access to page 432, even when I login. In any case I have no reason to doubt Rgr09's account of what it says. If the source is citing Davis for its information about Project Mockingbird then it's not reliable. (Darouet - to save you time in your research - read the last paragraph of this source.) --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:49, 15 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Try searching the Amazon preview for 'mockingbird', that should give you a way to get to the page. I wish there were a better solution than just leaving the article in its current state; if you run into reliable references on the more general subject of the use of media in Cold War propaganda, let me know, I'm still interested in starting an article on the subject, I just don't want to do OR. Rgr09 (talk) 23:31, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Glenn Hastedt Source, "Mockingbird, Operation"
Found another source in the library: a 2011 entry by Glenn Hastedt in the two-part ABC-CLIO encyclopedia "Spies wiretaps and secret operations." The entry is titled "Mockingbird, Operation." Hastedt chairs the Justice Studies Dept at James Madison University; I see he published a textbook with Pearson in 2011 called "American Foreign Policy." I don't think what Hastedt writes is going to resolve issues raised above, but I'm trying to find relevant sources when I can and collate them here for current and future efforts. Some relevant text:

The entry lists four "References and further reading:"


 * Mackenzie, Angus. Secrets: The CIA War at Home. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997.
 * Saunders, Frank Stonor. The Cultural Cold War. New York: Norton, 2000.
 * Thomas, Evan. The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
 * Wilford, Hugh. The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.

Will try to follow up, but I hope this is of some use. -Darouet (talk) 18:18, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The entry can also be found here. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 19:02, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I can't speak to this but I suspect Rgr09 will be able to. I noticed that this Hastedt source relies in part on the Evan Thomas source, which was heavily cited in our article until it was culled by Rgr09 in late 2016. Rgr09 commented here in October 2016: "This book never once mentions Operation Mockingbird." Rgr09 appears to have read Wilford as well. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 19:14, 17 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Haydon Peake reviews Spies wiretaps and secret operations (SWSO) here. The review concludes, "There is no excuse for an encyclopedia—a basic reference work—to be so unhampered by scholarship or quality control. No other profession would tolerate it, nor should ours. For these reasons and its $180 price, caveat lector!" I would underline this by noting that one of the sources listed for the SWSO entry on Operation Chaos was an article in Covert Action Information Bulletin. This is very bad. Also, the author of the entry on the Doolittle Report apparently got his copy of the report from the Cryptome website. With these sorts of sources, it is not surprising that misinformation has crept in.


 * I have read three of the four books listed as references: Saunders, Thomas, and Wilford. In fact, I have read Thomas twice and Wilford (an excellent book) three times. There is absolutely nothing in these books on Mockingbird. That these are listed as sources for an entry on Mockingbird is a travesty. I have not read Mackenzie, by all accounts a polemical book, but a google books search of Mackenzie produced not one hit for the word mockingbird. So all this material on Wisner, and McCord too, must have come from elsewhere. Dollars to donuts it came from KTG, either directly or indirectly. Rgr09 (talk) 21:56, 17 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Your expertise is greatly appreciated. I'll add that the Peake review isn't substance-less slamming. It says, "More than 600 factual errors of various types appear among the approximately 700 entries," and the review consists mostly of a laundry list of examples. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 22:10, 17 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Spent some time going back through the whole talk page today, and it's fascinating. First, I have to say thanks to you both (and above all Rgr09) for your long work on this. My impression (which could be wrong: I have a lot of reading to do) is that there's plenty of real information on CIA manipulation of media / information, but whether most of this really occurred under the aegis of a program called Operation Mockingbird is highly uncertain. There are otherwise reliable sources which have described CIA media efforts as within the umbrella of Mockingbird, but they may be mistaken. My sense then, overall, is that we should have an article for "Operation Mockingbird" (as we do now), include a subsection on "Project Mockingbird" (as we do now), and we should also describe the putative scope of Mockingbird, according to what would ordinarily be considered reliable sources. We should simultaneously find ways of noting editorially, sometimes in passing and somewhere in the article with a dedicated section, the problems and uncertainties — including the fact that the operation may never have existed (e.g. that some authors / scholars may have mistakenly lumped many activities into the Mockingbird category).


 * Something that would be VERY helpful, to describe uncertainty around Mockingbird, is finding a reliable source that describes these difficulties. Perhaps there already is one and I just haven't read it yet? Rgr09 it would be frustrating if you'd done all this work tracking down sources, but that same work hadn't been done elsewhere, and published in a source we can cite. If that turns out to be the case, we'll have to figure out how to use your work, while being mindful of OR. I agree it would be absurd to blindly regurgitate material that is demonstrably dubious or uncertain.


 * This also relates to the difficulty of reporting / writing on clandestine programs. In a past life I did some research on US clandestine activities during the late 1940s, using declassified documents. In that case, of course many related documents remained classified. They always seemed to be those that were most important: the documentary lynchpins adjacent to action. As a result, while I learned a lot, figuring out for sure what US agents did or didn't do wasn't possible. I'm curious about finding a copy of KTG to get a sense of it. For better or worse the book seems to have had a substantial impact on scholarship. -Darouet (talk) 01:19, 18 May 2018 (UTC)


 * It's interesting to watch you progress through the same logical progression as I did. The difference between your proposal (keep the article where it is but broaden the scope and move the Mockingbird content into a dedicated section) and Rgr09's and mine (move the article to a broader title and move the Mockingbird content into a dedicated section) is quite small. In fact, it might just boil down to what we call this thing. I prefer moving to a broader title for several reasons. First, from a policy/guideline perspective, Project Mockingbird technically fails GNG since we still haven't found a reliable source that covers it. Second, there's a lot of useful, verifiable content here on related programs. Third, if we broadened the scope of this article we'd be better able to explain Mockingbird and Davis in context, and we could restore a whole lot of content that was previously deleted for being out of scope. This might have the added benefit of reducing a lot of the drive-by editing we've seen over the last year. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 16:25, 18 May 2018 (UTC)


 * What can you do? You can't find a CIA-approved sourced to source that the CIA writes all the approved sources. What a catch 22! Volunteer Mockingbird (talk) 22:33, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
 * We have no choice but to take what the reliable sources give us. Before 2013, for instance, there was little to no public information about the U.S. government conducting mass digital surveillance, even though we now know about it because of Snowden. Fortunately there are investigative journalists who focus on national security issues, and sometimes secret programs do come to light. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 23:26, 6 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Mockingbird, there are reliable sources that state Operation Mockingbird was real (I don't think DrF agrees with me on this). However, careful review of those sources suggests that there has been some scholarly confusion conflating a lot of CIA activities generally with a more targeted CIA operation called Mockingbird. In the long term the goal is to write an article that reports what ordinarily reliable sources have stated, while also alerting readers to the difficulty of getting information on this and other clandestine programs. No we are not waiting for a CIA-approved source. I spent some time reading through the whole talk page here and my attitude shifted: from one similar to yours, towards appreciating DrF's perspective. -Darouet (talk) 23:13, 7 July 2018 (UTC)


 * It's Edgar not Edward Applewhite, responding to a talking point above. I'm not fixing anything on this page. Kirbyurner (talk) 00:00, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Checking and NPOVing
This article is to lick my ring. I can't imagine why Wikipedia would want to delete it. All one has to do is read the sources. I've read and written much on this subject, and this is all documented, on the record, credible information. I can only guess this pisses off the agency and they are obviously active here on Wikipedia, as evidenced by other entries that touch on Agency business. But this article should stay. If this goes, be certain that I and others will raise holy hell.

