How to End the Deep State
“Deep State” is a fictional television mini-series about a retired MI6 agent called back to do just one more job.
In the real world, the deep state is synonymous with shadow government. This is a permanent administrative state in contrast to the public structures we all learned about in a class called Civics 101.
This deep state is secretive. It entails a fluid network. It includes the intelligence agencies, the National Security Agency, FBI, and Defense Department. It is not the Department of Agriculture or your local town council.
The term has been used in political science for years, but it entered the national discourse in 2016 when candidate Trump talked about a cabal that operated in Washington, D.C. of unelected officials. That “swamp” had to be drained, he demanded. And that scared the deep state. It really scared them.
Already in 2014 Eric Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, exposed the reach of government surveillance. He said, “There’s definitely a deep state. Trust me, I’ve been there.”
Deep state was perhaps best defined by Mike Lofgren, a former congressional aide, as “a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.”
The term has been associated with the much older reference to what was termed a “military–industrial complex.”
Potential risks from that military-industrial complex were raised in President Dwight D. Eisenhower‘s 1961 farewell address: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Some have claimed the military-industrial complex is only the private part of the deep state. It involves leaders in finance and technology who are tied to the intelligence community and defense establishment.
As the Trump era unfolded, the term deep state came to mean something fully sinister to many on the Right. More than just signifying an impersonal, inept bureaucracy, it conjured a secretive illuminati of bureaucrats determined to sabotage the Trump agenda. It needed to be deconstructed. It still does.
Make no mistake; the deep state was the central actor in the plot to destroy the president. It is alive and active. It has not receded.
Without it, the whole Russia hoax fiasco would not have existed.
Intelgate
One of the premiere Kremlinologists in the whole world was Professor Stephen Cohen.
He served at the top ranks of the U.S. government, taught Russian history at Princeton, and wrote a mountain of books and professional articles about Russia. He knew it inside out and upside down—and you couldn’t fool him.
He thought the Russiagate brouhaha would be better termed “Intelgate.”
We should have listened to him. That whole incident could have initiated another, new cold war. The thing was, however, Russiagate was, from the very beginning, without Russia—as we have now discovered.
It is something much darker and more sinister.
The collusion, it turns out, was not between the White House and the Kremlin but between the U.S. intelligence community and the Democrats.
Opposition to both candidate and then President Trump was loud and continuous. The surveillance of Carter Page, a short-lived and peripheral Trump foreign policy advisor, was a central piece in the anti-Trump dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, the so-called MI6, Russia expert, who was in fact funded by Fusion GPS and paid by the DNC.
Steele’s documents were the fundamental ingredient in the whole “Red November” narrative. James Comey even used it to try and intimidate President Trump.
It was the entire basis for the Mueller investigation. I would know because I was called as a witness before that Kangaroo Court.
The dossier has now been thoroughly challenged as unrealistic and unsubstantiated by real experts, like Professor Cohen. Yet, it remained the core of all accusations for the proponents of the Russiagate storyline.
Why? Because it suggested a Trump-Putin collusion.
Cohen asked: when, and by whom was this opposition to Trump started? When did Christopher Steele get his information and who gave it to him? The investigation was not instigated by drunken remarks by George Papadopoulos to some anti-Trump Australian ambassador, late at night, in a London pub.
No, John Brennan and the CIA started the whole thing. Look at the recently declassified documents.
Brennan played a crucial role in promoting Russiagate from the get-go. He briefed members of Congress and President Obama as early as July and August of 2016, using Steele’s dossier. He shared information with James Clapper and FBI Director James Comey.
When did Brennan start his (CIA based) investigation of Trump? Late in 2015. His own testimony demonstrates he, not the FBI, was the godfather of Russiagate.
He provided information to Christopher Steele—spoon-fed it to him. Steele did not have deep contacts in Russia since he had not been there for about 20 years. He was badly out of touch.
Steele’s sources are incredible. He doesn’t and won’t name them because they are bogus.
Think about it: would Russian insiders really collaborate with an old, former MI6 operative under the eyes of the former KGB chief, Vladimir Putin? We are supposed to believe they would risk their positions, incomes, and their lives . . . for what?
Cohen rightly asks these questions. He also pointed out all the glaring and telling mistakes in the dossier—mistakes that real, current Kremlin experts do not make.
Christopher Steele’s source is John Brennan and the FBI, who as we now know, were already collaborating with Steele. Nellie Ohr, of Fusion GPS, provided CIA research and also funneled it into the Steele dossier. She was his co-author. Convenient.
If the information did not come from actual Russian sources, where did it come from? Was Russiagate the product of the U.S. intelligence community, specifically of John Brennan and the DNC, the political appointee sitting at the helm of the CIA? And what role did Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan play?
Is this not perilous to democracy? Does it pale to Watergate by comparison? Why was it done?
Loathing Trump is one thing; opposing any connection to or better relations with Russia is another. Could there also be ambition at play here, since it was no secret that Brennan badly wanted to become secretary of state to a future President Hillary Clinton?
Should Brennan not come under the bright light? Should he be indicted by John Durham?
And what was Obama’s role in all this? What did he know and when did he know it, to ask the proverbial question?
If we truly want to put an end to the deep state and future misdeeds, it will take real courage and killing it at its roots. Believe me, it won’t be easy to accomplish.
Here are the three things I would recommend to halt the deep state in its tracks. I think Eisenhower would approve.
First, restrict all government employees to five-year contracts, renewable only twice. For the military this should be 20 years and out, no exceptions. Then put measures into place that all these bureaucrats, appointees, and congressional staffers are not allowed to lobby or ever work for any government contractor or firm that has such contracts.
Second, impose term limits on Congress. Five two-year terms in the House; and, two six-year terms in the Senate. Likewise, no elected officials can ever lobby Congress or serve on the board or as an employee of any firm that does business with the government. Ironclad. The U.S. Congress, like the New Hampshire Legislature, should only be allowed to sit 45 days a year. This will make it a less than full-time assignment and allow all politicians to be part-time and return to their respective Mount Vernons. It will be a people’s republic.
And finally, the budget of the CIA and all other intelligence agencies, including most importantly, the FBI and NSA, should be cut over three years by 20 percent a year. This would work to rein in their excesses and limit their ability to thwart the democratic process.
All doable.
Who will step forward to take up this mantle? Any takers?
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