Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard responded on Thursday to the suggestion that the CIA and other elements of the U.S. intelligence community had infiltrated American media outlets, using them to spread misinformation and trip up the Trump administration.
In an interview with conservative influencer Benny Johnson, Gabbard did not directly use the term “Operation Mockingbird,” a CIA program to infiltrate nominally independent media organizations, declassified and allegedly shut down in the 1970s, but nevertheless claimed, “It’s something that we’ve already had to deal with in this administration.” [see video below]
JOHNSON: The media being used as a propaganda mechanism—we saw it flatly. I mean, I think it’s the smoking gun, quite frankly, of the Obamagate narrative and the Russiagate narrative. That it was so baked in, that The New York Times and Washington Post went and ran with it.
Some would say that that’s part of Operation Mockingbird. Some would say that that’s part of what we learned in the Church Committee—that the intel agencies were using media outlets as their mouthpieces, and that those mouthpieces would parrot the official narrative.
And I wanted to ask you: is this operation still going on? Are you aware of the intel agencies working directly with media outlets in order to push prescribed narratives that may or may not be true?
GABBARD: It’s something that we’ve already had to deal with, Benny, within this administration—where there are people within the intelligence community who believe that their will is more important than the will of the American people, and will weaponize intelligence by leaking it to their friends within the mainstream media with the intent of undermining President Trump’s agenda.
It is not one that he hasn’t already talked about in every rally and town hall that he did throughout the campaign. I don’t even know how many there were. But President Trump is enacting the very thing he promised the American people he would do in this election.
So people in the intelligence community—they may agree, they may disagree. That’s not the point here.
As intelligence professionals, as people who work in the national security space, in the intelligence community, they are required to fulfill their mandate—to their oath to the Constitution of the United States and to the President of the United States, who was duly elected by the American people.
Those who leak intelligence to their friends in the mainstream media with the intent of undermining the president who was elected by the American people—none of these intelligence professionals were. They are subverting the will of the people and therefore undermining the Constitution.
PLAY:
SCARY: Tulsi Gabbard CONFIRMS That ‘Operation Mockingbird’ is STILL Ongoing inside the CIA and she is actively trying to Shut it Down.
Tulsi says Deep State intel agents are still actively colluding with left-wing media outlets to attack President Trump from within:
“There are… pic.twitter.com/CZWMERFsa3
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 31, 2025