The original claim seems to come from Alex Constantine, who has written a couple books and has an essay that's been widely reprinted on the Internet. I can't find any skeptical treatment at all, but all the sites that carry it seem to be of the conspiracy-theorist bent. This article needs either serious NPOV, or some fact confirmation. --Isomorphic 07:06, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Well the CIA was established in 1948, and i find it hard to believe that Harry Truman hatched a plot to influence the American media. It is impossible to prove a negative, but this is very weak indeed. Propose deletion. --PaulinSaudi 11:47, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)]]


 * The wikipedia article on Allen Welsh Dulles says...
 * "Dulles also promoted Operation Mockingbird, a program with a goal to influence American media companies." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.67.253.203 (talk • contribs) 23:38, 29 April 2004 (UTC)


 * That article probably needs the comment removed, or else the word "allegedly" needs to go in. --Quadell 14:37, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC)

There is a considerable amount of documentary evidence that Operation Mockingbird existed. However, it is possible that the operation to manipulate the mass media was not actually given this name by the CIA. The first time "Operation Mockingbird" was used was in Deborah Davis's book, Katharine the Great (1979). The original edition was shredded as a result of CIA pressure. After a legal battle the book was republished in 1983. This included information about Ben Bradlee's role in Mockingbird that had been removed in the 1979 edition.

Published evidence of Mockingbird first appeared in Ramparts in March, 1967. The article, written by Sol Stern, was entitled NSA and the CIA. As well as reporting CIA funding of the National Student Association it exposed the whole system of anti-Communist front organizations in Europe, Asia, and South America. It named Cord Meyer as a key figure in this campaign. This included the funding of the literary journal Encounter.

In May 1967 Thomas Braden, former head of head of the of the CIA's International Organizations Division, responded to this by publishing an article entitled, I'm Glad the CIA is Immoral, in the Saturday Evening Post. In the article he defended the activities of the International Organizations Division unit of the CIA. Braden also confessed that the activities of the CIA had to be kept secret from Congress. As he pointed out in the article: "In the early 1950s, when the cold war was really hot, the idea that Congress would have approved many of our projects was about as likely as the John Birch Society's approving Medicare."

Cord Meyer's role in Operation Mockingbird was further exposed in 1972 when he was accused of interfering with the publication of a book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia by Alfred W. McCoy. The book was highly critical of the CIA's dealings with the drug traffic in Southeast Asia. The publisher, who leaked the story, had been a former colleague of Meyer's when he was a liberal activist after the war.

Further details of Operation Mockingbird was revealed as a result of the Frank Church investigations (Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) in 1975. According to the Congress report published in 1976: "The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets." Church argued that the cost of misinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year.

In February, 1976, George Bush, the recently appointed Director of the CIA announced a new policy: "Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station." However, he added that the CIA would continue to "welcome" the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists.

Tom Braden gave an interview interview to the Granada Television program, World in Action: The Rise and Fall of the CIA (UK, June, 1975)where he provided more details of how journalists were bribed to write pro-establishment articles.

Carl Bernstein, who had worked with Bob Woodward in the investigation of Watergate, provided further information about Operation Mockingbird in an article in Rolling Stone in October, 1977. Bernstein claimed that over a 25 year period over 400 American journalists secretly carried out assignments for the CIA: "Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country. 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 is almost certain that Bernstein had encountered Operation Mockingbird while working on his Watergate investigation. For example, Deborah Davis (Katharine the Great) has argued that Deep Throat was senior CIA official, Richard Ober, who was running Operation Chaos for Richard Nixon during this period.

According to researchers such as Steve Kangas, Angus Mackenzie and Alex Constantine, Operation Mockingbird was not closed down by the CIA in 1976. For example, in 1998 Kangas argued that CIA asset Richard Mellon Scaife ran "Forum World Features, a foreign news service used as a front to disseminate CIA propaganda around the world."

For a detailed account of this story see:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm

John Simkin (Spartacus Educational) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.105.51.16 (talk • contribs) 10:50, 7 April 2005 (UTC)


 * Sorry, a bunch of far left hacks (yes, that includes the phony Carl Bernstein) quoting each other, misrepresenting other sources (the remarks from the article in The Saturday Evening Post, for example, are very selective and removed from context, what was being talked about was funding to directly counteract specific Communist operations and does not mention any Student Council or any massive scheme to fund American journalists to lie), and repeating each other's "research" is not evidence. You've taken a few grains of truth and manipulated it into some massive conspiracy where everyone who opposed/opposes Communism is bought off by the CIA and the poor Commies are hapless victims. Who funds you, Comrade Simkin? Oh, let me guess, I must be a CIA agent!--- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:9001:580f:b900:3db8:3c44:3710:32ea (talk • contribs) 19:57, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

John Stockwell alludes to the use of journalists for propaganda purposes in his book "In Search of Enemies." Stockwell, who was in charge of the CIA's Angola operation in the 1970s, says friendly/corruptible foreign journalists were used to feed stories via Europe back to the US wire services. Captqrunch (talk) 15:12, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Finding consensus on the article
The result of the dispute resolution I requested has been posted here. The resolution asked for more discussion on the talk page. Unfortunately, I have mostly been unable to elicit any discussion by editors interested in this article. I cannot help but feel some frustration at this point. Are editors free to revise as they wish without discussion or sources?

