The Mockingbird Drive Page 16

  What kind of information was the CIA looking for?

  Well, imagine you're Joe CIA, part of a 6-man unit overseeing opposition to Khrushchev in the USSR in the late 1950s. Maybe you want information about an imprisoned far-right Ukrainian dissident, but you hear a rumor that the Gulag system is winding down. There's a chance he's been moved from the Saratovsky camp he's been rotting in for the last three years, but you need to know for sure. What would you do? Send over a couple corn-fed agents in Yankees hats to knock on the door of the Kremlin? Probably not. Instead, you call your buddy, Arthur Hays Sulzberger at The Times. He's got a reporter in Moscow right now who'll be back next month. As it happens, he's been working on a story about Khrushchev's reforms, and he'd be happy to help. Just doing his duty. By the way, want to play racquetball next week?

  And this is where Operation Mockingbird gets more complicated, and more controversial.

  We all know it's bullshit, but we like to think of journalists as unbiased. At least we used to. Historically, it's been one of the lies we tell ourselves to get through the day. But, we hope that they're not literally on the payroll of the governments or businesses or sports teams they're hired to cover. So, if a bunch of the top journalists in the country turned out to be—either formally or informally—working for the CIA, that'd be a big deal. And, according to Bernstein's article, the CIA had top people at almost every major news organization in the U.S. The New York Times, Time, Life, CBS News. Their list of assets was a who's who of top journalists from the 1950s to 1970s.

  But journalism is rarely a one-way street. Turns out, some of the reporters Bernstein spoke to described their relationship with the CIA as a typical, mutually beneficial journalistic relationship. So, when The Times reporter gets back from Moscow and tells Joe CIA everything he knows about Russian plans for political prisoners, of course he gets a scoop or two about Korolev's burgeoning space program. Simple business.

  I used to be a real journalist, remember? I made deals like that all the time. Just as Bird had a couple days ago. Any decent reporter covering foreign affairs would jump at the chance to have drinks with a known CIA staffer. And there's a good chance a CIA agent's view of the relationship would differ from the journalist's. Whereas a CIA staffer might puff up his importance by claiming to have control over a journalist, a journalist might think he's using the staffer to get information his competitor isn't getting.

  But even more important than the foreign correspondents were the columnists and commentators. These guys—and they were all guys at the time—were the ones who shaped American public opinion about politics, war, foreign leaders, you name it. According to the Bernstein piece, the CIA had dozens of the top commentators in the country on the payroll. Folks who were considered by the CIA to be "receptive to the Agency's point of view on various subjects." The best-known of these columnists was Arthur Sulzberger of The New York Times, who, according to several CIA officials, once published a column under his own byline that was just a briefing paper from the CIA. Sulzberger called the report, "A bunch of baloney." Assuming Bernstein's story is right—and I trust him—does this mean everything in The New York Times is a lie? Of course not.

  And that was why I didn't want to talk to Quinn about this. Luckily, she was now playing fetch with her new canine friend. She saw this type of thing in black and white, good and evil, while I saw shades of gray. Many of the CIA officials Bernstein interviewed thought of these helpful journalists as operatives or even full-on CIA agents. But the journalists tended to see themselves as trusted friends of the Agency who performed occasional favors—usually without pay—in the national interest.

  One of their best assets was Joseph Alsop, a legend in the journalism business. He was a Harvard guy, related to both Theodore Roosevelt and James Monroe, who had served in the Navy in World War II before becoming one of the most influential political journalists in the country. And he had no issue with going on the record in the Bernstein piece. When asked about his role in helping the CIA, he summed up the sentiments of many of the reporters involved: "I'm proud they asked me and proud to have done it…The notion that a newspaperman doesn't have a duty to his country is perfect balls."

  The third and final piece of Operation Mockingbird was to influence foreign citizens by setting up newspapers in foreign countries, paid for secretly, of course. For example, up until 1974, the CIA owned a forty-percent stake in the Rome Daily American, its main purpose to convince the Italian people not to become Communists. One project in the mid-sixties used high-level staffers from The Washington Post and CBS News—along with professors from MIT and Columbia—to figure out how to broadcast U.S. propaganda behind the Iron Curtain and into Red China. The team recommended that the CIA establish a radio broadcast run by the Voice of America and beam it into China. As apprehensive as I am about the entanglements between the media and the CIA, I wish they'd figured out something about China, because I still can't get The Barker past China's Great Internet Firewall.

  If you read spy novels, you might picture this whole project as a group of industrious folks at the CIA managing to infiltrate the media by blackmailing reporters or getting agents placed in the mailroom. And some of that happened. But that's not the right way to think about it, at least according to Bernstein.

  This was a partnership, and it came from the top down. Not only did the CIA have relationships with many of the top journalists and commentators, they did so with the encouragement of the publishers and owners they worked for. Top executives from most major newspapers and TV networks cooperated.

