Operation Mockingbird is an alleged 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 domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes.
[5] In the early years of the Cold War, efforts were made by the United States Government to use mass media to influence public opinion internationally.
After the United States Senate Watergate Committee in 1973 uncovered domestic surveillance abuses directed by the Executive branch of the United States government and The New York Times in 1974 published an article by Seymour Hersh claiming the CIA had violated its charter by spying on anti-war activists, former CIA officials and some lawmakers called for a congressional inquiry that became known as the Church Committee.
[7] Bernstein documented the way in which overseas branches of major US news agencies had for many years served as the "eyes and ears" of Operation Mockingbird, which functioned to disseminate CIA propaganda through domestic US media.
[9] In Katharine the Great, Deborah Davis' 1979 unauthorized biography of Katharine Graham, owner of The Washington Post, the author states that the CIA ran an "Operation Mockingbird" during this time, writing that the Prague-based International Organization of Journalists (IOJ) "received money from Moscow and controlled reporters on every major newspaper in Europe, disseminating stories that promoted the Communist cause",[10] and that Frank Wisner, director of the Office of Policy Coordination (a covert operations unit created in 1948 by the United States National Security Council) had created Operation Mockingbird in response to the IOJ, recruiting Phil Graham from The Washington Post to run the project within the industry.