In January 1967, the CIA sent a memo (marked “SECRET,” “RESTRICTED,” and “DESTROY WHEN NO LONGER NEEDED”) to its army of media “assets” secretly embedded in virtually every area of U.S. communications. This army of covert operatives (exposed as “Operation Mockingbird” in a historic 1977 Rolling Stone article by Carl Bernstein) extended all the way up to world famous columnists, bureau chiefs, managing editors, newspaper publishers and CEOs of major radio and television broadcasting networks.

What did the CIA’s secret memo instruct its media assets to do? Entitled “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report,” the memo provided guidance for countering “conspiracy theorists” who challenged the Warren Report’s false conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of John F. Kennedy. It recommended the strategy of smearing critics of the Warren Report by describing them as being financially motivated; or having “anti-American, far-left or communist sympathies,” or being hasty, inaccurate or ego-driven in their research.

Sound familiar? Although five decades old, the tactics recommended by the memo seem chillingly current, a virtual operating manual for how the present-day CIA tries to smear and discredit anyone who dares to question official government propaganda.

Read the rest of the article here. (CovertAction Magazine)