US Govt Just Legalized Operation
Mockingbird - FBI Can Now Impersonate the Media
TheFreeThoughtProject.com, by Claire
Bernish - September 22, 2016
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.
Last Thursday, the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General
published what’s become the subject of outrage for journalists, civil and
constitutional rights advocates, and legal experts — “A Review of the
FBI’s Impersonation of a Journalist in a Criminal Investigation.”
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.
As shocking as the finding sounds, it only validates the practice — in
fact, 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 report states.
But even the ubiquitous, mainstream AP — whose outlet became an unwitting
pawn for the agency — sharply 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.”
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.
It wasn’t until an ACLU technologist accidentally discovered copies of the
bogus news stories in 2014 — buried in pages the Electronic Frontier
Foundation obtained from the FBI via a Freedom of Information Act request
in 2011 — that the plot to pose as journalists came to light, generating
massive controversy and consternation.
Furthering the contempt, FBI Director James Comey penned a letter to the
editor of the New York Times defending the agency’s impersonation,
dismissively stating “we do use deception at times to catch crooks, but we
are acting responsibly and legally.”
The Associated Press and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
didn’t believe either the veracity or legality of Comey’s statement, and
sued the FBI to disclose documents relating to the practice — ultimately
obtaining a redacted memo in which the agency acknowledged the agents
violated the FBI’s own guidelines. However, the memo also stated that
violation, under the circumstances, 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.
In June this year, the FBI firmed up its rules for when an agent can
pretend to be a journalist — but the added rules haven’t quelled the ire.
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.
“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,” states the inspector general.
But no one outside the FBI or DOJ’s Office of Inspector General who grasps
the grievous threat to free speech and press — or the potential slippery
slope law enforcement co-opting the media represents — agrees anything
short of an abolishment on the practice could be acceptable.
“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.
“The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press is deeply troubled
by today’s disclosure,” David Boardman, RCFP steering committee chairman,
wrote in a statement last Thursday, “that the FBI believes that there is a
place in this country for federal agents to impersonate journalists. Such
a policy can seriously damage the public’s trust in its free press and the
ability of journalists to hold government accountable. We urge the Justice
Department to take seriously the need for reform and the importance of
protecting the integrity of the newsgathering process.”
Anyone with cursory knowledge of the U.S. government’s nefarious programs
to control its citizenry will undoubtedly see similarities between the
FBI’s fake journalism plot and the post-World War II CIA propaganda
campaign, Operation Mockingbird.
To ensure support for its operations and views, the CIA clandestinely
recruited American journalists and media outlets, funded the creation of
student and cultural organizations, launched purely propaganda-based print
media, and, ultimately, worked its way into political campaigns and
employed similar methods abroad.
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.
Mockingbird covertly influenced national opinion for years, nefariously
planting the CIA’s narrative on the unwitting collective public mind
before finally being at least partially exposed over a decade later. It
wasn’t until a congressional investigation in 1975 the putative full
extent of the program was revealed. Although the CIA claimed it would no
longer recruit journalists and media organizations into its folds,
Mockingbird has oft been rumored never to have stopped.
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.
It would seem Mockingbird endures to this day — and whatever premise the
government claims as reason to become the American media — the public
remains, for the large part, its oblivious, captive audience.
Source:
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/fbi-impersonate-media-mockingbird/
Ed Note: This article is a good read,
but not entirely accurate in its depiction, primarily because a key
distinction needs to be made... that Operation Mockingbird was an
infiltration of the media, while the FBI revelation was an
impersonation of the media. Both are bad, but they are two wholly
different things. The CIA's Operation Mockingbird was an ongoing
campaign that delivered news to the people on a daily basis, while the
FBI issue is more related to the fraudulent misuse of media credentials to
gain media access into private entities for secret domestic intelligence
gathering. Again, both are bad and are egregious government misuses of the
media.
Read more about Operation Mockingbird and the corrupted mainstream media:
MediaDeceit.com
(Must see website on corporate media corruption)
|