Operation Mockingbird

[John Simkin]

It must be remembered that from the end of WWII to the late eighties the Western democracies were indeed fighting a "cold war" against a totalitarian and repressive regime as evil as that of Nazi Germany (Stalin killed at least as many as Hitler; see Robert Conquest's books.) This regime had announced its intention to "bury" the western democracies and was doing its best to accomplish its objective.

Provided the articles were truthful, was it wrong for the CIA to attempt to "plant" pro-Western articles in the foreign press? If for no other reason to counter the disinformation being spread by the KGB. One could consider Operation Mockingbird as "covert public relations". I for one cannot see a moral objection for the CIA to, for instance, encourage a friendly Miami newsman to write a story about political or religious repression in Cuba, provided the article was factually accurate.

The cold war was in fact "cold" because it was in some part fought in the arena of public perception, particularly in the non-aligned countries.

Let me try a different hyypothetical. Would it have been wrong for the CIA to encourage stories about the successes of the Peace Corps?

It strikes me that to deny the US the right to encourage, even covertly, the placement of pro-Western news stories to counter anti-Western stories (many false) being planted by the KGB (see "The Sword and the Shield") would be like requiring the west to fight a hot war without bullets.

Journalists who encouraged the forces of democracy deserve commendation not condemnation, IMO.

Going by your postings I can see why you are in favour of the CIA manipulating the media via Operation Mockingbird. However, I am rather surprised that you have admitted to this on this thread.

In his Senate report, “Select Committee to Study Government Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities” (April, 1976), Frank Church argued that there were several reasons why the CIA should not be involved in media manipulation. This report was signed by all members of the committee including the three Republicans, John Tower, Howard Baker and Barry Goldwater.

(1) That under the terms of the 1947 National Security Act it was illegal for the CIA to be engaged in operations directed at Americans within the United States. The committee pointed out that the reason for this prohibition was to protect the “American people from the possibility that the CIA might act in any way that would have an impact upon their rights” (see pages 135-139 of the report).

(2) Church’s investigation discovered that the CIA paid “journalists to devise and place propaganda” in the media. The CIA also planted smear stories about people they considered to be dangerous. For example, by using the Freedom of Information Act, William Turner discovered that the CIA established Operation Nightingale as part of the Mockingbird Project (see pages 299-300 of Rearview Mirror) that was used to smear critics of the Warren Commission report. Church believed this CIA activity was wrong for several reasons. For example, it was illegal (see point 1). A second reason was that the “diversity and legitimacy” of the media needs to be “rigorously protected”. The committee felt that the planting of propaganda by the CIA was undermining this process (see pages 179-180).

(3) Church points out that the CIA were unwilling to provide all the documents they sought in order to fully discover the way that the CIA manipulated the media. In fact, it mainly had to rely on information discovered by investigative journalists working for left-wing journals such as Ramparts and the Nation. However, the CIA did provide a list of 50 journalists who were “part of a network of several hundred individuals” who attempted to influence public opinion by placing “covert propaganda” in the media. William Colby, claimed in testimony before the House Select Committee on Intelligence (HSCI) that the CIA had focused its efforts on those people living abroad and therefore had not acted illegally. That was supported by the restricted list of names provided by the CIA to the HSCI. The suspicion was of course that this was the reason why the CIA was unwilling to name the full list of journalists working on their behalf.

The HSCI discovered that even if these stories were “planted” in foreign newspapers and journals, there was no way that this information could not be stopped coming back into the United States. In fact, several CIA agents testified that this so-called “fall-out” was a fully intended consequence of the operation (pages 199-200).

Over the years released documents show that the CIA was indeed using journalists to plant stories in the American media. This includes several journalists based in the Miami area. See for example the cases of Hal Hendrix and those journalists working for the Miami Herald in the 1960s. William Turner also provides the names of several journalists who he has discovered were working on behalf of the CIA and the FBI (The FBI of course had its own Operation Mockingbird. You can read about that in William Sullivan’s book, The Bureau – see pages 80-100).

(4) The discovery of the CIA’s covert book publishing programme revealed that Colby was lying about only targeting the foreign media. Well over a thousand different books were produced, subsidized or sponsored directly by the CIA between 1947 and 1967 (see pages 192-193). One example of this program was the Penkovskiy Papers published in 1965. The CIA established a trust fund and this was used to submit the manuscript to the publishers. The company published the book in good faith and was completely unaware that they were publishing the book on behalf of the CIA (page 194).

Church published details of a CIA document that was written by the chief of the agency’s propaganda unit in 1961 (see page 193 of report):

“The advantage of our direct contact with the author is that we can acquaint him in great detail with our intentions; that we can provide him with whatever material we want him to include and that we can check the manuscript at every stage. Our control over the writer will have to be enforced usually be paying him for the time he works on the manuscript, or at least advancing him sums which he might have to repay… the (CIA) must make sure the actual manuscript will correspond with our operational and propagandistic intention.”

Church also discovered the person responsible for publishing this CIA fronted books in the 1960s. It was our old friend, E. Howard Hunt (page 198). Hunt was also in charge of persuading journalists to write good or bad reviews of books that the CIA had an “interest” in. For example, Hunt testified before the (HSCI) where he gave an account of how he arranged for a book by Edgar Snow to be reviewed in the New York Times by a CIA asset. This was done because it was felt that Edgar Snow had provided a “sympathetic view of the emerging China”.

(5) Church and his committee also raised the issue of taxpayers money to fund the publication to pro-CIA material. As this is done covertly, no financial records are kept. They therefore pointed out that this makes it impossible for Congress to evaluate the value of this work (page 250). Church pointed out that the funding of certain book companies enabled them to “compete unfairly” with other companies who were not receiving these subsidies (page 251).

(6) The CIA also had a program where right-wing, wealthy sympathizers, provided money for the publication of books. This group of supporters included Haroldson L. Hunt who paid for Michael Eddowes’s book, Khrushchev Killed Kennedy, to be published in 1975. As they title suggests, Eddowes argues that JFK was killed by the KGB. I wonder why the CIA and the right-wing extremists were pushing this theory? That of course is one of your pet theories (along with the Castro/Mafia did it postings).

(7) Frank Church’s committee discovered that Desmond FitzGerald had issued an order in 1967 preventing the CIA taking part in covert media operations in America. However, this order was ignored. As a result of the committee’s investigations, the CIA announced new guidelines in 1976: “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.” (page 195).

However, as Church pointed out, only about half of the original 50 names were actually employed by the CIA. The rest only received “occasional gifts and reimbursements from the CIA” for their help. We now know that other journalists, for example, Hal Hendrix, received information from the CIA in return for their covert activities. These journalists were particularly useful and of course their names were not on the list submitted by the CIA.

George Bush, who was Director of the CIA when the Frank Church report was published, immediately promised that he would follow William Colby’s guidelines issued in 1973 that the agency would not undertake any activities in “which there is a risk of influencing domestic public opinion, either directly or indirectly.” Of course, Bush and those who have followed in his footsteps have not kept this promise.

