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US Govt Just Legalized Operation Mockingbird - FBI Can Now Impersonate the Media

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posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 12:57 PM
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FBI agents conducting undercover investigations have now been given the green light to impersonate journalists, the Justice Department determined last week — effectively legalizing the government’s most notorious propaganda program, Operation Mockingbird.

Source

Related: Link

Operation Mockingbird


Operation Mockingbird was a secret campaign by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to influence media. Begun in the 1950s, it was initially organized by Cord Meyer and Allen W. Dulles, and was later led by Frank Wisner after Dulles became the head of the CIA. The organization recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network to help present the CIA's views. It funded some student and cultural organizations and magazines as fronts. As it developed, it also worked to influence foreign media and political campaigns, in addition to activities by other operating units of the CIA.

Last Thursday, the DOJ Office of Inspector General published what will completely destroy what little honesty and integrity journalism has left.

Behold,

“A Review of the FBI’s Impersonation of a Journalist in a Criminal Investigation”

PDF: Download


Allowing agents to infiltrate media organizations for any reason threatens to utterly undermine public trust, kill the very concept of journalistic integrity, and throttle the flow of information from sources and whistleblowers concerned with the legitimacy of journalists they contact.

This is big folks. The establishment media has had enough and those designated to control the flow of information have found themselves losing the information war.

Here is an example,


...the report centers around a case from 2007 in which an FBI agent pretended to be an Associated Press journalist to identify an elusive suspect online. At the time, the FBI “did not prohibit agents from impersonating journalists or from posing as a member of a news organization,”

The article states that the AP (a Rothschild organization), became an unwitting pawn for the agency and have heavily criticized the DOJ’s announcement..


“The Associated Press is deeply disappointed by the Inspector General’s findings, which effectively condone the FBI’s impersonation of an AP journalist in 2007,” Associated Press Vice President Paul Colford said in a statement cited by US News. “Such action compromises the ability of a free press to gather the news safely and effectively and raises serious constitutional concerns.”

Here is how the setup went down…


In 2007, a high school student near Seattle emailed a series of bomb threats to his school, but his use of proxy servers thwarted police efforts to learn his identity — so they asked for assistance from the FBI’s Northwest Cybercrime Task Force.

Agents devised a plan, and, as the Intercept summarized, “An undercover agent sent the student email impersonating an editor for the Associated Press. The email included links to a fake news site designed to look like the Seattle Times.”

When the student followed the links, malware revealing his actual location installed itself.

In 2014, an ACLU technologist accidentally discovered copies of the bogus news stories buried deep within pages from an earlier FOIA request in 2011, causing massive outrage and controversy. At the time, FBI Director James Comey wrote a letter to the New York Times defending the agency’s impersonation.

Comey stated:

“we do use deception at times to catch crooks, but we are acting responsibly and legally.”

The AP was not persuaded to back off and subsequently sued the FBI under the belief that they were acting unethically and illegally. Documents related to the practice were eventually uncovered and the evidence exposed. A memo was produced showing that the agency acknowledged the agents violated the FBI’s own guidelines. Regardless of the rules, the memo also stated that the violation, under the circumstance, was not “unreasonable.”


A review was launched by the OIG, but Thursday’s conclusion simply confirmed the FBI’s previous finding it had done nothing wrong — and may proceed with future journalistic deception.

The rules of deception have been established and once again, the public remains in the dark. We're lucky if we can even identify when it's happening without purposefully trying to disprove every article we read.


As long as agents receive approval from the head of the FBI field office, the Undercover Review Committee, and the deputy director of the FBI — who then must meet with the deputy attorney general — they are free to pose as journalists during undercover investigations.

It appears that the FBI sees nothing wrong with the practice and refuses to acknowledge how it will affect journalistic integrity in the future. The inspector general stated, “We believe the new interim policy on undercover activities that involve FBI employees posing as members of the news media is a significant improvement to FBI policies that existed.”


“The FBI guidelines adopted in 2016 in response to this incident still permit the FBI to impersonate news organizations and other third parties without their consent in certain cases, and fail to address the host of other dangers associated with FBI hacking,” Neema Singh Guliani, ACLU legislative counsel, said in a statement cited by US News.

edit on 23-9-2016 by eisegesis because: (no reason given)



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 12:58 PM
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To ensure the FBI had enough support, the CIA recruited American journalists and media outlets. They also funded the creation of student and cultural organizations, launched propaganda-based print media and eventually worked their way into the political campaign process. The CIA was so successful that the same techniques were used to achieve similar results overseas.


