Caitlin Johnstone

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Deep State Swamp Monster Says There Is No Deep State

Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo said during a hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee today that he does not believe there is a deep state in the CIA, the State Department or the Department of Justice, which is the same as a mob boss saying he doesn’t believe there is organized…

Caitlin Johnstone
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Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo said during a hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee today that he does not believe there is a deep state in the CIA, the State Department or the Department of Justice, which is the same as a mob boss saying he doesn’t believe there is organized crime in the Mafia.

California Rep. Ted Lieu, himself a virulent Russiagater and aggressive defender of the US intelligence community, asked Pompeo if he believed there was a “Criminal Deep State” at the State Department in reference to a recent tweet by America’s reality TV president.

“I haven’t seen the comments from the president. I don’t believe there is a deep state at the State Department,” Pompeo said.

“You formerly served as CIA Director,” Lieu continued. “Do you believe your colleagues at the CIA are part of the Criminal Deep State?”

“You know, this term ‘deep state’ has been thrown around — I will say this, the employees that worked for me at the CIA, nearly uniformly, were aimed at achieving the president’s objectives and America’s objectives,” Pompeo responded.

“And that’s your experience when you interact with colleagues at the FBI and the Department of Justice as well?” Lieu asked.

“Uh, yes,” Pompeo replied.

It was like watching a two-handed puppet show about two swamp monsters furiously agreeing with one another that there is no swamp.

This would be the same Mike Pompeo, by the way, who promised that he would make the depraved, lying, torturing, propagandizing, drug trafficking, coup-staging, warmongering CIA into a “much more vicious agency.” The same Mike Pompeo who just the other day stood before a plutocrat-funded DC think tank declaring an effective regime change policy against Iran, citing its government’s human rights violations while ignoring the human rights violations of the Saudi Royals which were making headlines that same day.

I hardly ever use the term “deep state” anymore. For a time it was a sensible label to use within smaller, well-informed circles to refer to the unelected power structures which remain in America regardless of the shifting tides of its official elected government, but ever since it became a mainstream household term it’s been rendered meaningless by partisan hackery.

Republicans, who spent the last week defending CIA torture as “Bloody Gina” Haspel ascended to Pompeo’s old office, insist that President Trump is “fighting the deep state” due to some shady intelligence community behavior two years ago. This would be the same President Trump who has authorized unprecedented black budget funding for that same intelligence community. The same President Trump who has advanced longstanding deep state agendas against Syria, Iran and Russia, the same President Trump who has continued Bush and Obama’s Orwellian surveillance program, government opacity and persecution of whistleblowers, the same President Trump who said he supports the US Department of Justice in its prioritizing the arrest of WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange.

Democrats meanwhile proclaim that talk of a deep state in America is a baseless conspiracy theory, which is an innately absurd position. Deep state is not a conspiracy theory, it’s a concept used in political analysis to describe the ways that unelected power structures like multinational plutocrats and intelligence/defense agencies tend to collaborate with one another in order to advance their own agendas. The fact that such plutocrats and agencies (A) exist, (B) have power, (C) are unelected, (D) tend to form alliances with each other and (E) try to advance their own agendas is not disputable; the only thing you can dispute is the nature and extent of their operations.

These would be the same Democrats, by the way, who have spent the last year and a half fanatically defending US intelligence agencies and canonizing J Edgar Hoover heirs James Comey and Robert Mueller as living saints.

Obviously there is a deep state in America, obviously it is extremely powerful, and obviously men like Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo are some of its most valuable foot soldiers. But partisan echo chambers have most Americans so blinkered that they can only see one of two halves of the equation: either the US intelligence community is a plucky band of virtuous patriots resisting a president who is simultaneously (A) stupid, (B) crazy, (C) a Nazi, and (D) a Kremlin agent, or Trump is a populist hero of the people who is fighting the deep state. Through the filters of partisan idiocy it’s impossible to see the otherwise obvious fact that unelected power dominates the United States, and that Donald Trump is in full service of that unelected power.

But more and more people are seeing through the illusion. More and more are asking the right questions about why US presidential administrations seem to advance more or less the same policies regardless of political affiliations. It isn’t necessary to use the now-useless phrase “deep state” to point to these dynamics. They’re becoming more and more self-evident by the day.

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9 responses to “Deep State Swamp Monster Says There Is No Deep State”

  1. elkojohn Avatar
    elkojohn

    Ex-CIA Officer, Kevin Shipp explains the difference
    between the Shadow Government & the Deep State

  2. Cameron Freeman Avatar
    Cameron Freeman

    The Deep State will blow up the world in a nuclear holocaust b4 it lets the truth of its nefarious criminality be exposed.

  3. Susan Williams Avatar
    Susan Williams

    Don’t ever stop. I need your simplicity and common sense to wade through all the bullshit.