Several researchers have claimed that Operation Mockingbird/Nightingale is still in existence. According to CIA document 1035-960 this includes employing “propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.”

This can be seen by the way that the first two books published on the JFK assassination that suggested that Oswald had not been a lone gunman were treated. The authors of these books, Thomas Buchanan (Who Killed Kennedy?) and Joachim Joesten (Oswald, Assassin or Fall Guy?) were both falsely accused of being KGB agents by reviewers when their books were published in 1964. Of course, this is a similar tactic used by Tim Gratz.

Mark Lane explains in his book Plausible Denial how he had difficult getting Rush to Judgement published (pages 24 and 25) in the United States. Lane eventually got a British company, Bodley Head to publish his manuscript in 1966. This resulted in Holt, Rinehart and Winston agreeing to publish it in the United States. The company’s editor-in-chief, Arthur A. Cohen, later told Lane that the FBI ordered the American publisher to cancel the contract. It refused and it soon became the number-one-selling book in the United States. This was disastrous for Operation Mockingbird/Nightingale. Other publishers now attempted to make money out of other books that attacked the conclusions of the Warren Report.

Mark Lane has also been able to use the Freedom of Information Act to discover how the CIA attempted to control the reviews of Rush to Judgement. One document said:

"Employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passage to assets. Our play should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (i) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (ii) politically interested, (iii) financially interested, (v) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (v) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Edward Jay Epstein’s theory of attack, using the attached Fletcher Knebel article and Spectator piece for background.”

Lane goes on to point out that the New York Times, Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and all the other major newspapers followed this line in their reviews of Rush to Judgement. It was only Norman Mailer’s review in the Houston Post who did not “march in lockstep with the intelligence agencies’ effort to destroy the First Amendment” (page 72, Plausible Denial).

In his book Rearview Mirror, Bill Turner explains how the CIA used Jim Phelan and Edward Jay Epstein to publish articles attacking the work of Jim Garrison (pages 299-300). Turner also reveals how Life Magazine journalists, Dick Billings, Miguel Acoca and Sandy Smith were used to smear Jim Garrison with stories about him being linked to mobsters like Carlos Marcello. CIA assets were also out in force to write critical reviews of Oliver Stone’s JFK.

Turner also argues that books like Gerald Posner’s Case Closed relied heavily on help provided by the CIA. According to Turner, Posner told Jim Marrs that the book was commissioned by Robert Loomis after he was contacted by the CIA offering “full cooperation” in helping with the writing of the book. This included access to Yuri Nosenko, the KGB defector, who was arguing at that time that Oswald was a “lone-nut” and was not part of any conspiracy (page 300, Rearview Mirror).

Randon House editor, Robert Loomis, has been associated with the publication of several anti-conspiracy books. Loomis admitted to Publishers Weekly that he had a political agenda in publishing these books: “All the conspiracy theories have undermined the public’s belief in government. They (the public) believe that everybody’s in cahoots, that we have murderers in the CIA. That’s what has been accepted, and that, to me, is a crime.”

[John Simkin]

It must be remembered that from the end of WWII to the late eighties the Western democracies were indeed fighting a "cold war" against a totalitarian and repressive regime as evil as that of Nazi Germany (Stalin killed at least as many as Hitler; see Robert Conquest's books.) This regime had announced its intention to "bury" the western democracies and was doing its best to accomplish its objective.

Provided the articles were truthful, was it wrong for the CIA to attempt to "plant" pro-Western articles in the foreign press? If for no other reason to counter the disinformation being spread by the KGB. One could consider Operation Mockingbird as "covert public relations". I for one cannot see a moral objection for the CIA to, for instance, encourage a friendly Miami newsman to write a story about political or religious repression in Cuba, provided the article was factually accurate.

The cold war was in fact "cold" because it was in some part fought in the arena of public perception, particularly in the non-aligned countries.

Let me try a different hyypothetical. Would it have been wrong for the CIA to encourage stories about the successes of the Peace Corps?

It strikes me that to deny the US the right to encourage, even covertly, the placement of pro-Western news stories to counter anti-Western stories (many false) being planted by the KGB (see "The Sword and the Shield") would be like requiring the west to fight a hot war without bullets.

Journalists who encouraged the forces of democracy deserve commendation not condemnation, IMO.

Going by your postings I can see why you are in favour of the CIA manipulating the media via Operation Mockingbird. However, I am rather surprised that you have admitted to this on this thread.

In his Senate report, “Select Committee to Study Government Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities” (April, 1976), Frank Church argued that there were several reasons why the CIA should not be involved in media manipulation. This report was signed by all members of the committee including the three Republicans, John Tower, Howard Baker and Barry Goldwater.

(1) That under the terms of the 1947 National Security Act it was illegal for the CIA to be engaged in operations directed at Americans within the United States. The committee pointed out that the reason for this prohibition was to protect the “American people from the possibility that the CIA might act in any way that would have an impact upon their rights” (see pages 135-139 of the report).

(2) Church’s investigation discovered that the CIA paid “journalists to devise and place propaganda” in the media. The CIA also planted smear stories about people they considered to be dangerous. For example, by using the Freedom of Information Act, William Turner discovered that the CIA established Operation Nightingale as part of the Mockingbird Project (see pages 299-300 of Rearview Mirror) that was used to smear critics of the Warren Commission report. Church believed this CIA activity was wrong for several reasons. For example, it was illegal (see point 1). A second reason was that the “diversity and legitimacy” of the media needs to be “rigorously protected”. The committee felt that the planting of propaganda by the CIA was undermining this process (see pages 179-180).

(3) Church points out that the CIA were unwilling to provide all the documents they sought in order to fully discover the way that the CIA manipulated the media. In fact, it mainly had to rely on information discovered by investigative journalists working for left-wing journals such as Ramparts and the Nation. However, the CIA did provide a list of 50 journalists who were “part of a network of several hundred individuals” who attempted to influence public opinion by placing “covert propaganda” in the media. William Colby, claimed in testimony before the House Select Committee on Intelligence (HSCI) that the CIA had focused its efforts on those people living abroad and therefore had not acted illegally. That was supported by the restricted list of names provided by the CIA to the HSCI. The suspicion was of course that this was the reason why the CIA was unwilling to name the full list of journalists working on their behalf.

The HSCI discovered that even if these stories were “planted” in foreign newspapers and journals, there was no way that this information could not be stopped coming back into the United States. In fact, several CIA agents testified that this so-called “fall-out” was a fully intended consequence of the operation (pages 199-200).

Over the years released documents show that the CIA was indeed using journalists to plant stories in the American media. This includes several journalists based in the Miami area. See for example the cases of Hal Hendrix and those journalists working for the Miami Herald in the 1960s. William Turner also provides the names of several journalists who he has discovered were working on behalf of the CIA and the FBI (The FBI of course had its own Operation Mockingbird. You can read about that in William Sullivan’s book, The Bureau – see pages 80-100).