Interest was expressed at the DRN in looking at Deborah Davis's book, Katharine the Great. I have access to all three editions, but this is copyright material, so I cannot provide this on Wikipedia. Those interested in the subject will have to check their local libraries or Abebooks. Rgr09 (talk) 12:00, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I'd note that one needs to be able to verify sources and the content to be able to contribute to the discussion. Given that there are only a few relevant pages referenced, I would think that providing access to the relevant pages would be acceptable under fair use (most countries have a 10% rule/1 chapter which allows reproduction). Given that the purpose of accessing the material is of a research nature, I believe exceptions apply here. Steven   Crossin  17:33, 3 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I am responding to Rgr09's ping in the discussion closed last month by Steven Crossin and subsequently archived here. (Additional courtesy pings to Darouet, DrFleischman, Richard-of-Earth.)
 * Don't be fooled by GHits. The Family Jewels report that mentions "Project Mockingbird" was compiled by the CIA in 1973 and officially released in 2007, however, some details of it - but not the name - were leaked by Seymour Hersh in 1974. In 1979, Deborah Davis sourced various details of "Operation Mockingbird" to an unnamed "former CIA analyst" in her book Katharine the Great. Since the term "Project Mockingbird" was not revealed until much later, the sources using "Operation Mockingbird" are simply regurgitating the term Davis used. Also confounding the issue, a lot of them are willy-nilly calling anything related to to media surveillance "Operation Mockingbird". On one hand, we have reliable primary sources for the name "Project Mockingbird". On the other, we have Davis' book (which Kirkus called "267 pages of immaterial bunk") as the primary source for "Operation Mockingbird". As I mentioned previously, my !vote is to first rename this article "Project Mockingbird" then discuss the alleged claims, properly attributed to the sources making them, in the body of the article. -Location (talk) 19:43, 12 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Rgr09, one idea is to re-create CIA and the media where verified information regarding the use of media for intelligence gathering AND propaganda can be mentioned; move the sections "Congressional investigations", "CIA response", and "Project Mockingbird wiretapping operation" to that article (because the sources used in those sections do not actually mention the so-called "Operation Mockingbird"); and leave this as a dumping ground for the various allegations of the so-called "Operation Mockingbird". Of course, "See also" links or headers could be employed. -Location (talk) 18:50, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Project Mockingbird section
The section on Project Mockingbird, as opposed to "Operation Mockingbird", is now vastly improved, thanks to Location. Since this is so clearly distinct from "Operation Mockingbird", this should probably be split off into a separate article. The large number of sources Location came up also suggest that it is significant enough to merit its own article. If it is split, however, a clear description of the two different Mockingbirds should remain here. Rgr09 (talk) 00:04, 5 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the feedback. As we have discussed here and elsewhere, the CIA influence of the media for propaganda purposes, the CIA involvement with the media for intelligence collection, and the CIA involvement in domestic surveillance of the media are all different things. "Project Mockingbird", the domestic surveillance of members of the media, is clearly supported by reliable sources and should be the name of a Wikipedia article. CIA influence of the media for propaganda purposes is also clearly supported by reliable sources. "Operation Mockingbird" is alleged to be part of this, but it is NOT supported by reliable sources and, therefore, really should not have its own article. I think the question is whether "Operation Mockingbird" with its very weak sourcing should fall under "Project Mockingbird", an article discussing the CIA influence of the media for propaganda purposes, or both; and to which article should Operation Mockingbird then redirect.
 * Given that "Project Mockingbird" and "Operation Mockingbird" are often used synonymously by many people with an interest in the subject, I think we should move the order of the material to put Project Mockingbird at the top and Operation Mockingbird at the bottom, then request an admin to change this article to Project Mockingbird and set Operation Mockingbird to redirect here. I think there are attribution issues if we were to move information over the Project Mockingbird redirect. I believe Bernstein's article is about the CIA's use of the media, but I'm not sure it belongs in an article about Project Mockingbird because it does not mention domestic surveillance and it does not mention "Mockingbird". The information that you put in about Congressional investigations and the CIA response could serve as background here, although I think it should be limited to those things relevant to domestic surveillance. I think citations that reference the CIA's use of the media for propaganda purposes and intelligence collection should go elsewhere. - Location (talk) 17:22, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I support your suggestion to rename and redirect. Perhaps not the final solution, but preferable to the current situation. I am working on a revision of the old "CIA and the media" page which I hope I can get restored. Bernstein's article should be one of the main sources for this. "Operation Mockingbird" could logically be a section there. Rgr09 (talk) 01:38, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree that there is more to be done. I'll try to get to what we've discussed above sometime over the next few days. - Location (talk) 03:28, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I went ahead with your initial suggestion and split the articles. The information in “Congressional investigations” and “CIA response” is good, but much better suited for a broader discussion on CIA and the media or CIA and the press. Given that there is only the one reliable source for OM (i.e. Hadley), I am beginning to think everything should be moved to one of those articles. - Location (talk) 00:33, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

MuckRock article
I recall stumbling across this article in MuckRock a year or two ago: To Kill a MOCKINGBIRD: Recently released records dispel old myths surrounding CIA program targeting journalists from MuckRock. These two excerpts (posted without hyperlinks) seem to state what many of us have been stating here for quite awhile:
 * According to many and the popular consciousness, Operation MOCKINGBIRD was a propaganda program in which CIA would utilize journalists as assets. While such efforts certainly existed, and some were quite widespread, there is only a single source for the name - Deborah Davis’s book, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and Her Washington Post Empire. It’s unclear from the text who Davis’ source for the name is, though she sources several details of the effort to an unnamed “former CIA analyst who worked with MOCKINGBIRD.”
 * There is no official record of MOCKINGBIRD being officially used as a cryptonym for a propaganda program. There is, however, a growing paper trail of documents about a Project MOCKINGBIRD disclosed as the third item in CIA’s Family Jewels.

Any thoughts on using MuckRock as a source? Their editorial policy is here. - Location (talk) 19:00, 31 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Although that was a very interesting post, Muckrock is not a regular publication; I'm not sure they even have a regular staff. I therefore hesitate to endorse them as a reliable source. See the talk page of Inslaw for earlier comments I had about their posts. Rgr09 (talk) 15:20, 1 June 2020 (UTC)


 * It does not mean much, but I noticed that the author and editor of Project Mockingbird article are the same as the author and editor of the Inslaw articles. I certainly don't want to go down a slippery slope of viewing their work acceptable for one article, but not another. I wonder if she was aware of Greg Mitchell's article/book before that came out ~16 months before. By the way, her FOIA request turned up more information on Project Mockingbird that was released two months ago: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/project-mockingbird-49939/#file-856274.
 * I imagine with all these people writing and talking about Operation Mockingbird that somebody has requested information via the FOIA specific to "Operation Mockingbird"... and come up empty. Oh, here is one. The CIA's reply: "We conducted searches on behalf of earlier requesters for records concerning the subject of your request and no records were located. However, we searched our database of previously released records and located the enclosed three documents, totaling five pages, which we believe to be responsive to your request." The material he received is the Project Mockingbird stuff that we have already seen. Now, if the CIA has already admitted to using the media for propaganda purposes at times (see the House and Senate links provided previously), why would they not admit to this massive Operation Mockingbird program alleged by so many? *sigh* - Location (talk) 16:44, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Medium article
Congratulations! I noticed that this edit that you made on January 10, 2017 was copied by James Slate for an article in Medium called "What was Operation Mockingbird?" published August 20, 2018. If you Google passages from that article, you will find pretty much everything is copied from elsewhere. I'm sorry he didn't give you credit for your work! - Location (talk) 20:26, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Katharine the Great by Deborah Davis
As discussed previously, Katharine the Great by Deborah Davis is an unreliable source and it appears to be the origin for the term "Operation Mockingbird". I noticed that there are some changes from the first edition published by Harcourt in 1979 to 2017 ebook edition published by Graymalkin Media. For example, "it was said to have the codename Operation Mockingbird" to a definitive "The program had the name Operation Mockingbird. If anyone knows her sources for these assertions, I would be interested in seeing them. -Location (talk) 21:54, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I believe there are various changes in every edition of KTG. Other than a general attribution to a 'CIA analyst' I don't believe Davis has given any sources for OM. Rgr09 (talk) 23:48, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

David M. Barrett
For future reference: David M. Barrett (2017) JFK, FBI, and CIA: playing hardball over an intelligence leak to the New York Times, Intelligence and National Security, 32:1, 37-53, DOI: 10.1080/02684527.2016.1192888. The abstract for this article from David M. Barrett states: "This article details an aggressive FBI investigation of who had leaked to Baldwin, as well as an initiative at the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct its own future leak investigations inside the US, both authorized by President Kennedy." I do not have access to the article nor do I know if it reveals any information or conclusions published elsewhere, but it appears to have relevance. - Location (talk) 19:03, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I can get access to it. I'll return here when I've read it. Rgr09 (talk) 01:47, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

