CDZ Is it Time to Break Up the FBI and CIA?

[JimBowie1958]

Yep. The man really knows how to hire the best people.

Trump I think goes for the best people at a task whether they like him or not.

He is learning why that is not necessarily a good thing in politics.

 

[diver52]

Yep. The man really knows how to hire the best people.

Trump I think goes for the best people at a task whether they like him or not.

He is learning why that is not necessarily a good thing in politics.

That may be what he goes for, but he seems to consistently fail spectacularly. Is he learning? Not from what I've seen so far.

 

[Dick Foster]

Since Trumps taking the oath of office, we have had three leaks of Presidential phone conversation between Trump and the heads of state of Australia, Mexico, and now a conversation with the President of the Ukraine, a critical ally along the border with Russia.

This is treason, to betray this confidence and it is coming out of the CIA. Period.

The CIA is privy to the Presidents phone calls and the heads of the CIA know that some of their staffers are hostile to this President and they assign them to the WH to get them to betray the US President for the purposes of getting 'actionable' dirt on him.

The CIA and the FBI for similar reasons, have become a modern version of the old Roman Empire's Praetorian Guard.

Many have called for the dismantling of the CIA, from JFK, to Truman, to former Reagan staffers, and even Bernie Sanders who one would think would one day plan to use it, lol.

There are many problems with running career elite central government 'protectors'. Like the Roman Praetorians, after a while you have to figure out who protects you from your protectors.

Now, I do not think that the functions of the CIA are to be completely abolished, I just think they should be broken up into about 12 different agencies. They should cover one different agency for each continent, one for space, one for economic interests, one for satellite analysis, one for corporate entanglements, one for human rights, and one to give briefings to the President and report back to an umbrella group that pools data, and the last one being a group who oversees intelligence related to Presidential foreign trips to provide security, logistics, etc. Not that exact number is necessary, but just the general idea of breaking the CIA into multiple rival agencies that wont be so cooperative or as dominant as the CIA is today.

We don't need an intel agency that a Senate Majority Leader would feel a need to warn his political rivals about 'being careful around'.

The CIA is too Big to Let Run Loose.

It's been long past time. The FBI was built by a cross dressing pervert and blackmailer and they still have that assholes name on the building. The FBI was was built around a core of corruption.

 

[JimBowie1958]

So it appears that the IC changed its Whistleblower rules just prior to this whistleblower to try to derail the investigation into Ukrainian interference into our 2016 election.

Whistleblower Rules Secretly Changed Right Before Report Filed Against Trump

This means the collusion among the Praetorian Guard in the Deep State along with leftist activists in Congress and elsewhere in our government runs very deep and across agency lines. People this is a conspiracy, and since it involves the exposure of classified information to weaken ongoing investigations and the interests of our country it is therefore also treason in the vernacular.

Those defending this outrageous sedition claim that the guidelines are set by law, but every agency issues updates to these various laws via their own agency guidelines like this one.

It is time to break up this modern Praetorian Guard in order to preserve our Republican form of government.

 

[Syriusly]

Since Trumps taking the oath of office, we have had three leaks of Presidential phone conversation between Trump and the heads of state of Australia, Mexico, and now a conversation with the President of the Ukraine, a critical ally along the border with Russia.

This is treason, to betray this confidence and it is coming out of the CIA. Period.

The CIA is privy to the Presidents phone calls and the heads of the CIA know that some of their staffers are hostile to this President and they assign them to the WH to get them to betray the US President for the purposes of getting 'actionable' dirt on him.

The CIA and the FBI for similar reasons, have become a modern version of the old Roman Empire's Praetorian Guard.

Many have called for the dismantling of the CIA, from JFK, to Truman, to former Reagan staffers, and even Bernie Sanders who one would think would one day plan to use it, lol.

There are many problems with running career elite central government 'protectors'. Like the Roman Praetorians, after a while you have to figure out who protects you from your protectors.

Now, I do not think that the functions of the CIA are to be completely abolished, I just think they should be broken up into about 12 different agencies. They should cover one different agency for each continent, one for space, one for economic interests, one for satellite analysis, one for corporate entanglements, one for human rights, and one to give briefings to the President and report back to an umbrella group that pools data, and the last one being a group who oversees intelligence related to Presidential foreign trips to provide security, logistics, etc. Not that exact number is necessary, but just the general idea of breaking the CIA into multiple rival agencies that wont be so cooperative or as dominant as the CIA is today.