(4) The discovery of the CIA’s covert book publishing programme revealed that Colby was lying about only targeting the foreign media. Well over a thousand different books were produced, subsidized or sponsored directly by the CIA between 1947 and 1967 (see pages 192-193). One example of this program was the Penkovskiy Papers published in 1965. The CIA established a trust fund and this was used to submit the manuscript to the publishers. The company published the book in good faith and was completely unaware that they were publishing the book on behalf of the CIA (page 194).

Church published details of a CIA document that was written by the chief of the agency’s propaganda unit in 1961 (see page 193 of report):

“The advantage of our direct contact with the author is that we can acquaint him in great detail with our intentions; that we can provide him with whatever material we want him to include and that we can check the manuscript at every stage. Our control over the writer will have to be enforced usually be paying him for the time he works on the manuscript, or at least advancing him sums which he might have to repay… the (CIA) must make sure the actual manuscript will correspond with our operational and propagandistic intention.”

Church also discovered the person responsible for publishing this CIA fronted books in the 1960s. It was our old friend, E. Howard Hunt (page 198). Hunt was also in charge of persuading journalists to write good or bad reviews of books that the CIA had an “interest” in. For example, Hunt testified before the (HSCI) where he gave an account of how he arranged for a book by Edgar Snow to be reviewed in the New York Times by a CIA asset. This was done because it was felt that Edgar Snow had provided a “sympathetic view of the emerging China”.

(5) Church and his committee also raised the issue of taxpayers money to fund the publication to pro-CIA material. As this is done covertly, no financial records are kept. They therefore pointed out that this makes it impossible for Congress to evaluate the value of this work (page 250). Church pointed out that the funding of certain book companies enabled them to “compete unfairly” with other companies who were not receiving these subsidies (page 251).

(6) The CIA also had a program where right-wing, wealthy sympathizers, provided money for the publication of books. This group of supporters included Haroldson L. Hunt who paid for Michael Eddowes’s book, Khrushchev Killed Kennedy, to be published in 1975. As they title suggests, Eddowes argues that JFK was killed by the KGB. I wonder why the CIA and the right-wing extremists were pushing this theory? That of course is one of your pet theories (along with the Castro/Mafia did it postings).

(7) Frank Church’s committee discovered that Desmond FitzGerald had issued an order in 1967 preventing the CIA taking part in covert media operations in America. However, this order was ignored. As a result of the committee’s investigations, the CIA announced new guidelines in 1976: “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.” (page 195).

However, as Church pointed out, only about half of the original 50 names were actually employed by the CIA. The rest only received “occasional gifts and reimbursements from the CIA” for their help. We now know that other journalists, for example, Hal Hendrix, received information from the CIA in return for their covert activities. These journalists were particularly useful and of course their names were not on the list submitted by the CIA.

George Bush, who was Director of the CIA when the Frank Church report was published, immediately promised that he would follow William Colby’s guidelines issued in 1973 that the agency would not undertake any activities in “which there is a risk of influencing domestic public opinion, either directly or indirectly.” Of course, Bush and those who have followed in his footsteps have not kept this promise.

Several researchers have claimed that Operation Mockingbird/Nightingale is still in existence. According to CIA document 1035-960 this includes employing “propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.”

This can be seen by the way that the first two books published on the JFK assassination that suggested that Oswald had not been a lone gunman were treated. The authors of these books, Thomas Buchanan (Who Killed Kennedy?) and Joachim Joesten (Oswald, Assassin or Fall Guy?) were both falsely accused of being KGB agents by reviewers when their books were published in 1964. Of course, this is a similar tactic used by Tim Gratz.

Mark Lane explains in his book Plausible Denial how he had difficult getting Rush to Judgement published (pages 24 and 25) in the United States. Lane eventually got a British company, Bodley Head to publish his manuscript in 1966. This resulted in Holt, Rinehart and Winston agreeing to publish it in the United States. The company’s editor-in-chief, Arthur A. Cohen, later told Lane that the FBI ordered the American publisher to cancel the contract. It refused and it soon became the number-one-selling book in the United States. This was disastrous for Operation Mockingbird/Nightingale. Other publishers now attempted to make money out of other books that attacked the conclusions of the Warren Report.

Mark Lane has also been able to use the Freedom of Information Act to discover how the CIA attempted to control the reviews of Rush to Judgement. One document said:

"Employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passage to assets. Our play should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (i) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (ii) politically interested, (iii) financially interested, (v) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (v) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Edward Jay Epstein’s theory of attack, using the attached Fletcher Knebel article and Spectator piece for background.”

Lane goes on to point out that the New York Times, Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and all the other major newspapers followed this line in their reviews of Rush to Judgement. It was only Norman Mailer’s review in the Houston Post who did not “march in lockstep with the intelligence agencies’ effort to destroy the First Amendment” (page 72, Plausible Denial).

In his book Rearview Mirror, Bill Turner explains how the CIA used Jim Phelan and Edward Jay Epstein to publish articles attacking the work of Jim Garrison (pages 299-300). Turner also reveals how Life Magazine journalists, Dick Billings, Miguel Acoca and Sandy Smith were used to smear Jim Garrison with stories about him being linked to mobsters like Carlos Marcello. CIA assets were also out in force to write critical reviews of Oliver Stone’s JFK.

Turner also argues that books like Gerald Posner’s Case Closed relied heavily on help provided by the CIA. According to Turner, Posner told Jim Marrs that the book was commissioned by Robert Loomis after he was contacted by the CIA offering “full cooperation” in helping with the writing of the book. This included access to Yuri Nosenko, the KGB defector, who was arguing at that time that Oswald was a “lone-nut” and was not part of any conspiracy (page 300, Rearview Mirror).

Randon House editor, Robert Loomis, has been associated with the publication of several anti-conspiracy books. Loomis admitted to Publishers Weekly that he had a political agenda in publishing these books: “All the conspiracy theories have undermined the public’s belief in government. They (the public) believe that everybody’s in cahoots, that we have murderers in the CIA. That’s what has been accepted, and that, to me, is a crime.”

It must be remembered that from the end of WWII to the late eighties the Western democracies were indeed fighting a "cold war" against a totalitarian and repressive regime as evil as that of Nazi Germany (Stalin killed at least as many as Hitler; see Robert Conquest's books.) This regime had announced its intention to "bury" the western democracies and was doing its best to accomplish its objective.

Provided the articles were truthful, was it wrong for the CIA to attempt to "plant" pro-Western articles in the foreign press? If for no other reason to counter the disinformation being spread by the KGB. One could consider Operation Mockingbird as "covert public relations". I for one cannot see a moral objection for the CIA to, for instance, encourage a friendly Miami newsman to write a story about political or religious repression in Cuba, provided the article was factually accurate.

The cold war was in fact "cold" because it was in some part fought in the arena of public perception, particularly in the non-aligned countries.

Let me try a different hyypothetical. Would it have been wrong for the CIA to encourage stories about the successes of the Peace Corps?