  As public trust in U.S. institutions eroded during the Vietnam War and Watergate, Operation Mockingbird wound down between 1973 and 1976 under CIA director William Colby. And when George Bush took over the CIA in 1976, he immediately announced a new policy: "Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio, or television network or station." Of course, this new policy only affected one piece of the program, and the CIA would still welcome the voluntary cooperation of news organization and reporters.

  From the 1940s to 1970s, the program was one of the CIA's most closely-held secrets, for two main reasons. First, if a journalist was found to be a CIA operative while reporting in a foreign country, he wouldn't come home. That would be bad, sure, and it led to the second reason. There was no telling how the public would react if the program leaked. Bobby Newspaper-Reader still believed that, despite its limitations, the press presented a basically truthful version of events. You know, facts. If it turned out that half of the most-trusted newsmen in the U.S. were with the CIA, public confidence would be shattered. At least that was the fear.

  So, how did Operation Mockingbird become public?

  A few details had already leaked when the Church Committee started looking into CIA and press relationships in 1975. But the committee, made up of a half-dozen senators, was designed as a broad investigation into U.S. intelligence services, and committee members spent most of their time searching for headline-grabbing assassination attempts, exploding suitcases, and poison pens. The investigation into the use of journalists was an afterthought. And it's not like the CIA cooperated. After months of stonewalling, the Church Committee gained only limited access to some of the files. No journalists had been interviewed. The committee's final report contained just ten pages about the program, which were agreed upon, according to committee member Senator Gary Hart, after "prolonged and elaborate negotiation [with the CIA] over what would be said."

  To my mind, they were worried about nothing. As sacred as the role of the press is supposed to be—it's in the First Amendment, after all—the press is a business. And if the relationship between the CIA and the press were to become public, who would make it public?

  The press, right?

  And why would the press report something that would undermine confidence in its own product? Not to mention the fac
t that, if Bernstein was right about the reporters he'd named, further reporting could ruin a journalist's career. Not surprisingly, the Bernstein piece had caused a small stir, but had been ignored by the major news outlets.

  One quote from "a high-ranking CIA official" in the Bernstein piece kept coming back to me. "This all has to be considered in the context of the morality of the times…There was a time when it wasn't considered a crime to serve your government.'"

  There was something about the quote that got to me, and I was trying to figure out what it was. I pictured Bernstein in 1975, a long-haired Jewish reporter who leaned left, sitting across from a chiseled CIA agent with a graying crew cut and a constant frown. To the agent's generation, nothing was even slightly wrong with the program. He'd lived through the Great Depression, World War II, and the early stages of the Cold War, conflicts that had to be fought and had to be won. Of course journalists should help, and having a hippie like Bernstein question him must have been the ultimate insult. But, to Bernstein's generation of counterculture revolutionaries, who grew up distrusting the government and had protested the war in Vietnam, everything was wrong about the program. To Bernstein, the role of the press was to uncover government lies and deceptions, even when it came to war. To find out that they'd been in cahoots all along would have been shocking.

  But that was forty years ago, and I couldn't help but think that the whole dichotomy between Bernstein and the CIA had somehow been erased. That the relationships between press and power had changed fundamentally.

  I glanced up when I heard Quinn's steps crunching the dry grass. Her shirt was covered with dog hair and she looked closer to happy than I'd ever seen her.

  I stood and tucked the binder under my arm, then gestured towards the car, tossing Quinn the keys. "Okay. Before we go through it all, I have one question. Operation Mockingbird wound down forty years ago. When the details came out, no one really cared. And I've never heard a single rumor about a journalist having a relationship with the CIA. Maybe there is more information buried in this binder and maybe not. But if the information has been public for forty years, why would it be worth killing over now?"

  Quinn scoffed, like I'd asked the stupidest question in the world. While I was trying to think of something to say, she grabbed the binder from me and strode back to the car. She paused when she got to the car, staring at the dog park.

  The brown dog was now alone in the fenced-in area, two paws up on the fence. He seemed to be staring at Quinn. And Quinn was staring back.

  I'd lost track of the time while reading about Operation Mockingbird, but we must've been there over at hour. There were no other cars in the lot. No one had come or gone from the restroom in the last few minutes, and I knew what was about to happen.

  I walked to the car. Quinn's eyes were fixed on the dog, who still had two paws on the fence, tongue out, tail wagging.

  "Did he have tags on him?" I asked.

  "No," Quinn said.

  "He's abandoned, you think?"

  "We've been here an hour and no sign of his owner. It's eighty degrees and there's no water in there."

  "So, we're getting a dog?"

  "I love him."

  "Okay, but he rides in the back."

  Chapter 20

  Back in the car, Quinn convinced me to continue driving west, toward Oregon and the headquarters of Allied Regional Data Security, the firm where Tudayapi had once worked. I'd objected at first, but figured we'd come up with a better idea along the way. Plus, west meant I'd be driving toward Seattle, too.