We don't need an intel agency that a Senate Majority Leader would feel a need to warn his political rivals about 'being careful around'.

The CIA is too Big to Let Run Loose.

Leaking a private Presidential conversation is not treason.
You haven't made a case to support your conclusions about the CIA.

Let me put it another way- if the CIA did overhear a President of the United States conspiring with the head of a foreign government to break U.S. law- say by illegally funding a terrorist organization- should the CIA protect the President? Or the United States?

As far as breaking up the CIA or the FBI, it doesn't make any real sense to. Certainly there should be adequate oversight of both- and that is Congress's job.

 

[flacaltenn]

Since Trumps taking the oath of office, we have had three leaks of Presidential phone conversation between Trump and the heads of state of Australia, Mexico, and now a conversation with the President of the Ukraine, a critical ally along the border with Russia.

This is treason, to betray this confidence and it is coming out of the CIA. Period.

The CIA is privy to the Presidents phone calls and the heads of the CIA know that some of their staffers are hostile to this President and they assign them to the WH to get them to betray the US President for the purposes of getting 'actionable' dirt on him.

The CIA and the FBI for similar reasons, have become a modern version of the old Roman Empire's Praetorian Guard.

Many have called for the dismantling of the CIA, from JFK, to Truman, to former Reagan staffers, and even Bernie Sanders who one would think would one day plan to use it, lol.

There are many problems with running career elite central government 'protectors'. Like the Roman Praetorians, after a while you have to figure out who protects you from your protectors.

Now, I do not think that the functions of the CIA are to be completely abolished, I just think they should be broken up into about 12 different agencies. They should cover one different agency for each continent, one for space, one for economic interests, one for satellite analysis, one for corporate entanglements, one for human rights, and one to give briefings to the President and report back to an umbrella group that pools data, and the last one being a group who oversees intelligence related to Presidential foreign trips to provide security, logistics, etc. Not that exact number is necessary, but just the general idea of breaking the CIA into multiple rival agencies that wont be so cooperative or as dominant as the CIA is today.

We don't need an intel agency that a Senate Majority Leader would feel a need to warn his political rivals about 'being careful around'.

The CIA is too Big to Let Run Loose.

The Dems WERE the party of "protectors of Civil Liberties" 30 years ago.. THAT Dem party would not allow the NSA to be given the world's most awesome DOMESTIC spy machine.. In fact, it was largely Dems who DECRIED that no US Intel agency (other the FBI) should EVER be allowed to operate domestically.. All those champions of Liberty and freedom would be appalled that the CIA was ever even MENTIONED in connection to covert spying on an opposition political campaign or a sitting Prez...

LEGALLY -- the CIA is NOT allowed to act in any way domestically.. Unfortunately, the world's best electronic spies at NSA now can.. But with MEDIA allowing Brennan and Clapper to leap directly from their roles as conspirators in domestic spying to being nightly corporate resources on CNN and MSNBC -- that horse doesn't even have a barn anymore...

Even the Repubs love themselves some powerful domestic tools.. On the eve of reissuing the Patriot Act, only 2 or 3 of them were lobbying for reforms and transparency... And those fools -- whose OWN PRESIDENT is a victim of domestic (and foreign) Intel abuse -- voted unanimously to renew without review...

Even Trump was backed down on domestic spy reforms.. On the morning of the Patriot Act renewal, he tweeted a powerful message about the urgent need to reform and revise.. And by NOON -- he withdrew his comments and said he "fully supported the re-authorization"...

Only patriots and ACTUAL Civil Libertarians are gonna fix this.. And the only real source of Civil Libertarians these days are in some think tanks, the ACLU and the Institute for Justice, and the Libertarian party...

APPARENTLY both inept and crooked parties have come to love domestic spying and Intel abuse... They have to be defeated....

 

[flacaltenn]

So basically you're pissed because the FBI and CIA didn't protect tRump from himself?

People are people, they all.have their limits. If you see enough wrongdoing eventually you're gonna spill it.

People in the Intel community are NOT "normal people".. The standards and ethics and requirements are high.. And when these agencies are "kept in their lane" and directed at INTERNATIONAL problems, they serve with pride and honor.. I know this...