David P. Hadley
Another reference from the same source is. This article mentions Mockingbird. Hadley also has a book that seems to mention OM as well:. I can get access to the article, I'll check on the book; there is a google books preview available. Rgr09 (talk) 02:00, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Good find! The couple references to "Mockingbird" mentioned in the book would be as a secondary source for Davis's claims in KTG. - Location (talk) 03:26, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I added the material regarding Davis/Mockingbird found in his book, but there is plenty of other information that would be excellent background for CIA and the media. I may have quoted Hadley a little too liberally so I am open to changing it. - Location (talk) 16:44, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Politico article
For future reference: Here's what's in Ben Bradlee's FBI file by Nick Gass with Politico. Gass write: "As his long career wound to a slow close, Bradlee would repeatedly fend off allegations that he was doing cloak-and-dagger work for a different federal agency: the CIA. Bradlee furiously struck back at such assertions in Carol Felsenthal’s 1993 book “Power, Privilege & the Post: The Katharine Graham Story,” for example. The pushback followed Deborah Davis’ 1979 book “Katharine the Great,” which targeted the Post, The New York Times and other prominent publications for their involvement in what Davis dubbed Operation Mockingbird, a secret CIA effort to influence the media." - Location (talk) 15:17, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

an alleged operation
Editorial consensus to use the word 'alleged' to describe Operation Mockingbird was reached after a long discussion on the article's talk page. Unfortunately, the consensus is regularly ignored by drive by editors who simply delete the word 'alleged' from the article's lead without citing sources or adding anything to the discussion. The latest instance is by user, with multiple reverts, no discussion, no sources, and no response to a note left on the user's talk page. I am taking this problem to the Dispute resolution noticeboard; please direct any comments there while the the review is underway. Rgr09 (talk) 12:05, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
 * As asked by another editor at Dispute resolution, please link to the discussion of the 'alleged' wording that you mention above.Dialectric (talk) 14:11, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
 * It is under the talk page section Alleged. Rgr09 (talk) 14:42, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Sloppy grammar needs improvement: the adjective "alleged" is currently modifying the wrong noun. The phrase "is an alleged term used for a large-scale program" incorrectly indicates that the term itself is alleged. Suggested clearer wording: "is a term used for an alleged large-scale program" instead. --Don Brutzman (talk) 23:17, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

What is alleged
There is a long-standing dispute about the use of "alleged" in the article's lead. As I see it, the root cause of the problem is confusion over what is alleged -- the program or the title.

Based on the sources cited, the CIA did seek to influence public opinion by "funding student and cultural organizations and magazines" and using "connections with journalists and civic groups". But the use of the term "Operation Mockingbird" is only alleged.

I propose that the lead be rewritten to clearly state what was fact and what was alleged, with emphasis on the facts. Something like this:

Operation Mockingbird is a term used for a large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate news media for propaganda purposes. The agency funded student and cultural organizations and magazines as front organizations and recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network.

CIA support of front groups was exposed when a 1967 Ramparts magazine article reported that the National Student Association received funding from the CIA. In 1975, Church Committee Congressional investigations revealed Agency connections with journalists and civic groups.

Author Deborah Davis popularized the term "Operation Mockingbird" to describe these activities in her 1979 book Katherine the Great. The term does not appear in contemporary reports about the agency's activities, nor in the Church Committee's findings.

I think this could potentially put to rest the "alleged" dispute once and for all. Any thoughts? 143.244.37.214 (talk) 22:29, 21 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Are the above comments yours? They have an IP signature, but the timing correlates with a similar post you made a few section up above.
 * I am opposed to the suggestion. If we were to change "Operation Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program..." to "Operation Mockingbird is a term used for a large-scale program...", then the next step is that someone would argue "is a term" is redundant leaving "Operation Mockingbird was a large-scale program...". For example, the Wikipedia article for Car states "A car (or automobile) is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transportation." It does not state "A car (or automobile) is a term for a wheeled motor vehicle used for transportation." - Location (talk) 15:33, 22 September 2020 (UTC)


 * I'd support this change. It would handily deal the the problem that we know these activities were occurring, and ordinarily reliable sources describe the activities using the term "Operation Mockingbird," but we're not certain that "Operation Mockingbird" was actually a single coherent CIA operation with that name. -Darouet (talk) 16:00, 22 September 2020 (UTC)


 * I appreciate the editor's willingness to discuss the article on the talk page instead of just deleting the word "alleged", but I do not agree with the suggestion. Deleting a single word will not resolve the problems of the article. The issue continues in the first sentence of the suggested revision: "Operation Mockingbird is a term used for a large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency."
 * There was not a unitary program or project for cold war propaganda, either in the CIA or in any of the other numerous U.S. government offices which handled propaganda, yet the proposed change asserts there was. What is the source for this claim? The Church Committee volumes do NOT support the claim that . The problem is not solved.
 * Second, the new language would state that the term "Operation Mockingbird" was "popularized" by Davis's book. Davis's book is the source of the term. In fact, it is the sole source of the term. Since her, as far as I can tell, no one else has ever even attempted to find a source for the name. "Popularize" is not an accurate description.
 * To sum up, "Operation Mockingbird" is simply not an acceptable cover term for "U.S. government cold war propaganda". The components of cold war propaganda must be listed separately, because they were historically separate, done by different people, at different times, for different purposes. Nor is it acceptable to return to the former version of the page in which some undefined Operation Mockingbird is described as current, or ongoing. The proposed change cited above would invite this interpretation, but you need a source for that. Rgr09 (talk) 17:56, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I need to think about this more and re-read the whole talk page again. My recollection is that last time I did that, you convinced me that the concept of an "operation mockingbird" was flawed, and might well be a misnomer. At the same time, I don't think we had an independent, reliable source backing up your claim. Is that still the case? If so, defining "Operation Mockingbird" as a term used by various sources to describe XYZ is preferable to using the word "alleged," which seems to go into OR territory. I'm not going to have time to think about this hard right now / do research, so I will recuse myself, for the moment, from contributing to a conclusion to this discussion. But I just want to put this idea out there as a framework. Curious to know what you think. -Darouet (talk) 20:40, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

I oppose rephrasing to avoid "alleged" in the lead. Any activities the CIA was doing at any time to manipulate news media belongs in the article CIA influence on public opinion. This article is about the program that was claimed to exist, but never confirmed. Now if you feel the the phrase "Operation Mockingbird" has become slang or jargon for such activities and you have citations to support that, you could add a paragraph or a section regarding that to the body. Perhaps a "In popular culture" or "Cultural references" section is needed, but such a section should be supported by citations per MOS:CULTURALREFS showing significance. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 02:26, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree. We do have an independent reliable source - Hadley - stating that Deborah Davis is the originator for the term "Operation Mockingbird" and the theory that "the CIA operated a deliberate and systematic program of widespread manipulation of the U.S. media" and that her theory "does not appear to be grounded in reality". - Location (talk) 21:45, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Conflation of Project Mockingbird vs. Operation Mockingbird
The lead paragraph currently includes the following statement:
 * It funded student and cultural organizations and magazines as front organizations.

