MOCKINGBIRD

Opening

The name Mockingbird sits on more than one paper. Project Mockingbird, in the CIA Family Jewels, was a 1963 wiretap on columnists Robert Allen and Paul Scott, 12 March to 15 June. The wider story is older. Frank Wisner at the Office of Policy Coordination, from 1948, built a network that placed material in foreign and, at times, domestic outlets. Cord Meyer is named in later books as a principal hand. Deborah Davis, in Katharine the Great, used the phrase Operation Mockingbird for that network. The Agency has not adopted her title as an official program name covering the whole press.

What is not fog is the Church Committee, 1975-76. Its final report said the CIA then maintained several hundred foreign individuals with access to newspapers, agencies and broadcasters, and about fifty American journalists or media employees as assets, fewer than half of them accredited. Carl Bernstein in Rolling Stone, 1977, put the American number higher than four hundred across years and named rooms at the Times, CBS and Time. Payments in the committee record ran to about a million dollars in the window they examined. Official narrative after Church was reform and a narrower rule on American newsrooms.

Timeline

1948 onwardWisner's OPC network. Placement, not always a captioned project the public can file under one word.

12 March to 15 June 1963Family Jewels Project Mockingbird: a tap on Allen and Scott. That caption is narrow and real.

1975-76 ChurchThe count of foreign and American assets. Reform language after.

Wisner's OPC net is the older weather. Davis's title is a later name for that weather. The Jewels caption is narrower and dated: two columnists, twelve weeks in 1963. Do not let the brand eat the tap or the tap eat the brand.

Church's count is the page that survives an argument about titles. Several hundred foreign, about fifty American, fewer than half accredited, in the window they examined. Bernstein's higher American number is journalism that named rooms. It is not the committee table by itself.

Key figures

Frank Wisner and Cord Meyer own the early network in the later telling.

Robert Allen and Paul Scott own the 1963 tap that actually carries the Mockingbird caption.

The Church Committee owns the count the record can stand on.

Carl Bernstein and Deborah Davis own the larger American map. Their map is journalism. It is not the Jewels caption by itself.

Physical and documentary trail

The record:

One: the Family Jewels Project Mockingbird tap, March-June 1963.

Two: Church Committee language on several hundred foreign individuals and about fifty American media employees.

Three: payment figures in the window Church examined.

Four: Bernstein 1977 and Davis's later title.

There is no public roster of every name. There is no Agency stamp that Davis's title covers the whole press. There is no denial that Church's count existed.

A Senate count and a Family Jewels caption are the two objects that do not need a book title. A full roster would end the rest. Until then the record is a count plus a tap, not a switch on every newsroom.

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.

Things you might not know

• Bernstein counted over 400 journalists. His 1977 article said more than 400 Americans in the press had carried out CIA assignments over about 25 years.
• He named big names. They included the columnist Stewart Alsop and Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times.
• The wiretap targets were two columnists. Robert S. Allen and Paul Scott were the journalists tapped under the 1963 operation.
• Davis put the Washington Post at the centre. She claimed Frank Wisner recruited the paper's Phil Graham, with Cord Meyer later the main operative.
• A student group was funded too. In 1967 Ramparts magazine revealed that the National Student Association had received CIA money.
• Historians are sceptical of the big version. The historian David P. Hadley wrote that the Davis account of Operation Mockingbird "does not appear to be grounded in reality".

Competing explanations

A named press-control program covering American newsrooms. This is the popular reading. It has Davis's title. It has no Agency stamp for that whole title.

A real foreign-influence net plus a small American asset count plus one 1963 tap. This is Church plus Jewels. It is enough without the brand.

Exaggeration after Watergate. Weak against the committee page.

Later life of the case

"Operation Mockingbird" became a byword online for the idea that intelligence agencies control the news, a much bigger claim than the 1963 wiretap or the Church Committee count supports. The documented record is still the Senate figures, Carl Bernstein's 1977 article and the Family Jewels caption. For the inquiry that put the numbers on paper, see the Church Committee.

Finding

The Church Committee wrote that the CIA kept hundreds of foreign press contacts and about fifty American media employees as assets, and the Family Jewels named a 1963 tap Project Mockingbird.

What still will not resolve: a full public roster, or an Agency page that adopts Davis's title for the whole net.