It was political hijinks and 9-11 over reaction that MADE them political.. And that needs to get back in order.

 

[flacaltenn]

Leaking a private Presidential conversation is not treason.

It's a violation of MANY National Security codes... There is a "need to know" requirement even for folks cleared to level of accessing these privileged papers. And it should be KEPT that way...

You'll only "love it" when it's useful to YOU and your tribe... And we'll lose international status and respect if it's not adhered to...

 

[JimBowie1958]

Only patriots and ACTUAL Civil Libertarians are gonna fix this.. And the only real source of Civil Libertarians these days are in some think tanks, the ACLU and the Institute for Justice, and the Libertarian party...

Actual Liberterians?

You would have to win an election first.

 

[task0778]

Leaking a private Presidential conversation is not treason.

It's a violation of MANY National Security codes... There is a "need to know" requirement even for folks cleared to level of accessing these privileged papers. And it should be KEPT that way...

You'll only "love it" when it's useful to YOU and your tribe... And we'll lose international status and respect if it's not adhered to...

Not only status and respect, but trust. Who's going to trust us with their sensitive or classified information that some American asshat is going to leak, either for personal or political gain. And not only the trust of foreign gov'ts, but eve more importantly the trust of our own citizens. There was a time when the FBI and other gov't intel agencies were honored and respected and trusted; those days are gone.

 

[Crepitus]

So basically you're pissed because the FBI and CIA didn't protect tRump from himself?

People are people, they all.have their limits. If you see enough wrongdoing eventually you're gonna spill it.

People in the Intel community are NOT "normal people".. The standards and ethics and requirements are high.. And when these agencies are "kept in their lane" and directed at INTERNATIONAL problems, they serve with pride and honor.. I know this...

It was political hijinks and 9-11 over reaction that MADE them political.. And that needs to get back in order.

Actually they are normal people.

 

[flacaltenn]

So basically you're pissed because the FBI and CIA didn't protect tRump from himself?

People are people, they all.have their limits. If you see enough wrongdoing eventually you're gonna spill it.

People in the Intel community are NOT "normal people".. The standards and ethics and requirements are high.. And when these agencies are "kept in their lane" and directed at INTERNATIONAL problems, they serve with pride and honor.. I know this...

It was political hijinks and 9-11 over reaction that MADE them political.. And that needs to get back in order.

Actually they are normal people.

There are no "normal" rabid partisans tho.. And that's the point...

It's the "politically appointed" higher echelons that are malignant or become malignant.. That's just a fact... The folks in Intel are "focused on the game", NOT the politics of it.. And often in the case of CIA -- they just make their OWN political realities... That's why it's called the Deep State...

The Deep State is NOT the temporary leadership that gets nominated and approved...

 

[Crepitus]

So basically you're pissed because the FBI and CIA didn't protect tRump from himself?

People are people, they all.have their limits. If you see enough wrongdoing eventually you're gonna spill it.

People in the Intel community are NOT "normal people".. The standards and ethics and requirements are high.. And when these agencies are "kept in their lane" and directed at INTERNATIONAL problems, they serve with pride and honor.. I know this...

It was political hijinks and 9-11 over reaction that MADE them political.. And that needs to get back in order.

Actually they are normal people.

There are no "normal" rabid partisans tho.. And that's the point...

It's the "politically appointed" higher echelons that are malignant or become malignant.. That's just a fact... The folks in Intel are "focused on the game", NOT the politics of it.. And often in the case of CIA -- they just make their OWN political realities... That's why it's called the Deep State...

The Deep State is NOT the temporary leadership that gets nominated and approved...

The deep state is a myth.

Edited

 

[Syriusly]

Leaking a private Presidential conversation is not treason.

It's a violation of MANY National Security codes... There is a "need to know" requirement even for folks cleared to level of accessing these privileged papers. And it should be KEPT that way...

You'll only "love it" when it's useful to YOU and your tribe... And we'll lose international status and respect if it's not adhered to...

But it isn't Treason. You didn't address that little detail- almost like you only 'hate it' when it's useful for you and your tribe.

And of course what the whistle blower did wasn't a leak- it was following the law. The whistle blower reported what he/she believed to be the President breaking the law- to the exact channels that were legally established for that purpose- which the Inspector General found credible enough to pass to Congress.