It strikes me that to deny the US the right to encourage, even covertly, the placement of pro-Western news stories to counter anti-Western stories (many false) being planted by the KGB (see "The Sword and the Shield") would be like requiring the west to fight a hot war without bullets.

Journalists who encouraged the forces of democracy deserve commendation not condemnation, IMO.

Going by your postings I can see why you are in favour of the CIA manipulating the media via Operation Mockingbird. However, I am rather surprised that you have admitted to this on this thread.

In his Senate report, “Select Committee to Study Government Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities” (April, 1976), Frank Church argued that there were several reasons why the CIA should not be involved in media manipulation. This report was signed by all members of the committee including the three Republicans, John Tower, Howard Baker and Barry Goldwater.

(1) That under the terms of the 1947 National Security Act it was illegal for the CIA to be engaged in operations directed at Americans within the United States. The committee pointed out that the reason for this prohibition was to protect the “American people from the possibility that the CIA might act in any way that would have an impact upon their rights” (see pages 135-139 of the report).

(2) Church’s investigation discovered that the CIA paid “journalists to devise and place propaganda” in the media. The CIA also planted smear stories about people they considered to be dangerous. For example, by using the Freedom of Information Act, William Turner discovered that the CIA established Operation Nightingale as part of the Mockingbird Project (see pages 299-300 of Rearview Mirror) that was used to smear critics of the Warren Commission report. Church believed this CIA activity was wrong for several reasons. For example, it was illegal (see point 1). A second reason was that the “diversity and legitimacy” of the media needs to be “rigorously protected”. The committee felt that the planting of propaganda by the CIA was undermining this process (see pages 179-180).

(3) Church points out that the CIA were unwilling to provide all the documents they sought in order to fully discover the way that the CIA manipulated the media. In fact, it mainly had to rely on information discovered by investigative journalists working for left-wing journals such as Ramparts and the Nation. However, the CIA did provide a list of 50 journalists who were “part of a network of several hundred individuals” who attempted to influence public opinion by placing “covert propaganda” in the media. William Colby, claimed in testimony before the House Select Committee on Intelligence (HSCI) that the CIA had focused its efforts on those people living abroad and therefore had not acted illegally. That was supported by the restricted list of names provided by the CIA to the HSCI. The suspicion was of course that this was the reason why the CIA was unwilling to name the full list of journalists working on their behalf.

The HSCI discovered that even if these stories were “planted” in foreign newspapers and journals, there was no way that this information could not be stopped coming back into the United States. In fact, several CIA agents testified that this so-called “fall-out” was a fully intended consequence of the operation (pages 199-200).

Over the years released documents show that the CIA was indeed using journalists to plant stories in the American media. This includes several journalists based in the Miami area. See for example the cases of Hal Hendrix and those journalists working for the Miami Herald in the 1960s. William Turner also provides the names of several journalists who he has discovered were working on behalf of the CIA and the FBI (The FBI of course had its own Operation Mockingbird. You can read about that in William Sullivan’s book, The Bureau – see pages 80-100).

(4) The discovery of the CIA’s covert book publishing programme revealed that Colby was lying about only targeting the foreign media. Well over a thousand different books were produced, subsidized or sponsored directly by the CIA between 1947 and 1967 (see pages 192-193). One example of this program was the Penkovskiy Papers published in 1965. The CIA established a trust fund and this was used to submit the manuscript to the publishers. The company published the book in good faith and was completely unaware that they were publishing the book on behalf of the CIA (page 194).

Church published details of a CIA document that was written by the chief of the agency’s propaganda unit in 1961 (see page 193 of report):

“The advantage of our direct contact with the author is that we can acquaint him in great detail with our intentions; that we can provide him with whatever material we want him to include and that we can check the manuscript at every stage. Our control over the writer will have to be enforced usually be paying him for the time he works on the manuscript, or at least advancing him sums which he might have to repay… the (CIA) must make sure the actual manuscript will correspond with our operational and propagandistic intention.”

Church also discovered the person responsible for publishing this CIA fronted books in the 1960s. It was our old friend, E. Howard Hunt (page 198). Hunt was also in charge of persuading journalists to write good or bad reviews of books that the CIA had an “interest” in. For example, Hunt testified before the (HSCI) where he gave an account of how he arranged for a book by Edgar Snow to be reviewed in the New York Times by a CIA asset. This was done because it was felt that Edgar Snow had provided a “sympathetic view of the emerging China”.

(5) Church and his committee also raised the issue of taxpayers money to fund the publication to pro-CIA material. As this is done covertly, no financial records are kept. They therefore pointed out that this makes it impossible for Congress to evaluate the value of this work (page 250). Church pointed out that the funding of certain book companies enabled them to “compete unfairly” with other companies who were not receiving these subsidies (page 251).

(6) The CIA also had a program where right-wing, wealthy sympathizers, provided money for the publication of books. This group of supporters included Haroldson L. Hunt who paid for Michael Eddowes’s book, Khrushchev Killed Kennedy, to be published in 1975. As they title suggests, Eddowes argues that JFK was killed by the KGB. I wonder why the CIA and the right-wing extremists were pushing this theory? That of course is one of your pet theories (along with the Castro/Mafia did it postings).

(7) Frank Church’s committee discovered that Desmond FitzGerald had issued an order in 1967 preventing the CIA taking part in covert media operations in America. However, this order was ignored. As a result of the committee’s investigations, the CIA announced new guidelines in 1976: “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.” (page 195).

However, as Church pointed out, only about half of the original 50 names were actually employed by the CIA. The rest only received “occasional gifts and reimbursements from the CIA” for their help. We now know that other journalists, for example, Hal Hendrix, received information from the CIA in return for their covert activities. These journalists were particularly useful and of course their names were not on the list submitted by the CIA.

George Bush, who was Director of the CIA when the Frank Church report was published, immediately promised that he would follow William Colby’s guidelines issued in 1973 that the agency would not undertake any activities in “which there is a risk of influencing domestic public opinion, either directly or indirectly.” Of course, Bush and those who have followed in his footsteps have not kept this promise.

Several researchers have claimed that Operation Mockingbird/Nightingale is still in existence. According to CIA document 1035-960 this includes employing “propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.”

This can be seen by the way that the first two books published on the JFK assassination that suggested that Oswald had not been a lone gunman were treated. The authors of these books, Thomas Buchanan (Who Killed Kennedy?) and Joachim Joesten (Oswald, Assassin or Fall Guy?) were both falsely accused of being KGB agents by reviewers when their books were published in 1964. Of course, this is a similar tactic used by Tim Gratz.

Mark Lane explains in his book Plausible Denial how he had difficult getting Rush to Judgement published (pages 24 and 25) in the United States. Lane eventually got a British company, Bodley Head to publish his manuscript in 1966. This resulted in Holt, Rinehart and Winston agreeing to publish it in the United States. The company’s editor-in-chief, Arthur A. Cohen, later told Lane that the FBI ordered the American publisher to cancel the contract. It refused and it soon became the number-one-selling book in the United States. This was disastrous for Operation Mockingbird/Nightingale. Other publishers now attempted to make money out of other books that attacked the conclusions of the Warren Report.

