#1948

Operation Mockingbird

Between 1948 and the mid-1970s, the Central Intelligence Agency cultivated paid and unpaid working relationships with American journalists, editors, and publishers across every major U.S. news organization. The architect was an OSS veteran named Frank Wisner. He called the network the 'Mighty Wurlitzer' — a theatre-organ metaphor for a machine that could play many instruments from a single console. The full scope was confirmed by the 1975 Church Committee, expanded upon in Carl Bernstein's 25,000-word 1977 Rolling Stone investigation, and partly declassified since. What the records have not yet given up is the operational name everyone agrees was attached to it.