  In the back seat, Smedley—which is what Quinn was already calling her dog—was slobbering all over the three-day-old backpack that was holding the drive. He was a medium-sized dog, with a strong body, a wrinkly face, and a childlike enthusiasm. His fur was the color of milky coffee, and Quinn thought he might be part Shar Pei.

  While she drove, I relayed what I'd read about Operation Mockingbird, insisting that she let me finish the whole story before interrupting. As usual, I was giving my balanced-journalist version of events, and I knew where she wanted to take it.

  At least I thought I did.

  "Three things," she said. "First, I already knew most of that. Second, if that's what Bernstein could get people to talk about, imagine how much went on that he never found."

  I did agree with that. When stories are about to go public, companies, individuals, and governments have two options. The first is: don't comment, categorically deny it. The second is to step in and try to control the story, to minimize the story, blame it on a couple low-level officials, admit to some minor details and obfuscate the larger ones. It's fairly likely that, in this case, the CIA had chosen the second option.

  "So, what's the third thing?" I asked, and this was when she surprised me.

  "It's really not that big a deal."

  Right when she said it, two epiphanies struck me almost simultaneously. First, I'd been pretending it wasn't a big deal while reading about it and while telling Quinn about it. The truth was, I felt disillusioned, angry, and betrayed. By the government, by the journalists involved, and by society for not caring about it when it came out. Despite being a sell-out myself, I figured that all along there had been real journalists out there doing real stories, keeping politicians and corporations honest. And I figured that when the big stories broke, they had effects that rippled through the years. I was ashamed and embarrassed that Bernstein's story hadn't made waves.

  My second epiphany was about Quinn. It made perfect sense that she would say it wasn't a big deal. Not only had she known about it for years, she lived in a mental place where things much worse were happening all the time. Operation Mockingbird was, in her mind, a misdemeanor in a world of capital crimes. The reason I called it an epiphany is that it hit me all at once, not as mental recognition, but as a physical one. It was like a giant whoosh through my body. Like I could feel the world she lived in, a world where of course the CIA controls the media, just like they're watching us right now and are probably going to kill us any minute.

  I asked Quinn why they'd be following us if it was no big deal.

  "Because it's not just about Operation Mockingbird."

  "So, I ask again, why would they be following us? Why would they have killed Baxter and the others, why is the drive important?"

  Quinn thought for a while, then said. "There are only three options. First, they know it's unimportant but it's a matter of principle. Somehow they found out that Tudayapi stole it from them, and therefore it must be destroyed on principle even though there's nothing of interest on it. Or, they don't know there's nothing of interest on it because they don't know what's on it. Those options are similar."

  "So, what's the third option?"

  "That there is something on the drive—in the binder—that they're trying to protect, but we haven't found it yet."

  I felt like there was more to say, but we drove in silence for almost an hour. Every once in a while, Quinn would glance over at me like she was about to say something, but she never did. I'd like to say that I couldn't get my mind off the hard drive. I'd like to say that every fiber in my being wanted to get back to the binder, to channel my inner Bernstein and get to the bottom of the story. But I kept thinking about Greta, and the fact that I was supposed to be eating dumplings with her in about three days.

  I was getting hungry, and I couldn't let myself get too far down that rabbit hole, so I started looking for somewhere to stop.

  Quinn must have been on the same wavelength because, a few minutes later, she broke the silence with a "Hey! I've been there." She was pointing at a billboard advertising BUSTER'S TRAIN WHISTLE SALOON. "You hungry?" she asked.

  After a quick stop for dog food, a leash, and a metal water bowl, we hooked Smedley to a shady tree in front of the Saloon, which was in an old brick building just off the highway.

  They had a new-looking flat screen on the wall, and I asked the old man behind the bar if he could turn on CNN. He frowned at me, but pulled a
sticky remote from behind the cash register. "Have at it," he said in a growly voice.

  It was around seven, still early for a bar crowd, and the place was empty except for a few tables near the window, one of four men and one of four women. Both tables were littered with shot glasses, and the groups were talking so loudly I didn't think they'd mind—or even notice—if I turned up the sound. Quinn and I took a seat in a booth across from the bar, where she could watch Smedley through the window, and I could see the TV. I scanned through CNN and MSNBC, then landed on Fox News, the only one of the three not on commercial. Two talking heads were debating something or other, and I turned down the volume.

  "Why the hell do you want to watch the news?" Quinn asked, dismissively, opening the binder.

  "Just want to see how they're covering the shooting." That's what I always said when someone asked me why I still watched cable news. But, secretly, I was hoping I'd learn something new about the shooting. Quinn was the sort of person who was sure she knew the truth and had no interest in hearing alternatives. I'm the sort of person who, even though I know cable news is mostly infotainment, watches anyway because I can pick up kernels of truth from the way it's being presented.

  All of a sudden, the windows along the far wall of the bar began to shake a little, followed by the floor beneath us. It wasn't anything extreme, and at first I thought I was imagining it.

  "Do you feel that?" Quinn asked.

  "I'm glad it's not just me. Earthquake?"