There are a few issues with the source noted (e.g. it conflates Operation Mockingbird with Project Mockingbird in numerous places; it cites articles on angelfire.com and Newsmax), but I guess the most relevant is that it does not actually support the statement in the article (i.e. it doesn't say anything about front organizations). Removed per failed verification. - Location (talk) 02:58, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

CIA response
The CIA claims that prior to the release of the Church report, they had already begun restricting their use of journalists. According to the report, former CIA director William Colby informed the committee that in 1973 he had issued instructions that "As a general policy, the Agency will not make any clandestine use of staff employees of U.S. publications which have a substantial impact or influence on public opinion."

In February 1976, Director George H. W. Bush announced an even more restrictive policy: "effective immediately, CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station."

By the time the Church Committee Report was completed, all CIA contacts with accredited journalists had allegedly been dropped. The Committee noted, however, that "accredited correspondent" meant the ban was limited to individuals "formally authorized by contract or issuance of press credentials to represent themselves as correspondents" and that non-contract workers who did not receive press credentials, such as stringers or freelancers, were not included.

Discussion
As The Washington Post article above indicates, people tend to conflate the alleged "Operation Mockingbird" with the real "Project Mockingbird" and the real relationships the CIA had with journalists. I have removed the above sections per WP:SYNTH as the sources supplied do not indicate that Seymour Hersh or the Church Committee investigated what is alleged to be "Operation Mockingbird" or that the CIA had any response to any investigations of what is alleged to be "Operation Mockingbird". The material IS relevant to CIA influence on public opinion and Rgr09 has already placed it in that article. - Location (talk) 20:13, 1 December 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion regarding Watergate, Seymour Hersh, and the Church Committee has been condensed and included with appropriate sourcing as it has relevance to Hadley's comment that "continued lack of specific details [provided by the Church Committee and Bernstein's exposé] proved a breeding ground for some outlandish claims regarding CIA and the press". - Location (talk) 01:46, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I would condense it even more to a brief summary section labeled "Background" with a main article pointer to Church Committee or CIA influence on public opinion. Right now the "History" section is so obscure and devotes so much space to unrelated accusations against the CIA that only the last two or three sentences contain what might be helpful to a reader wondering what the conspiracy theory about Operation Mockingbird was. - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:46, 11 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I have changed the section label and trimmed the following...
 * According to Bernstein, 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). 


 * Is that what you had in mind? I know it won't get very much traction, but AFAIK Operation Mockingbird could point to a subsection of CIA influence on public opinion since that is what most people think they are referring to when they mention the subject. - Location (talk) 22:49, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Hm. Maybe front-loading the Background isn't such a good structure for the body text. Operation Mockingbird is obviously a CT, so perhaps the structure should be more elementary, e.g. "Mockingbird is a CT”, "Mockingbird CT claims...", "the origins of Mockingbird are...", "its proponents include..." etc. and then "Background" last. - LuckyLouie (talk) 23:10, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah. I just read the Talk page archives and now I understand, this article is the result of protracted discussion and compromise. Which explains why the article has such poor readability. Honestly, my first impression was that the CIA had an actual program that did what Operation Mockingbird is claimed to do, they just didn't call it Operation Mockingbird. - LuckyLouie (talk) 13:49, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Conspiracy theory
HERE is a link to an article in The Washington Post titled "Fact-checking QAnon conspiracy theories: Did J.P. Morgan sink the Titanic?" (Full citation: ) The section on Operation Mockingbird states:
 * QAnon posters dismiss press reports they do not like by claiming they are part of “Operation Mockingbird,” supposedly a continuation of a 1950s CIA program to distribute propaganda through the media.
 * The CIA really did cultivate extensive relationships with the American press: Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein reported in Rolling Stone in 1977 that CIA files showed 400 reporters had “secretly carried out assignments” for the agency in the ’50s through ’70s.
 * A declassified 1965 CIA memo names at least 20 prominent journalists whom a CIA deputy director briefed from 1957 to 1965. For years, conspiracists identified this effort as “Operation Mockingbird,” based on a 1967 article in Ramparts. But the actual “Project Mockingbird” was something different: a 1963 CIA effort to wiretap two Washington journalists believed to have received top-secret leaks. QAnon, though, uses the phrase “mockingbird” to mock all mainstream media, as if the CIA program still exists and controls everything.