Mainstream outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, and many others, actively and willingly disseminated propaganda disguised as news — through suppression, censorship, and selective focus, etc. — in the interest of the government.

Operation Mockingbird covertly influenced the public’s opinion for years by planting the CIA’s fabricated “stories” in the media. After a decade of deceit, a congressional investigation finally took place in 1975, revealing the full extent of the program. The CIA claimed it would no longer recruit journalists and media organizations, but the rumor is that they never really stopped. When the government gets caught, it only finds a better way to not get caught, making the public believe that any unethical or illegal behavior will cease to continue. Yeah, right...


Besides the revelations in this article concerning the FBI, documents revealed the government actively tried to influence public thought about WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, in 2011.

This is just another example to show how Operation Mockingbird and the agencies involved, continue to confuse and subjugate the public perception at all costs. Combine this with the government’s preexisting propaganda outlets and it’s hard to take anything seriously anymore. It doesn’t matter how much you trust or respect the media, get as much information from as many sources as possible and come to your own conclusion.

Thanks for reading.

edit on 23/9/16 by masqua because: Edited 1 word change per member request (it's to their)



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 01:03 PM
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Good work eisegesis!

COINTELPRO, Hitler's Youth, and now this? What else haven't they covered these days? Oh, MKULTRA. Or have they?

Project Paperclip sure paid off, eh?
en.wikipedia.org...



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 01:04 PM
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posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 01:18 PM
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Thing are really, really, really bad right now. I don't think people realize how bad.

How the EU uses Academia & Media to sell "integration"


The European Union's propaganda budget

Expenditure is spread around many departments and then within many sections. Even DG X (the EU institution responsible for Information and Communication) is unlikely to have a complete idea of how much is being spent. However, we can catalogue and detail many of the various lines in the EU Budget that are being used for propaganda expenditure in 2002 and show how much money is spent on supporting such work.

The main section of the EU budget to be tapped on propaganda is B3-3, which is concerned with information and communication, and in 2002 it had a total budget commitment of €105,205,600. €44.7 million of this was available to Prince (B3-306), the section dealing in part with the single currency. Other key lines include B3-301 (Information outlets) and B3-304 (European Integration in Universities).


Open your eyes people, everything is connected!!

It dates back to the elimination of the Goddess religions and introduction of the new religions, persecuting Paganism. Nothing has changed in ~2000+ years. And Im not attacking your religion (Christians), but the same people took it over when they realized they couldn't defeat it. Same thing happened with Islam (Abu Bakr employed Muhammed's nemesis after his death - Bloodthirsty general) & they've been controlling religion, media, education ever since.

The same people.

The next step in this biblical deception is to corral Muslim's until Europe is saturated & begin the next stage of devolution.

It's going to get hairy soon because we are in the final stages of their plan....



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 01:21 PM
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Mockingbird was an internal (i.e., homeland) program of manipulating and fabricating stories in mainstream journalism. That's a bit different from posing as a journalist to trick people into giving away information that they might otherwise withhold.

I mean, the FBI tactic is dreadful, but it's not Mockingbird.



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 01:26 PM
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a reply to: boncho

Boncho...

Take that right wing, anti immigration waffle, and cram it up another thread. It is not disinformation to insist that human beings can live side by side peacefully, when unmolested by propagandists and schemers, just a simple fact. We would never have thought any other thing, if it had not been for the slave trade, which was so effective at dehumanising demographics, that hundreds of years of barbarism followed, and even after abolition, a further few hundred years of xenophobic taint remains. It will be extinguished in time, and the world will be better for it. Till then, stow it.



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 01:28 PM
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a reply to: TrueBrit

I usually love your posts, but barbarism is all over that whole 'scene':
www.abovetopsecret.com...



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 01:35 PM
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a reply to: TrueBrit

Even if he is right wing I think he was saying all religious (ideology) gets perverted for an agenda. God knows this "patriotism" here in the US is making us happy to lose all of our rights for security. And yet the NSA hasn't thwarted any attacks.



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 01:40 PM
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a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

All your thread proves, unfortunately, is that you have the same disease Boncho there has.

It's a disease of the will. You have not a strong enough will, to withstand the pressure to hate, mistrust, and dehumanise your fellow human beings at the whim of a bent media machine designed to make enemies of your fellow citizens, and fellow human beings. That is unfortunate indeed...

Just make sure that remains your problem, for you to solve, and never becomes anyone else's problem at your behest? There's a good chap.



