Thread by @caitoz

The CIA Used To Infiltrate The Media. Now The CIA Is The Media.

"This isn't Operation Mockingbird. It's so much worse. Operation Mockingbird was the CIA doing something *to* the media. What we are seeing now is the CIA openly acting *as* the media."
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-cia-used…

Back in our younger more innocent days the psychopathic CIA had to covertly infiltrate the news media to manipulate the information Americans were consuming about their nation and the world. Nowadays, there is no meaningful separation between the news media and the CIA at all.

Greenwald recently highlighted an interesting point about New York Times' reporting on the so-called "Bountygate" story the outlet broke last year about the Russian government trying to pay Taliban-linked fighters to attack US soldiers in Afghanistan:

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1382793565714153472?s=20

This would be the same "Russian bounties" narrative which was discredited all the way back in September when the top US military official in Afghanistan said no satisfactory evidence had surfaced for the allegations.
nbcnews.com/politics/natio…

This would also be the same "Russian bounties" story that has just been further discredited with a new article by The Daily Beast titled "U.S. Intel Walks Back Claim Russians Put Bounties on American Troops".

https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1382769897420296194?s=20

The Daily Beast, which has itself uncritically published many articles promoting the CIA "Bountygate" narrative (

https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1382720830178754562?s=20

), reports the following:

So the mass media aggressively promoted a CIA narrative that none of them ever saw proof of, because there was no proof, because it was an entirely unfounded claim from the very beginning. They quite literally ran a CIA press release and disguised it as a news story.

This allowed the CIA to throw shade and inertia on Trump's proposed troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Germany, and to continue ramping up anti-Russia sentiments on the world stage,
theintercept.com/2020/07/02/hou…

It also may well have contributed to the fact that the CIA will officially be among those who are exempt from Biden's performative Afghanistan "withdrawal".
archive.is/UO3w8#selectio…

In totalitarian countries the government spy agency tells the news media what stories to run, and the news media unquestioningly publish it. In free democracies, the government spy agency says "Hoo buddy, have I got a scoop for you!" and the news media unquestioningly publish it.

In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled "The CIA and the Media" on how the CIA had covertly infiltrated America's most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters whom it considered assets in a program known as Operation Mockingbird.
carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_a…

It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media is meant to report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the agendas of spooks and warmongers.

Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and people are too propagandized to even recognize this as scandalous. Highly influential outlets like @nytimes uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news pundits.

https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1382777804014641152?s=20

The sole owner of The Washington Post is a CIA contractor, and WaPo has never once disclosed this conflict of interest when reporting on US intelligence agencies per standard journalistic protocol.
huffpost.com/entry/why-amaz…

Mass media outlets now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like these folks:

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1205610508134555648

The mass media also employ known CIA assets like @KenDilanianNBC.
theintercept.com/2014/09/04/for…

As well as CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson.
theweek.com/speedreads/689…

This isn't Operation Mockingbird. It's so much worse. Operation Mockingbird was the CIA doing something TO the media. What we are seeing now is the CIA openly acting AS the media. Any separation between the CIA and the news media, indeed even any pretence of separation, is gone.

And the CIA is the very worst institution that could possibly be spearheading the movements of that power structure. A little research into the many, many horrific things the CIA has done over the years will quickly show you that this is true.
whatwhenwhy.net/worst-intellig…

Hell, just a glance at what the CIA was up to with the Phoenix Program in Vietnam will show you this.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_P…

One of the weirdest mainstream political beliefs is that secretive government agencies who did evil things in the past just don't do evil things anymore. This belief is based on literally nothing. Nothing whatsoever. It's believed because it's comfortable.

The CIA should not exist at all, let alone control the news media, much less the movements of the US empire.