  4. Mama Wolf Avatar
    Mama Wolf

    Keep lighting the candle of knowledge. The world is brighter for you.

  5. John Doyle Avatar
    John Doyle

    Michael Hudson explains this “Deep State” phenomenon very clearly in this two part talk with Chris Hedges;

    https://videosenglish.telesurtv.net/video/523415/days-of-revolt-523415/

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=89&v=6KZJBgihWcg

    It’s all about manipulating the economy to gat all the wealth over to the 0.1%

  6. Marko Avatar
    Marko

    “….. It isn’t necessary to use the now-useless phrase “deep state” to point to these dynamics. They’re becoming more and more self-evident by the day. ”
    ‘
    True , but only for those who bother to notice. Too many still don’t give it any thought. Once you’ve been paying attention for awhile though , it really does appear so obvious that you wonder how you ever failed to see it earlier. The deep state is pretty shallow after all.

  7. Jim KABLE Avatar
    Jim KABLE

    Isn’t it time for sanctions against the US – economic blockades – send their ambassador home (oops – no ambassador in OZ for nearly two years) well close up their embassy and send all US staff home might be the way to go – recall Hockey here from Washington?

  8. Arby Avatar
    Arby

    I believe in simplifying things when possible. There’s a deep state if by deep state we mean institutions, with power, that endure. Randolph Bourne wrote about the State, but died (1918) before he finished. It’s pretty interesting stuff but not, in my opinion, wild. It’s actually fairly obvious. What struck me about Bourne’s thoughts on the State was that he described, in my view (which isn’t terribly informed here) what we call the deep State. As have others, like Adam Smith. Smith and Bourne and others were not familiar with our concept of the deep State (which, simply, seems to be the same as their concept of powerful special interests; which would tend, by dint of their power, to endure), but they recognized that those with power, and therefore money, determined the direction or character of politics. That class has always been with us, and is now unchallenged in it’s power and its royalty is compromised of corporations. CEOs, like presidents and prime ministers, come and go, but their companies, depending, not only endure but determine, in important respects, the character of nations. Institutions vary in character, and some are rather unimportant, from the State’s standpoint, while others – Wall Street, the Pentagon, oil companies, Google – are very important.

    Fascism is another simple idea that all kinds of people, Left and Right, are all the time complicating for various reasons. When the State joins forces with the political and business classes in order to run the country and cuts out the people (via counterrevolution dressed up as Critical Infrastructure Protection and national security and the war on terrorism), while telling the people that they are not cut out and elections and voting prove it, you have fascism. Corporatocracy is fascism. Getting into deep discussions about historical fascism may furnish us with insights and and other information but will be misleading if the intention is to settle for all time the definition of fascism.

    Randolph Bourne:

    “The State is the country acting as a political unit, it is the group acting as a repository of force, determiner of law, arbiter of justice. International politics is a “power politics” because it is a relation of States and that is what States infallibly and calamitously are, huge aggregations of human and industrial force that may be hurled against each other in war. When a country acts as a whole in relation to another country, or in imposing laws on its own inhabitants, or in coercing or punishing individuals or minorities, it is acting as a State. The history of America as a country is quite different from that of America as a State. In one case it is the drama of the pioneering conquest of the land, of the growth of wealth and the ways in which it was used, of the enterprise of education, and the carrying out of spiritual ideals, of the struggle of economic classes. But as a State, its history is that of playing a part in the world, making war, obstructing international trade, preventing itself from being split to pieces, punishing those citizens whom society agrees are offensive, and collecting money to pay for all.

    “Government on the other hand is synonymous with neither State nor Nation. It is the machinery by which the nation, organized as a State, carries out its State functions. Government is a framework of the administration of laws, and the carrying out of the public force. Government is the idea of the State put into practical operation in the hands of definite, concrete, fallible men. It is the visible sign of the invisible grace. It is the word made flesh. And it has necessarily the limitations inherent in all practicality. Government is the only form in which we can envisage the State, but it is by no means identical with it. That the State is a mystical conception is something that must never be forgotten. Its glamor and its significance linger behind the framework of Government and direct its activities.”

    As for dog Pompeo, expect deceit and lies and the effort to distract people with mumbo jumbo. That’s exactly what neocons do. It’s straight out of the writings of Leo Strauss. The masses are dull and must be led and given their dose of organized religion. But you don’t tell them that (unless you read Leo Strauss’s writings). The masses are, as Walter Lippmann and others explain, meant to be spectators of politics, not participants. We would just mess things up. Toss and ball for us to chase and while we are chasing it, take care of the important business of running the world in the interests of those who count.

  9. Katy Meigs Avatar
    Katy Meigs

    Absolutely spot on , as usual!

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