Mark Lane has also been able to use the Freedom of Information Act to discover how the CIA attempted to control the reviews of Rush to Judgement. One document said:

"Employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passage to assets. Our play should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (i) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (ii) politically interested, (iii) financially interested, (v) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (v) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Edward Jay Epstein’s theory of attack, using the attached Fletcher Knebel article and Spectator piece for background.”

Lane goes on to point out that the New York Times, Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and all the other major newspapers followed this line in their reviews of Rush to Judgement. It was only Norman Mailer’s review in the Houston Post who did not “march in lockstep with the intelligence agencies’ effort to destroy the First Amendment” (page 72, Plausible Denial).

In his book Rearview Mirror, Bill Turner explains how the CIA used Jim Phelan and Edward Jay Epstein to publish articles attacking the work of Jim Garrison (pages 299-300). Turner also reveals how Life Magazine journalists, Dick Billings, Miguel Acoca and Sandy Smith were used to smear Jim Garrison with stories about him being linked to mobsters like Carlos Marcello. CIA assets were also out in force to write critical reviews of Oliver Stone’s JFK.

Turner also argues that books like Gerald Posner’s Case Closed relied heavily on help provided by the CIA. According to Turner, Posner told Jim Marrs that the book was commissioned by Robert Loomis after he was contacted by the CIA offering “full cooperation” in helping with the writing of the book. This included access to Yuri Nosenko, the KGB defector, who was arguing at that time that Oswald was a “lone-nut” and was not part of any conspiracy (page 300, Rearview Mirror).

Randon House editor, Robert Loomis, has been associated with the publication of several anti-conspiracy books. Loomis admitted to Publishers Weekly that he had a political agenda in publishing these books: “All the conspiracy theories have undermined the public’s belief in government. They (the public) believe that everybody’s in cahoots, that we have murderers in the CIA. That’s what has been accepted, and that, to me, is a crime.”

[Ron Ecker]

Turner also argues that books like Gerald Posner’s Case Closed relied heavily on help provided by the CIA. According to Turner, Posner told Jim Marrs that the book was commissioned by Robert Loomis after he was contacted by the CIA offering “full cooperation” in helping with the writing of the book. This included access to Yuri Nosenko, the KGB defector, who was arguing at that time that Oswald was a “lone-nut” and was not part of any conspiracy (page 300, Rearview Mirror).

Randon House editor, Robert Loomis, has been associated with the publication of several anti-conspiracy books. Loomis admitted to Publishers Weekly that he had a political agenda in publishing these books: “All the conspiracy theories have undermined the public’s belief in government. They (the public) believe that everybody’s in cahoots, that we have murderers in the CIA. That’s what has been accepted, and that, to me, is a crime.”

This is just the opposite from what I distinctly remember reading somewhere, namely that Posner claimed that he started out to write a conspiracy book, which is what his publisher wanted, but the more he got into his research the more he realized that Oswald acted alone, and Posner was afraid that his publisher wouldn't like this lone-nut conclusion. Of course this sounded like pure BS when I read it, and it certainly sounds like pure BS now.

[John Simkin]

Despite the media campaign to persuade the American public that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman, the vast majority have refused to believe it. Here are the polls over the years:

Date (Blue)

% Suspected a Conspiracy (Red)

% Think it Was One Man (Green)

Sep. 1966 (46) (34)

Feb. 1967 (44) (35)

Sep. 1967 (60) (24)

Nov. 1983 (80) (13)

Dec. 1991 (73) (11)

Nov. 2003 (70) (22)

[William Kelly]

John,

I share your interest in Operation Mockingbird.

The CIA's use of ostensibly independent journalists was part of the "Family Jewels," along with the assassination plots and MK/ULTRA.

In another thread, I think it's on Nate Weyel, there's a list of members of an anti-Castro Cuban organization that included a few relevant people that I am familiar with - Ernest Cuneo and Virginia Prewett.

Cuneo is a former OSS officer who worked with Sir William Stephenson (A Man Called INTREPID) and the Brits/Canadians in US during WWII, and with Ivor Bryce, owned the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), the subject of one of my COPA conference talks. I'll try to dig up the abstract, which I think is titled "Bottlefed by Oswald's NANA."

Cuneo and Bryce used NANA as their own private intelligence agency, with reporters all over the world, Ernest Hemingway in Spain, Priscilla Johnson (McMillan) in USSR, Virginia Prewett in Cuba (with David Atlee Phillips), and Ian Fleming as "European Editor."

Fleming even used Cueno and Bryce as 007 characters, Cuneo a Vegas cab driver in Live and Let Die and Bryce as a horse breeder at Saratoga.

Phillips used Prewett (See Gaeton Fonzi's "The Last Investigation") to promote his Cuban operations.

Another NANA editor who worked with Fleming is named Goldberg - the husband of Luci Goldberg, the New York "journalist" who convinced Linda Tripp to surepticiously tape record Monaca Lowinsky, which violated a state law and got Tripp into trouble.

Besides NANA, Fleming also worked as an editor at the London Sunday Times with the Random House publisher of Posner's "Case Closed," not Loomis, but whose name escapes me at the moment. But he's credited by Posner in the acknoledgements as giving him the commission to write the book.

In any case, Ernest Cuneo and Virginia Prewett and NANA were very much a part of the Mockingbird legacy and the CIA's Cuban ops.

Bill Kelly

[Tim Gratz]

John, interesting survey results.

From which I would deduce that Stone's "JFK" played only a minimial role in changing people's opinions:

Before Stone's "JFK": Conspiracy Lone Nut (conspiracy numbers listed first)

(November 1983)

80 13

After "JFK": 73 11

(December 1991)

It is possible that the December 1991 results are too early to reflect the impact of "JFK". Note however that 80% of the public already agreed with Stone's premise.

POST POSNER

November 2003 70 22

I may be reading too much into your numbers, however.

Edited October 22, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[John Simkin]

John,

I share your interest in Operation Mockingbird.

The CIA's use of ostensibly independent journalists was part of the "Family Jewels," along with the assassination plots and MK/ULTRA.

In another thread, I think it's on Nate Weyel, there's a list of members of an anti-Castro Cuban organization that included a few relevant people that I am familiar with - Ernest Cuneo and Virginia Prewett.

Cuneo is a former OSS officer who worked with Sir William Stephenson (A Man Called INTREPID) and the Brits/Canadians in US during WWII, and with Ivor Bryce, owned the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), the subject of one of my COPA conference talks. I'll try to dig up the abstract, which I think is titled "Bottlefed by Oswald's NANA."

Cuneo and Bryce used NANA as their own private intelligence agency, with reporters all over the world, Ernest Hemingway in Spain, Priscilla Johnson (McMillan) in USSR, Virginia Prewett in Cuba (with David Atlee Phillips), and Ian Fleming as "European Editor."

