History lesson: Operation Mockingbird - CIA's media control

Jesse Ventura and Brigida Santos discuss Operation Mockingbird and how America’s most powerful news outlets worked with the CIA for 25 years to plant false stories and mislead the public.

Documentarian John Barbour talks about the surveillance of journalists.



The Church Committee was the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church (D-ID) in 1975. The committee investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The committee was part of a series of investigations into intelligence abuses in 1975, dubbed the "Year of Intelligence".

By the early years of the 1970s, a series of troubling revelations had appeared in the press concerning intelligence activities. First came the revelations by Army intelligence officer Christopher Pyle in January 1970 of the U.S. Army's spying on the civilian population and Senator Sam Ervin's Senate investigations produced more revelations. Then on December 22, 1974, The New York Times published a lengthy article by Seymour Hersh detailing operations engaged in by the CIA over the years that had been dubbed the "family jewels". Covert action programs involving assassination attempts on foreign leaders and covert attempts to subvert foreign governments were reported for the first time. In addition, the article discussed efforts by intelligence agencies to collect information on the political activities of US citizens.

The creation of the Church Committee was approved on January 27, 1975, by a vote of 82 to 4 in the Senate.

Sadly despite that good start the CIA and other intelligence agencies have retaken control and now are freely running their own foreign policy (that benefits corporate interests) without any real Congressional or public oversight and restrictions.