The article does not explicitly state "Operation Mockingbird is a conspiracy theory", however, it lists Operation Mockingbird in an article about conspiracy theories and it states that the term is used by conspiracy theorists. Is this enough to change the lead paragraph to state "Operation Mockingbird is a conspiracy theory..."? - Location (talk) 21:09, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * No. It will be contested and it is not needed. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 05:19, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It is only a conspiracy theory so much as any theory about a group of people conspiring to do something (which is basically the CIA's job) is a conspiracy theory. SomerIsland (talk) 19:30, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Outside of QAnon adherents and the like, the idea that the CIA has an ongoing program to manipulate the US media is a conspiracy theory. - Location (talk) 20:13, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * So an organization with a long history of spending billions on manipulating the media, denying that they are doing so, and lying to the government and public about doing so says "Hey, we definitely did all those crimes, but we pinky promise that we aren't doing them anymore; and no you are not allowed to see inside all these buildings!", and you think that is at all credible? This has the same vibe as Charlie Brown getting tricked by Lucy grabbing the football over and over again, believing each time that they're definitely telling the truth and then getting surprised a few years later when things are leaked or declassified. Further, all of this is ignoring their well documented manipulations during the Iraq war, their funding of media projects in Hollywood, and that every statement they put out is designed to manipulate the public in some way. I mean, if you're okay applying the same standard of blindly trusting intelligence agencies when they claim to have cancelled some program or operation then sure; but it should be applied to the Russians and Chinese as well. SomerIsland (talk) 20:49, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * It has nothing to do with blind trust. When conspiracists use the term "Operation Mockingbird", they are claiming the CIA continues to manipulate domestic media. If you have proof of that, show it. If it meets Wikipedia standards, then it might qualify for inclusion in the article. Or are you requiring us to have blind trust in what you think is true? - Location (talk) 23:01, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The idea that the CIA has an ongoing program to manipulate the US media is not a theory. It IS a conspiracy.  Anyone that thinks this is a theory has swallowed their propaganda. 2601:603:4880:E440:81E6:488A:A3F6:35DE (talk) 16:56, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Alleged
We need to keep the language saying that Operation Mockingbird was an "alleged" program since there are no reliable sources indicating that that a program of this name actually existed. The Davis book isn't reliable, and the reliable sources that are cited (e.g. the Hersh article) make no mention of "Operation Mockingbird" and could be about something else. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:25, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Family Jewels, a report from the CIA, refers to a Project Mockingbird and describes it. It is not alleged. However, perhaps anything beyond what was in that report could be presented as "alleged". It would depend on the source. What parts of the article do you thing are merely alleged? Richard-of-Earth (talk) 08:33, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The article distinguishes between Project Mockingbird and Operation Mockingbird, or at least I intended that it would distinguish between them when I revised it. Perhaps I did a poor job. Project Mockingbird was a 3 month wire-tap on two reporters. It was one of the subjects of the Family Jewels report, and was first made public in a 1985 book. If this were all there were to it, in my opinion this falls far below the criteria for a separate article and could easily be discussed in the Family Jewels article, where it is already mentioned. It is mentioned here because earlier versions of the article lumped it in with Operation Mockingbird. Operation Mockingbird, as described in a single source, a book by reporter Deborah Davis, is in fact a totally different thing. Davis seems to claim that ALL of the United States efforts in Cold War propaganda were part of a single monolithic program. The details for this in Davis's book are so sparse as to render a full length article very difficult to write. There are NO other sources which make this claim, except internet articles and a bizarre book by Alexander Constantine, which should not even be mentioned in the article. NO one else mentions an Operation Mockingbird AT ALL, and Davis's book suffers from serious credibility issues. It was retracted by its publisher under circumstances described in the article on the book.  'Alleged' is by no means an improper term.
 * I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to track down the sources originally cited in this article and it was a very frustrating experience. They do not support most of the claims made in the article, as my notes above show. That the US, through the CIA and other government organs, engaged in a serious propaganda effort during the 1950s 60s is absolutely true, and deserves a real article. I suggested that this could go in the article CIA influence on public opinion, though this is already somewhat misleading, since it suggests that the CIA was the sole, or even leading, government agency in this area, a suggestion which is probably not true.  If someone ever has the time and energy to try produce or revise an article on this subject, this article should be promptly merged into it, and a dab page left here in its place Rgr09 (talk) 15:48, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
 * , it occurred to me in reading your response that instead of moving this content into a broader article about CIA influence, we should instead by merging it into Katharine the Great. After all, this article is nothing more than a summary of the book's allegations and the distinctions between those allegations and other programs. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:04, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I am in agreement with all of you. As you know, it is common in these types of articles to see a WP:REDFLAG claim - often a primary source claim like this one - followed by other cherry-picked material intended to support it without direct mention of the original claim or person making the claim. (I see it so often that I wish there was a term for it!) There are reliable secondary sources that confirming that PROJECT Mockingbird was a real thing (e.g. The Washington Post, The New York Times), so my !vote would be to reverse how PROJECT Mockingbird and OPERATION Mockingbird are addressed in the article. I suggest re-titling the article Project Mockingbird, write whatever we can about that using reliable secondary sources, then near the bottom mention the allegations of Operation Mockingbird to the extent they are discussed in reliable secondary sources. I know it is a popular belief among conspiracy believers, but Davis' WP:REDFLAG claim should not even be mentioned if it is not discussed in those types of sources. Those are the rules of WP:REDFLAG. -Location (talk) 16:06, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
 * For future reference, this biography of John McCone by chief CIA historian David Robarge refers to Project Mockingbird on pages 328-329. There are not many more details than what we have here already. - Location (talk) 03:09, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

I've just added a reference from Routledge's Encyclopedia of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. The encyclopedia has a full-page, two-column entry on the program and does describes it as real, not merely "alleged." -Darouet (talk) 18:44, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Regarding Encyclopedia of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Hayden Peake was (is?) curator of CIA's Historical Intelligence Collection and he has reviewed hundreds of books of this type. In his 2005 review (p. 85), he wrote: "Professor Carlisle’s Encyclopedia of Intelligence and Counterintelligence is a good place to start when readers, students, or analysts look for historical background. Nevertheless, as a matter of prudence, check other sources where particular facts are important to the case at hand intelligence requires multiple source validation whenever possible." (The review of Spy Book is here and Peake states: "one should be cautious if detail is important to one's task".) One important thing to note is that knowledge of the Family Jewels and Project Mockingbird was not made public until 2007, so the authors and editors of Encyclopedia of Intelligence and Counterintelligence did not have access to that information. Their entry is called "Project Mockingbird" and we now have multiple reliable sources on "Project Mockingbird" that contradict what they have to say about it (i.e. that it was a propaganda program started by Frank Wisner). I also noticed that their entry on Frank Wisner cites this Newsmax article which in turn cites other unreliable sources: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/ and http://www.grandconspiracy.com/library.html#operation. Pretty much anyone writing about "Operation Mockingbird" has the same issues of either not using citations or citing unreliable material. - Location (talk) 15:31, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

There are a lot of evidence for it. It has obviously existed, so its not an "alleged" program. It is a program, and if anyone feels like like it isn't, then go ahead edit it back, but I'm gonna go edit it away. In my opinion having spent a while on this, I do not think it is alleged. It may be alleged to do some things which it didn't, or something of the sort, but the program existed, and I think its fair to say we have enough evidence.88.193.234.86 (talk) 13:59, 10 June 2018 (UTC)


 * We need reliable sources, not unspecified "evidence." --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 00:27, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
 * So you need reliable sources that some people call an operation a project? Do you need a thesaurus Dr. Fleischman? Volunteer Mockingbird (talk) 21:40, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Please try to keep the discussion civil and constructive. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 22:17, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I was pinged here by a discussion below and I realized I never responded to this conversation. Thank you all for your responses above. I see now that the article makes it clear that Project Mockingbird is not alleged and was acknowledged by the CIA and Operation Mockingbird is merely alleged and not acknowledged by the CIA. I support the word "alleged" in the lead sentence in regard to Operation Mockingbird. Per WP:WIKIVOICE we should not present opinions nor contested assertions as facts. I also agree that Project Mockingbird is not the same as Operation Mockingbird and should not be presented as the same in any way. I am also not interested in debating the issue. I feel sufficient arguments have already been made by others (much much more then sufficient). If I do not post again on this board, it is because nothing has been said to change my mind and I do not feel the need to try to change anyone else's mind on the matter. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 07:48, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I don’t think that’s true. Neither the program nor the Operation are alleged at all in 2023.  It’s been confirmed and verified with multiple official documents. Viriditas (talk) 23:12, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

A black eye for Wikipedia
This is one of the worst articles in Wikipedia: a lengthy entry often viewed over 1000 times a day that is almost entirely baseless. Almost everything in this article that is not total nonsense should go in CIA influence on public opinion. I have been looking for several weeks now, and the claim that there was an "Operation Mockingbird" appears to trace back to only ONE source: Deborah Davis's biography of Katherine Graham, a book which was withdrawn by the publishers after Graham complained. As an example of how bad the article is, forget about the phrase Operation Mockingbird, the WORD Mockingbird does not seem to appear even once in the entire Church Committee report, yet there is a whole section devoted to the Church Committee report in the article. I will get back to the article when I have finished my search of the Church Committee report and the lengthy supplemental volumes. Rgr09 (talk) 16:04, 9 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I erred. There are other sources besides Davis, there is Alex Constantine's Virtual Government. Wikipedia used to have an article on Constantine, but it has been deleted (twice). Nonetheless, his writings live on in Wikipedia through this page. Rgr09 (talk) 12:37, 12 October 2016 (UTC)