 

[Syriusly]

So basically you're pissed because the FBI and CIA didn't protect tRump from himself?

People are people, they all.have their limits. If you see enough wrongdoing eventually you're gonna spill it.

People in the Intel community are NOT "normal people".. The standards and ethics and requirements are high.. And when these agencies are "kept in their lane" and directed at INTERNATIONAL problems, they serve with pride and honor.. I know this...

It was political hijinks and 9-11 over reaction that MADE them political.. And that needs to get back in order.

Actually they are normal people.

There are no "normal" rabid partisans tho.. And that's the point...

It's the "politically appointed" higher echelons that are malignant or become malignant.. That's just a fact... The folks in Intel are "focused on the game", NOT the politics of it.. And often in the case of CIA -- they just make their OWN political realities... That's why it's called the Deep State...

The Deep State is NOT the temporary leadership that gets nominated and approved...

It's called 'the Deep State' because far right Conspiracy theorists call their conspiracy theory that.

 

[flacaltenn]

Leaking a private Presidential conversation is not treason.

It's a violation of MANY National Security codes... There is a "need to know" requirement even for folks cleared to level of accessing these privileged papers. And it should be KEPT that way...

You'll only "love it" when it's useful to YOU and your tribe... And we'll lose international status and respect if it's not adhered to...

But it isn't Treason. You didn't address that little detail- almost like you only 'hate it' when it's useful for you and your tribe.

And of course what the whistle blower did wasn't a leak- it was following the law. The whistle blower reported what he/she believed to be the President breaking the law- to the exact channels that were legally established for that purpose- which the Inspector General found credible enough to pass to Congress.

Why did you just up the ante from "it's not a crime" to "it aint treason" ??? LOL.... Doesn't HAVE to be treason for justice to be metered out so that sensitive diplomatic phone calls from the CIC to other heads of state aren't just another National Enquirer headline every day...

 

[flacaltenn]

So basically you're pissed because the FBI and CIA didn't protect tRump from himself?

People are people, they all.have their limits. If you see enough wrongdoing eventually you're gonna spill it.

People in the Intel community are NOT "normal people".. The standards and ethics and requirements are high.. And when these agencies are "kept in their lane" and directed at INTERNATIONAL problems, they serve with pride and honor.. I know this...

It was political hijinks and 9-11 over reaction that MADE them political.. And that needs to get back in order.

Actually they are normal people.

There are no "normal" rabid partisans tho.. And that's the point...

It's the "politically appointed" higher echelons that are malignant or become malignant.. That's just a fact... The folks in Intel are "focused on the game", NOT the politics of it.. And often in the case of CIA -- they just make their OWN political realities... That's why it's called the Deep State...

The Deep State is NOT the temporary leadership that gets nominated and approved...

It's called 'the Deep State' because far right Conspiracy theorists call their conspiracy theory that.

I've got several years into the "intel biz" and that phrase is used all the time.. But it does NOT describe the conspirators like Comey, McCabe, Brennan and Clapper who have SERIOUSLY abused their offices, because they are TEMPORARY POLITICAL APPOINTEES who serve only on the whims of POLITICAL leaderships...

The purposes and missions of the Intel community are known by only HANDFULS outside the orb. And so their lives and work just "sails on" while all the drama queen action goes on in the heads of the departments.. Even WITHIN the depts, only handfuls have a COMPLETE PICTURE of what the deep state is doing...

 

[JimBowie1958]

I've got several years into the "intel biz" and that phrase is used all the time.. But it does NOT describe the conspirators like Comey, McCabe, Brennan and Clapper who have SERIOUSLY abused their offices, because they are TEMPORARY POLITICAL APPOINTEES who serve only on the whims of POLITICAL leaderships...
The purposes and missions of the Intel community are known by only HANDFULS outside the orb. And so their lives and work just "sails on" while all the drama queen action goes on in the heads of the departments.. Even WITHIN the depts, only handfuls have a COMPLETE PICTURE of what the deep state is doing...

Someone posted this article that was published in 2014, way before trump, and it explores the Deep State and how it has evolved.