Fleming even used Cueno and Bryce as 007 characters, Cuneo a Vegas cab driver in Live and Let Die and Bryce as a horse breeder at Saratoga.

Phillips used Prewett (See Gaeton Fonzi's "The Last Investigation") to promote his Cuban operations.

Another NANA editor who worked with Fleming is named Goldberg - the husband of Luci Goldberg, the New York "journalist" who convinced Linda Tripp to surepticiously tape record Monaca Lowinsky, which violated a state law and got Tripp into trouble.

Besides NANA, Fleming also worked as an editor at the London Sunday Times with the Random House publisher of Posner's "Case Closed," not Loomis, but whose name escapes me at the moment. But he's credited by Posner in the acknoledgements as giving him the commission to write the book.

In any case, Ernest Cuneo and Virginia Prewett and NANA were very much a part of the Mockingbird legacy and the CIA's Cuban ops.

Bill Kelly

Interesting post. If it is ok with you I will add this to my page on Mockingbird.

Have you read William Turner’s Rearview Mirror? He argues that after the assassination of JFK the CIA launched something called Operation Nightingale. Turner argues that the “CIA instituted a campaign called “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report,” which was part of its Operation Nightingale, named for the bird that sings in the dark, to stifle the critics. Nightingale was a companion piece to the older Operation Mockingbird, which proselytized journalists, writers and broadcasters to act as covert assets manipulating public opinion.”

Do you know of a detailed account of how the CIA/FBI manipulated the media in order to cover-up the true story of the assassination? If not, maybe you should write it. I believe that Mockingbird/Nightingale has played a crucial role in misleading the public about these events. In fact, it has been even more important that the destruction of CIA documents.

[Dawn Meredith]

[quote name='William Kelly' date='Oct 22 2005, 12:39 PM' post='42748']

John,

I share your interest in Operation Mockingbird.

The CIA's use of ostensibly independent journalists was part of the "Family Jewels," along with the assassination plots and MK/ULTRA.

Another NANA editor who worked with Fleming is named Goldberg - the husband of Luci Goldberg, the New York "journalist" who convinced Linda Tripp to surepticiously tape record Monaca Lowinsky, which violated a state law and got Tripp into trouble.

Besides NANA, Fleming also worked as an editor at the London Sunday Times with the Random House publisher of Posner's "Case Closed," not Loomis, but whose name escapes me at the moment. But he's credited by Posner in the acknoledgements as giving him the commission to write the book.

In any case, Ernest Cuneo and Virginia Prewett and NANA were very much a part of the Mockingbird legacy and the CIA's Cuban ops.

Bill Kelly

Bill,

Welcome to the Ed forum. I have long been an admirer of our work, and am especially interested in your efforts for the convening of a Grand Jury to hear this case. It will not ever happen under W or any of his political heirs. However, when I first heard about Pat FItzgerald being known as "Mr. Integrity" I wondered if he would/could be up to this monumental task. We shall see in the coming days if he is worthy of his nickname.

Re Ms. Goldberg, members here know that she and her dirty tricks go back a long time. To spying on McGovern volunteers for Nixon's CREEP. According to Glen Sample and Mark Collom in "The Men on the Sixth Floor" she was also working in the (LBJ!!) campaign press office (p 160 a). Gee I wonder what on earth she was doing THERE???

Dawn

[Tim Gratz]

Dawn wrote:

Welcome to the Ed forum. I have long been an admirer of our work, and am especially interested in your efforts for the convening of a Grand Jury to hear this case. It will not ever happen under W or any of his political heirs.

Dawn, as a lawyer you must know that the President has no input into the convening of a state grand jury or the actions of a local prosecutor. Look at the prosecution of Tom DeLay by a district attorney with clear ties to the Democrats. If the district attorney for Dallas County shares Bush's viewpoints or is friendly with him, you might be correct but not if a different districy attorney were elected. The president cannot, as a matter of law, influence the actions of a Texas District Attorney.

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Dawn, as a lawyer you must know that the President has no input into the convening of a state grand jury or the actions of a local prosecutor. Look at the prosecution of Tom DeLay by a district attorney with clear ties to the Democrats. If the district attorney for Dallas County shares Bush's viewpoints or is friendly with him, you might be correct but not if a different districy attorney were elected. The president cannot, as a matter of law, influence the actions of a Texas District Attorney.

Tim here is of course factually correct, but were I to be that D/A I'd make sure I took out plenty of health insurance, avoided dark out of the way places, and drove a bullet proof car.

Edited October 22, 2005 by Stephen Turner

[Dawn Meredith]

Dawn, as a lawyer you must know that the President has no input into the convening of a state grand jury or the actions of a local prosecutor. Look at the prosecution of Tom DeLay by a district attorney with clear ties to the Democrats. If the district attorney for Dallas County shares Bush's viewpoints or is friendly with him, you might be correct but not if a different districy attorney were elected. The president cannot, as a matter of law, influence the actions of a Texas District Attorney.

Tim here is of course factually correct, but were I to be that D/A I'd make sure I took out plenty of health insurance, avoided dark out of the way places, and drove a bullet proof car.

Tim:

What I meant is that the powers that be UNDER W would make sure that this did not occur. Just like the powers that were under Reagan made sure that the Justice Dept never followed-up on HSCA's recommendations.

The DA in Dallas has NO interest in this case. I wrote to him on the 40th anniversary and received nothing; not even a form letter response.

Bill K: Please excuse my horrid typing above, what I meant to say is that I have long been an admirer of YOUR work "(vs "our"). I need to better proof my posts before hitting "add reply".

I agree that any one who could actually convene a grand jury into this matter had better have armed guards at all times. This was not just the murder of a president, it was a coup and those bastards, still in power, (their political heirs, I mean), are not about to EVER allow a true investigation.

[John Simkin]

Bill, have you done any research into William F. Buckley and Operation Mockingbird?

Here is some information I have found out about Buckley.

William F. Buckley was the son of an extreme right-winger, William Buckley Sr., a Texas oil millionaire (according to the New York Times he left $110 million at his death in 1958). Like other Texas oil millionaires, H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, Sid Richardson, etc. Buckley was willing to use his considerable resources to help to persuade the public that anyone who suggested that taxes designed to redistribute wealth was a “communist”. These millionaires were especially hostile to anyone who suggested that the oil depletion allowance should be brought to an end.

It is no surprise that Buckley became a right-wing activist (so did all his brothers and sisters). His first book, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of Academic Freedom (1953) was a call for all socialist and liberal academics at Yale to be sacked. According to Buckley, “the purpose of education was not to acquaint students with the means of discovering the truth, but with received truths and the means of defending them”. Truth to Buckley was his right-wing interpretation of Christianity. Buckley argued that all those academics that took an alternative view to this should be removed from office. In other words, the function of a university was to indoctrinate students in received wisdom.

As Buckley pointed out: “I myself believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.”