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 01:41 PM
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a reply to: CriticalStinker

Indeed, however patriotism is not, unless the meaning of the word has changed significantly since I read the dictionary last, a religious issue.



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 01:44 PM
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a reply to: TrueBrit

We're going way off topic, but I did give you the perfect forum to explore all that. Enjoy!



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 01:48 PM
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a reply to: TrueBrit

People cling to ideology the same, whether it be country or religion. And we always get told by the leaders we are obligated to take certain stances.

I don't believe in open borders, but I sure would like to stop blowing half my countries money on war. Instead I'd rather spend a quarter on helping the rest of the world out.

Drop food, medicine, books and maybe one day Internet devices and in a few decades we won't need open borders. Help people rebuild their countries the way they want them.



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 01:59 PM
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a reply to: CriticalStinker

You are absolutely right, but in a nation like the US, or the UK, we have certain freedoms that do not exist when the muzzle of a Kalashnikov is never far away. We have freedom to think, to discuss, to debate, and to come to a realisation about the power which is weilded over us and the rest of the human race, and by whom it is weilded.

Being the people with most access to these freedoms, means that we are obligated to throw off our oppressors, to show the world what true freedom is, to take ALL the freedoms afforded us as persons with mastery of our fate, to never accept less than all of them, to defend every one of them with our lives and our hearts entire, as an example to every other nations people, of just what can happen when even corrupt, shadowy power crumbles as a result of citizen action.

Simply put, our enemies are not who we are told they are, and they need removing before the good work can be completed.



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 02:03 PM
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Any ATSers want to chip in and buy some remote island together in the Caribbean?



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 02:09 PM
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a reply to: TrueBrit

I couldn't have articulated that any better. And no one will listen to us if we attack their ideology, real gains are with gentle nudges over and over and over. Balls to the walls with the oppressors though haha.



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 02:22 PM
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I think you are mixing your metaphors here. The information you provided discusses the FBI attempting to find a person who was threatening to bomb a school, but who hid behind proxy servers. An agent impersonated an AP reporter in an attempt to find out who this guy was. They were successful.

You go on to conflate that with a 1950's era campaign to influence the media and news reporting.

So how was the FBI impersonating a reporter to find a fellow threatening to bomb a school influencing the news and news reporting? Do you not see a clear difference here? My guess is that had this fellow managed to bomb a school you would be all over law enforcement for not doing enough to stop him. You seem to be confusing under cover work with a political campaign. Unless you think it is unfair for the FBI to sneak up on a would-be bomber like that.

I of course disapprove of the government attempting to influence the media with subterfuge, but I see nothing wrong with this sort of undercover operation to catch a criminal attempting to cause mass deaths and destruction. Using this to complain about the other is completely misplaced.



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 02:28 PM
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I seem to recall a bunch of data came out via the 9/11 scene about such stuff going on related to that. Some being in place even before 9/11 I think it even was. It's been forever but I'm sure the data could be dug back up.



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 02:44 PM
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originally posted by: schuyler
You seem to be confusing under cover work with a political campaign. Unless you think it is unfair for the FBI to sneak up on a would-be bomber like that.

I of course disapprove of the government attempting to influence the media with subterfuge, but I see nothing wrong with this sort of undercover operation to catch a criminal attempting to cause mass deaths and destruction. Using this to complain about the other is completely misplaced.


Well, it's fine from a law enforcement point of view. However, it's a bit of a shi##y deal for actual journalists, who might find that people are a little (!) less willing to talk to them if those sources think they are talking to an undercover fed.

This is the real ethical problem with it. By poisoning the well, the FBi is casting suspicion upon legitimate journalists. And journalists have enough to worry about without ending up on some drug kingpin's hit-list by mistake.



posted on Sep, 23 2016 @ 02:58 PM
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a reply to: eisegesis

Let's look at this from a different angle, shall we?

The government of the United States, and more particularly its intelligence services and law enforcement agencies, have had access to all the data from the Internet that they could ever need, to identify, locate and snatch up, any person they "need" to, for reasons of "national security" for over a decade.

Ergo, they did not need this additional ability to impersonate members of the press for any reason, ergo, this rulings consequence will not be limited to uses of impersonation as described, because the whole thing has been bought to court to legitimise future, and unrelated actions, requiring the use of impersonation in order to achieve future aims.

If anything like the aims of the creation of the Prism, Xkeyscore, and other systems, then you can bet they have nothing to do with the upholding of the constitution against ALL threats, foreign AND domestic.




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