 * What about Kevin Shipp's interview in Out Of Shadows? If he has worked for CIA, wouldn't he be a reliable source? BlueBanana (talk) 20:56, 12 April 2020 (UTC)


 * WP:REDFLAG is very relevant. First of all, Shipp appears to have made many very questionable claims, and having worked for the CIA is not a guarantee of reliability. There are many people who have claimed to have worked for the CIA who have simply made stuff up (e.g. Tosh Plumlee, Chauncey Marvin Holt, Chuck Barris!!!, etc.), and there are many people who did work for the CIA who simply made stuff up (e.g. Victor Marchetti, Frank Sturgis, etc.). Although Shipp's statements to reliable sources might be able to be used with attribution, Out of Shadows (with its ties to Mike Smith and QAnon) would almost certainly fail as a reliable source. Perhaps Rgr09 has more on this. -Location (talk) 18:20, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I have not heard of the source Out of Shadows and would appreciate a link. I can't offer any opinion until I know more about it. Rgr09 (talk) 07:37, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I am not sure you will appreciate it, but see https://www.outofshadows.org/. -Location (talk) 21:52, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the link,Location. The website has no information on who established it, who runs it, or who writes its content. This seems ironic, given the site's name. I followed the links on the site and eventually found the video. I do not really have the time to watch the whole thing just to find out if there are credits anywhere on it. Although I watched chunks off the beginning and end of it, I saw no credits. In the interview clips I saw in this limited sample, the people speaking were also unidentified. This sort of thing is the antithesis of what Wikipedia looks for in a source. It is, in fact, an anti-source, even less usable than the works of Alex Constantine, who at least has the courtesy to use a pseudonym on his books. Rgr09 (talk) 07:41, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I cannot disagree. The Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at Middlebury Institute of International Studies published a report on this "documentary" recently (see Far-Right Communities are Pushing a Q-Anon Film [summary] and Far-Right Communities are Pushing a Q-Anon Film [full report]). It's all quite bizarre. -Location (talk) 06:47, 29 May 2020 (UTC)


 * The general fact of Mockingbird was confirmed by a Congressional inquiry. It is not controversial. As far as I can tell, the alleged controversy here is whether these actions taken by the CIA fell under an umbrella that was officially called Operation Mockingbird. I don't see why this question is even relevant. Even if the CIA never used the term "Operation Mockingbird" they objectively did do the things described in this article, by their own admission, and "Operation Mockingbird" is the label that has come to be attached to those operations. The people complaining do not understand how language works and are motivated by ideological concerns, in my opinion. The fact that something was done by your government doesn't mean people aren't allowed to talk about it.


 * Relatedly, I think there's a perceivable difference in tone within this article, between when it is describing alleged operations by the US government and when it is describing alleged operations by the USSR. The former takes pains to qualify every statement, even when such qualifications seem unnecessary or excessive, while the latter is simply stated as fact. Do others agree that this is inappropriate? Our standard of evidence shouldn't depend on which country we're talking about. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tausami (talk • contribs) 18:13, 7 May 2020 (UTC)


 * You say that "the general fact of Mockingbird" was confirmed by a Congressional inquiry. What do you mean by "the general fact" of Mockingbird? What was the Congressional inquiry that confirmed it? Please cite sources. You say that "Operation Mockingbird is the label that has come to be attached to those operations". Attached by whom? Attached to what? There must be sources.


 * Why is this so? Because Wikipedia articles must have adequate, appropriate sources. The Davis book makes claims that are found nowhere else. These include core content in her account, such as who was in charge of what and when. If Davis is this seriously flawed, another source must be found. If there is no appropriate source for 'Operation Mockingbird', the article with the title 'Operation Mockingbird' should go. Instead, there should be an appropriately titled article that addresses a clearly defined subject and gives reliably sourced claims and statements on well-established facts. I give as examples topics such as CIA funding of non-governmental organizations like the National Student Association, or CIA use of journalists. At one point there WAS an article on CIA and the Press, unfortunately merged into another article that was never completed.


 * Responding to your comment on Soviet practices, Davis's book originally stated that 'Operation Mockingbird' was created as a response to Soviet practices. It is simply another quote from the book, a relevant quote previously omitted. I do not see a perceivable difference in the way the article cites Davis's claims on either American or Soviet practices. Do you believe the Davis claims on 'Mockingbird'? If so, why reject the claim on the Soviets? I do NOT believe Davis's claims on Mockingbird. I therefore naturally reject the claim that Mockingbird was the U.S. response to the creation of the IOJ. Rgr09 (talk) 07:37, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I’ve been reading up on all your claims on this page, and I have to say they are incredibly suspect and go well beyond the sources. Yes, there are subjects that we do not have all the information about, but that does not stop us from writing articles about them. Most of your arguments come down to perfect world and nothing but objections fallacies. Viriditas (talk) 23:38, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

It is not an "alleged" operation
It is not

" alleged". There is documentation in the CIA website and the New York times published a full investigation of this operation in 1976 and ran that article. This operation has never been shut down officially 47.32.139.208 (talk) 05:42, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Higher up on this very Talk page, you will find the sentence As The Washington Post article above indicates, people tend to conflate the alleged "Operation Mockingbird" with the real "Project Mockingbird" and the real relationships the CIA had with journalists. --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:36, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Still not alleged in any way. Abigail Sessions: "Representatives for the CIA testified in front of the Church Committee in 1975 and admitted that at the peak of mockingbird’s activities there were at least 400 journalists on the CIA payroll in at least 25 media organizations. On January 30, 1976, George H. W. Bush became the director of the CIA and instituted a new policy stating that “Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.” In 1976 Operation mockingbird was officially shut down, although many critics speculate that the CIA continued [its] campaign of media manipulation." I removed the term. Viriditas (talk) 23:18, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I self-reverted due to the obvious talk page opposition. I will have to confront this opposition first. Looking briefly at the page, there are some unusual claims here that don’t pan out, particularly the idea that we can’t trust Constantine (1997), Marks (1974), Thomas (1995), and Wilford (2008), in other words, all the sources that support the claim. Further, I’m not seeing how these authors confuse the Operation and the Project. Viriditas (talk) 23:51, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
 * They are simply using semantics because it is the only opposing point they could use without looking entirely crazy. It is common sense to assume "Operation" and "Project" refer to the same document. They are synonymous. The one who is actually correct (talk) 08:06, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Alleged (Re)
From my own edit report: Removed alleged. I will continue to remove alleged for the next 50 years if I have to. The CIA have this file for public access on their own website. It is an officially released document. It is not alleged. It is undeniably, verifiably true and real. You are delusional if you disagree, and if you change it back I will war with you endlessly. Do not fight this. You do not want the stress and monotony. The one who is actually correct (talk) 08:09, 13 May 2023 (UTC)