Of course this bilge could not find a commercial publisher. Therefore Buckley’s rich daddy supplied the necessary funds via one of his company’s, Catawba Corporation. This money went to the Henry Regency Company, a publisher that had created great controversy a couple of years earlier by bringing out two books attacking the Nuremberg Trials. Henry Regency was a wealthy German-Catholic who had funded attempts to keep the United States out of the war with Germany.

Buckley’s father also spent a fortune promoting this book. This included persuading people like Max Eastman and Selden Rodman to write rave reviews in the American press. Interestingly, the most hostile review came from McGeorge Bundy in the Atlantic Monthly. He called Buckley a “twisted and ignorant young man”.

Buckley’s next book was McCarthy and Its Enemies: The Record and Its Meaning (1954). This was a passionate defence of Joseph McCarthy, who like Buckley, was advocating the sacking from office of all those who held left of centre political views. As Buckley wrote: “We cannot avoid the fact that the United States is at war against international Communism and that McCarthyism is a program of action against those in our land who help the enemy.” Buckley admitted that not all the men who McCarthy and himself wanted sacked were not all traitors: “men whose only fault may be that they are incompetent political analysts, men of bad judgement.” But for the good of the “advancement of American interests, the merely incompetent men must go out along with the traitors.” Before the book was published, McCarthy was able to go through the manuscript and make suggested changes. Buckley then rewrote these passages. Buckley and his co-author, his brother-in-law, Brent Bozell, also wrote speeches for McCarthy during this period.

In 1952 McCarthy had meetings with an old friend, E. Howard Hunt, about establishing a right-wing magazine. At first he tried to buy The American Mercury. He finally decided to establish his own magazine, The National Review. Some of the money came from his father. Buckley also had meeting with other right wing Texas oilmen such as H.L. Hunt. Another oilmen who contributed was Lloyd Smith. Roger and Gerrish Milliken (South Carolina textile magnates) and Jeremiah Milbank (New York financier). These men were associated with funding several right-wing organizations, including the John Birch Society. It was later revealed that there was another secret backer of Buckley’s activities. I will return to this point later.

The National Review’s first target was Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Buckley attacked what he saw was the administration’s concessions to communism and the welfare state. Buckley described Eisenhower program as “essentially one of measured socialism”.

When Eisenhower agreed to meet Khrushchev in 1959 Buckley wrote: “The President will meet with Khrushchev as Chamberlain and Daladier met with Hitler at Munich, as Roosevelt and Churchill met with Stalin at Yalta.” (National Review, 15th August, 1959). Privately, Buckley was urging a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Earlier he had advocated this policy against North Korea. Later, he urged its use in Vietnam.

The journal also disliked what they saw was Eisenhower’s sympathy towards the civil rights movement. Surprisingly as it may now seem, Buckley saw Eisenhower and Nixon as a “dangerous liberals” as they accepted the New Deal reforms and were willing to seek accord with the Soviet Union. During this period Buckley described himself as a "revolutionary against the present liberal order".

When Joseph McCarthy died in 1957 Buckley devoted two issues of the National Review to him. As the journal pointed out, McCarthy was the symbol of the continuing fight against liberalism.

Buckley was particularly concerned with the sympathy that Eisenhower and Nixon showed towards racial integration and voting rights. In an article entitled “Why the South Must Prevail” (24th August, 1957) the journal argued that the Deep South was “right to disenfranchise blacks from voting in elections”. In an editorial of the same edition, Buckley wrote that the whites were the advanced race and that uneducated blacks should not be allowed to vote. He was particularly concerned that if given the vote, blacks would vote for socialistic measures to solve their economic problems.

Buckley argued that liberals who pursued the “absolute right of universal suffrage” for the Negro were endangering existing standards of civilization. According to Buckley, this was not only true of America. He was also concerned about what was taking place in countries that were part of the old empires. He advanced the theory that “acceding to black demands for independence and one man, one vote, whites were inviting a return to barbarism”

Buckley shared the same views of other neo-fascists of the time such as George Lincoln Rockwell (founder of the American Nazi Party), Gerald L. K. Smith (founder of the Christian Nationalist Party), Russell Maguire (publisher of The American Mercury), General Charles Willoughby (a financial supporter of the National Review) and Robert Welch (the founder of the John Birch Society).

All these men believed the theory of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world (Protocols of Zion). Buckley was in constant contact with these men. The surviving correspondence shows that he attempted to improve their public image. Buckley actually felt uncomfortable with anti-Semitism.

In the 1960 presidential election he tried to get Barry Goldwater adopted as the Republican Party candidate (another one urging a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union). Part of this campaign involved establishing Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) with the John Birch Society. The main mission of the YAF was to “prepare young people for the struggle ahead with Liberalism, Socialism and Communism”.

Robert Welch was also a supporter of Goldwater. However, Buckley and Goldwater, were furious when Welch circulated a private letter that Eisenhower had been "knowingly receiving and abiding by Communist orders, and consciously serving the Communist conspiracy, for all his adult life." Buckley and Goldwater were concerned that this story would get out and destroy Goldwater’s prospects to get the nomination. After all, Eisenhower was a much loved figure in the Republican Party. Buckley wrote to Welch asking him to stop making these extreme comments about Eisenhower. However, he added: “If Eisenhower were what you think he is, then the elimination of Eisenhower would be a critical step in setting things a right.”

When the attempts to get Goldwater the nomination Buckley refused to endorse Richard Nixon who he considered to be far too liberal. Buckley considered supporting JFK (he liked the speeches he had been making about the need for increasing military spending on nuclear weapons and promising retaliation against Castro’s Cuba). However, Buckley distrusted JFK’s civil rights policy and decided not to endorse either candidate (he told friends that he planned to abstain from voting).

Buckley quickly got disillusioned with JFK. The Bay of Pigs operation showed that JFK had been lying about his planned strong action against Castro. Buckley was also furious with JFK policies concerning universal suffrage in the Third World and his comments about civil rights in the Deep South. However, it was JFK’s reactions to the Cuban Missile Crisis that really upset Buckley. If Eisenhower was a dangerous liberal, JFK was indeed a communist. To re-quote Buckley’s earlier letter to Welch: “If Eisenhower were what you think he is, then the elimination of Eisenhower would be a critical step in setting things a right.” If Buckley believed that JFK was a communist, was it right to “eliminate” him.

When JFK was assassinated Buckley was one of the first to suggest that Oswald was part of a KGB/Castro conspiracy. He went onto argue that Earl Warren, a man he considered to be a communist, had covered this up in his report.

Buckley continued to make extreme right-wing statements. For example, when Viola Liuzzo, the civil rights activist from Detroit was murdered in March 1965, Buckley argued that it was her own fault as she “drove down a stretch of lonely road in the dead of night, sharing the front seat with a young Negro identified with the protesting movement”.

He also led the smear campaign against Martin Luther King in the press (based on documents leaked by J. Edgar Hoover). He urged the repression of King and other civil rights and anti-war protestors on “constitutional grounds”. Buckley compared King to Hitler and Lenin. He said that he wished Lenin and Hitler had been repressed in the same way as King should be repressed. (National Review, 19th August, 1967).

