Project Mockingbird

1963NotableContested

The CIA wiretaps two Washington journalists to find their sources. The name later becomes shorthand for wider claims of CIA influence over the press.

Longest chain: The Big Bang → First stars ignite → Supernovae seed heavy elements → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → The Great Dying → Dinosaurs appear → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → Apes split from monkeys → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Natufian villages → Oldest known bread → Agriculture begins → Irrigation → Uruk and the first cities → Cylinder seals → Writing (cuneiform) → Babylonian mathematics → Babylonian astronomical diaries → Thales and natural philosophy → Trial and death of Socrates → Plato's Academy → Aristotle's Lyceum → Alexander's conquests → Alexandria founded → Library of Alexandria → House of Wisdom → Al-Khwarizmi and algebra → Fibonacci's Liber Abaci → Bills of exchange → Medici Bank → Double-entry bookkeeping → Muscovy Company → English East India Company → Seven Years' War → American Revolution → Declaration of Independence → French Revolution → Revolutions of 1848 → German unification → World War I → Treaty of Versailles → Great Depression → Nazis take power → World War II → Atomic bomb → Cold War begins → Project Mockingbird

Contested history

Consensus: Project Mockingbird was a 1963 CIA wiretap of two syndicated columnists, disclosed in the agency's Family Jewels documents.

The CIA illegally wiretapped journalistsEstablished

CIA records list wiretaps on columnists Robert Allen and Paul Scott among activities outside its charter.

The CIA kept working relationships with many U.S. journalistsEstablished

The Church Committee and later reporting documented paid and unpaid ties with reporters and outlets during the Cold War.

Operation Mockingbird was a single program controlling major mediaUnsupported

The name for a sweeping media-control program comes from later books, not from CIA records, which describe scattered relationships.

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Documentnsarchive2.gwu.edu

The CIA's Family Jewels (National Security Archive) ↗