 * To add, before someone says this before me. Do not attempt to use semantics to differentiate the names "Operation Mockingbird" and "Project Mockingbird". They, in fact, describe the exact same thing. One is simply a common and widely used term, while the other is slightly different, yet official and synonymous. I will ignore any claims against my proposal which use either semantics, or "conspiracy" as the basis of their argument. Circular, closed-minded discussion is not to be had. I will not engage. The one who is actually correct (talk) 08:13, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Semantics, in this case, matter. Project Mockingbird is the acknowledged scheme. It only involves wire-tapping. It is also acknowledged that the CIA has attempted to influence public opinion in various ways, but that was not part of Project Mockingbird as documented. This article is about the assertions made over the years about "Operation Mockingbird". "Operation Mockingbird" and "Project Mockingbird" are two different things. Until documentation is supplied that is acknowledged as authentic by the CIA that shows there was a scheme described by these assertions and titled "Operation Mockingbird", it will remain an alleged activity. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 20:32, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Question: User:Richard-of-Earth, is there any good reason this page shouldn’t redirect to CIA influence on public opinion? It would make more sense to have this subject mentioned in that larger article. Viriditas (talk) 21:48, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
 * There is currently no mention of Operation Mockingbird on that page, so I am assuming you would like to merge this article into it. Over time people would probably keep whittling away content about Operation Mockingbird citing WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE and perhaps eliminate it. I think the subject deserves it own article. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 04:13, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Please take a look at the current version of this article. Isn't it just a summary style of CIA influence on public opinion?  If it's not, and there's substance to be found, please point it out for me.  Another thing, have any of the sources that originated this designation ever followed up on it?  Finally, what's the best evidence we have for "Operation Mockingbird"?  Isn't this just a general umbrella for the entire effort of the CIA to influence public opinion? Bonus:  have any current researchers made mention of this subject?  For example, has Thomas Rid ever written about it?  For me, the silence is deafening.  How do we explain this? Viriditas (talk) 08:55, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Basically every sentence that mentions "Operation Mockingbird" is the substance of this article. You are basically suggesting we delete the article and I will not support that. I would like to see some improvement in the article. If there are WP:RS's out there that support for "Operation Mockingbird"?  is a general umbrella for the entire effort of the CIA to influence public opinion, I would like to see that added. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 05:10, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * this site way too uptight wtf 50.36.161.49 (talk) 05:12, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * You didn’t answer any of my questions. Instead, you made assumptions about my motives. Not a good discussion, I’m afraid. Viriditas (talk) 05:20, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * You asked a total of eight questions, including the one in your first post. It is true I have only answered two. The rest seem to be putting me in a position of defending the article, or just rhetoric. I do not have to defend the article, I just have to say what I think. I think turning the page into a redirect is tantamount to deleting the article. You asked the first "what do you think about" question. I though, why are we going off on a tangent, but fine. When I gave an answer, you asked seven more argumentative questions, some of which call for WP:OR evaluations to answer and ultimately, none of it directly having to do with the subject presented by the OP. I feel like I gave you an inch in answering the first question and then you demanded a mile. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 05:48, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * the entire article goes against wiki's own anti-bias policies 50.36.161.49 (talk) 06:15, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * You appear to be projecting your own argumentativeness and oddly defensive posture when I simply asked the most basic questions regarding verification. If you're confused, go back and read your responses.  I have never once said that I wanted to delete the topic.  I have never once argued that the topic should be eliminated.  In fact, this talk page shows me making multiple comments defending its existence.  However, I am now taking the opposing position, as it is the only way to be intellectually honest.  In other words, we must be able to argue from both sides and figure out which side comes out on top.  We cannot, as you are doing, favor one side only, and then argue from that position while neglecting the other. Viriditas (talk) 06:36, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * we must all come together. without this, the article will be problemed until 2089 50.36.161.49 (talk) 07:07, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * FWIW: I agree with Richard-of-Earth that Project Mockingbird and Operation Mockingbird are two different concepts, and that "alleged" should be used with Operation Mockingbird. I also agree with Viriditas that what people believe to be Operation Mockingbird falls under the broader topic of CIA influence on public opinion. I think I prefer the separate article on Operation Mockingbird, however, I have no strong objections to merge and redirect since I don't think either side wants to see the subject matter go away. -Location (talk) 16:43, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Agree with Richard-of-Earth and Location that Project Mockingbird and Operation Mockingbird are two different concepts, per our high quality academic sources. Crucially, the article desperately needs some rewriting for clarity. The text is muddy; e.g. the lead gives the most space to Deborah Davis claims and ends up confusingly mentioning that a document doesn't contain references to Operation Mockingbird (which is challenged with a "fact" tag). The body also rambles on re the claims and finally cites David P. Hadley, but only near the end. Somebody who knows the material should take a crack at improving the text and the structure. - LuckyLouie (talk) 21:48, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * There is no high quality source that supports "Operation Mockingbird". That’s the problem. I thought the talk page discussion up above makes this clear.  The current version of this article is simply a summary style of the CIA influence on public opinion article. Viriditas (talk) 02:07, 17 May 2023 (UTC)


 * The alleged "Operation" and the real wiretapping "Project" have become conflated, as Aaron John Gulyas (citing Hadley) clarifies here: . An equally reliable Oxford source also credits Davis and calls the alleged Operation "disputed" . I see what you mean, though, only the Oxford source explicitly names "Operation Mockingbird" and credits it to Davis. I haven't been able to find a source that specifies that the "Project" name was used to describe the wiretapping. - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:48, 18 May 2023 (UTC)


 * No worries, I went through the same process. It's maddening as well as frustrating. Hugh Wilford's book is an incredible resource as are the works by Thomas Rid. It's still totally unclear to me as to how Davis got the term "Operation Mockingbird".  There's no indication in all three editions as to why she uses it.  Someone on this talk page said she got it through the FOIA, but I've seen no such evidence.  I can only speak for myself, but there seems to be three possible explanations: 1) she was given the correct operation name by a leaker in the CIA; 2) she conflated it with the Project for one reason or another; 3) she made it up.  Unfortunately, none of these answers are satisfying.  It is certainly unusual that she was the only person to know of a "Mockingbird" designation almost 30 years before the wiretapping designation of the same name was released.  I can't explain that. Viriditas (talk) 07:58, 19 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, seems difficult to discover WP:THETRUTH of what went on. But, as editors, all we can do is summarize what the majority of experts have written and what those sources say. - LuckyLouie (talk) 12:48, 19 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I've done that below, and recently I've compiled even more. None of them, not one, use the term "Operation Mockingbird" to discuss this subject, and none of them refer to it as "alleged".   As just an example, the New York Times confirmed the story in December 1977, a story which had been widely known for years before this, such as Stuart Loory's 1974 article in the CJR which provides an enormous amount of detail.  It is entirely unclear to me why this current subject is discussed at "Operation Mockingbird", a term that isn't used by any reliable source for the last 50 years and has zero currency in the intelligence literature. This current article (Operation Mockingbird) should exist only as a redirect, with the subject discussed by reliable sources.   Richard-of-Earth's claims, when seen in this light, are exceptionally odd and unusual.   Richard-of-Earth has argued that I want to prevent the discussion of this subject, but in point of fact, my position is the exact opposite.  I want to expand, enlarge, develop, and build upon this topic using the appropriate, all-encompassing and inclusive title to facilitate that process.  In fact, our positions appear to be polar opposite.  It is Richard-of-Earth, in fact, who wants to prevent the expansion of this topic by keeping it held hostage under an unreliable article title supported by unreliable sources. Viriditas (talk) 11:01, 21 May 2023 (UTC)