In 1968 Buckley supported Nixon because he feared the Democrats might pull out of Vietnam. However, he soon got disillusioned with Nixon as a result of his attempts to negotiate with the Soviet Union and China. Buckley now became a strong supporter of Spiro Agnew and he went into overdrive when it was reported that Nixon might replace Agnew with John Connolly in 1972.

It was the Watergate Scandal that finally exposed Buckley’s long-term relationship with the CIA. As long as Agnew was vice president, Buckley made no real attempt to protect Nixon from this scandal (he did say in the National Review that Nixon was only doing what Democrats had been doing for years).

However, Buckley did help out his long-term friend, E. Howard Hunt. He gave Hunt advice and even paid some of his legal bills. He also became guardian of Hunt’s children and executor of Dorothy Hunt’s estate. After the death of Dorothy while carrying $10,000 in cash, Hunt had a meeting with Buckley. He told him that he believed that Nixon gave the order for the Watergate break-in. Hunt told Buckley that he had a safe-deposit box that contained documents that would protect him when he really got into trouble.

However, the resignation of Agnew complicated matters. So also did the decision by the CIA to fully expose Nixon’s relationship with Hunt and the others involved in Watergate. This dragged Buckley into the scandal and exposed him as a long-time CIA agent. Someone leaked information about Buckley to Sherman Skolnick. In his Hotline News he claimed: “Bill Buckley’s so-called oil fortune is mostly money deposited by the CIA… He has admitted he has been a long-time deep cover operative for the CIA. Over the years he has participated in several operations in Mexico with E. Howard Hunt, including preparations for the assassination of John F. Kennedy.”

It was revealed that Buckley was recruited into the CIA by James Burnham. A former supporter of Leon Trotsky, Burnham had been “turned” in the 1930s. Burnham introduced Buckley to E. Howard Hunt who arranged for him to join his covert CIA operation in Mexico City. After three months training in Washington, Buckley arrived in Mexico City in September, 1951. His first task was to help Eudocio Ravines write an anti-Communist book The Yenan Way (it was an attack on the Chilean Communist Party).

Buckley’s other major task was working as an undercover agent with university students in Mexico City in an attempt to create a right wing organization. This is of course what he later did in the United States with Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (1953) and the Young Americans for Freedom (1960).

Buckley officially left the CIA in April 1952. He returned to the United States where he concentrated on producing right-wing political propaganda. In 1953 he established the ISS, an organization that free copies of right-wing books such as Road to Serfdom (Friedrich A. Hayek) and The Income Tax: Root of all Evil (Frank Chodorov).

Some investigative reporters began to look at the accounts of the National Review. It had been losing a great deal of money over the years. It was not clear from published accounts who had been funding this operation. Some speculated that it was the CIA. In other words, Buckley was a key figure in Operation Mockingbird.

Evidence for this view came from a very strange source. On 29th January, 1975, the Washington Post published an article by George Will, the National Review’s Washington columnist. He posed the question: “Was National Review, with four ex-agents of the CIA on its staff, a CIA operation?” He claimed that several members of the National Review’s had believed that it was receiving funds from the CIA. Will also pointed out that Buckley was very close to E. Howard Hunt and had been raising funds for him.

Up until this time George Will had appeared to be a devoted follower of Buckley. What made him turn against Buckley? Was the National Review’s Washington columnist working for Richard Helms?

It was also revealed that Buckley was a long-time friend of two former directors of the CIA, William Casey and George Bush.

However, Nixon thought Buckley was working for him. When the Watergate tapes were released, Nixon is heard to say that Buckley would write an article in the National Review calling for Hunt to be given clemency (8th January, 1973).

It was also revealed that the National Review had obtained funds from the American-Chilean Council (ACC). This helps to partly explain the support that Buckley had given to General Pinchet’s coup (this included a defence of the execution of 500 Chilean opponents of the regime). Buckley wrote that this action was popular in Chile because “people prefer an authoritarian government to chaos.”

Buckley also published the claim (based on information from the ACC) that Orlando Letelier had been assassinated in Washington because he had been “entangled in international terrorism and was receiving funds through Havana”.

[William Kelly]

Hi Dawn and John,

It's nice to be admired from afar by a girl from Austin. You don't have much music down there, do you?

As for the Federal Grand Jury petition, you can the petition on line at:

http://www.petitiononline.com/jfkgjury/petiton.html

and if not a US citizen, sign on but note nationality in order to get updates on the petiton's progress.

If you can imagine a federal grand jury, similar to the one Fitz conveined for the CIA leak, you have an idea of how significant this could be in getting new testimony under oath, scientific evaluations reviewed and providing a venue for whistleblowers and new evidence. In addition, the related crimes are homicide, conspiracy, destruction of evidence, perjury and bringing the Pinkerton doctrine into play.

And John,

as for Buckley, I know he was involved in some Mexico City shennigans, and that the CIA most certainly bankrolled media industrially - Copley News Service (as exposed by Penthouse), Visions of Latin America and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism - so why not National Review?

Just today in my local paper - Burlington County (NJ) Times (Monday, Oct. 24, 05) has a commentary:

Today's conservatives owe a debt to one influencial magazine - National Review - by former editor (1957-1988) William Rusher, Esq. , now a distinguished fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy Newspaper Enterprise Association (that would make that CISSPPNEA).

"...All honor then, to Bill Buckley...who analyzed America's problems carefully, and insisted upon responses to them that were not always popular, but had the supreme virtue of being right."

And if those responses didn't work, then he ran a covert operation that did it anyway.

I'll try to find an abstract of my COPA address "Bottlefed by Oswald's NANA," which discusses the CIA-Media ownership as it affects the Kennedy assassination.

Also, Jerry Polikoff wrote a long article and gave a COPA talk on the Media and the JFK Assassination, though he focused mainly on the mainstream CBS and NYTs.

BK

[Tim Gratz]

For those who may have missed it, Joseph Trento, whose theory on the Kennedy assassination (set forth in his book "The Secret History of the CIA") has been regularly disparaged by John Simkin, recently wrote on the "books" section that it was he who first exposed CIA influence in the media, in a 1977 article titled "The Spies Who Came In From the Newsroom."

Edited October 27, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[John Simkin]

For those who may have missed it, Joseph Trento, whose theory on the Kennedy assassination has been regularly disparaged by John Simkin, recently wrote on the "books" section that it was he who first exposed CIA influence in the media, in a 1977 article titled "The Spies Who Came In From the Newsroom."

The article appeared in Penthouse in August 1977. Maybe a member in America can buy a copy and post the article on the Forum.

http://usedmagazines.com/titles/Penthouse/1977/

There is no doubt that Joe Trento did some good investigative journalism in the early part of his career. My complaint is that he was taken in by James Angleton and therefore began pushing the Castro/KGB theory. Edward Epstein and Gus Russo made the same mistake.