From 1960 to 1980 we did not have a single President finish two full terms, which prior to that was unusual in our politics. I think that was mostly due to the rise of the Deep State to displace civilian authority from the shadows of our government and the support industry that surrounds it.

The Fates of American Presidents Who Challenged the Deep State (1963-1980) (1963-1980) | The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus

And in 2013, particularly after the military return to power in Egypt, more and more authors referred to this second level as America’s “deep state.”2 Here for example is the Republican analyst Mike Lofgren:

There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.3​

I believe that a significant shift in the relationship between public and deep state power occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in the Reagan Revolution of 1980. In this period five presidents sought to curtail the powers of the deep state. And as we shall see, the political careers of all five—Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter—were cut off in ways that were unusual. One president, Kennedy, was assassinated. Another, Nixon, was forced to resign....

This tension increases, and predictably tips toward violence, if a well-organized open community expands beyond its own borders and is increasingly occupied with the business of supervising an empire. It is repeatedly the case that progressive societies (like America) expand. As their influence expands, their democratic institutions, based at bottom upon persuasive power among equals, are supplemented by new, often secret, institutions of top-down violent power for the control of alien populations abroad, often speaking different and unfamiliar languages. The more the society expands, the more these institutions of violent power encroach upon and supplant the original democracy.

As a result these nations also experience a deeper and deeper politics, much of it a contest between these two types of power. One special feature of American deep politics since World War Two is that much of it has been characterized by a series of conspiratorial deep events: emblematic of the ongoing conflict between these two forms of power and their corresponding mindsets. One is the acknowledged public mindset of openness, egalitarianism, and democracy. The other is the global dominance mindset committed to maintaining and expanding American hegemony. In domestic policy we often analyze the two cultures as liberals versus conservatives; in foreign policy, doves versus hawks. (Yet American liberals when they reach power, such as Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, have also been deeply entwined in the militarization of American politics and its global expansion.) But with the recent expansion since 9/11 of extra-constitutional agencies like the NSA, it is time to supplement these horizontal distinctions with a vertical one: between those agencies constrained by constitutional checks and balances (the public state) and those not so constrained (the deep state). Although the deep state as we have defined it has always existed, its recent radical expansion has brought it into occasional conspiratorial conflict with the public state, even with the president....

In saying that these deep events have contributed collectively to a major change in American society, I am not attributing them all to a single agent or “secret team.” Rather I see them as flowing in part from the socio-dynamic processes of violent power itself, power associated with and deployed in the service of the global expansion of American military might, which (as history has shown many times) has the effect to transform both societies with surplus power and the individuals exercising that power.7 Insofar as these power processes govern America without deriving from its constitution, we can say that they derive from the milieu of the American deep state.

In discussing the deep events of Dallas, Watergate, Iran-Contra and 9/11, I will argue that, while the mysteries of these deep events cannot at present be fully dispelled by historical analysis (given the tight lock on official documentation), analysis does point to a pattern linking them....

The continuity between all these successive deception plots suggests that there may be an underlying source for all of them, and that the repeated appearances of external attacks or threats (from North Vietnam, Nicaragua or Iraq) may be false. I will suggest that for at least a half-century the conflict between the two mindsets has given rise to a series of conspiratorial deep events emanating from the hidden recesses of the American war machine all designed to deceive and coerce the American people so as to sustain or further military expansion. I will go further, and argue that this continuity underlies yet other significant deep events that led, not to the start of yet another external war, but to the progressive militarization and political repression of domestic American society.

Later I came to state this conclusion more forcefully:

Since 1959, virtually all of America’s major foreign wars have been wars 1) induced preemptively by the U.S. war machine and/or 2) disguised as responses to unprovoked enemy aggression, with disguises repeatedly engineered by deception deep events, involving in some way elements of the global drug connection.8​

These deceptions were not designed to deceive America’s enemies, but first and foremost to deceive the American people, to accept the unilateral initiation by America of illegal wars....

The antagonism between CIA operatives and the White House did not begin with Carter. It was so acute right after the Bay of Pigs and the firing of CIA Director Dulles that Kennedy told one of the highest officials of his Administration that he wanted 'to splinter the C.I.A. in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”21 In 1972 Nixon fired Helms after the Watergate break-in because he believed Helms “was out to get him;” and he gave orders to Helms’s replacement, James Schlesinger, “to turn the place inside out.”22

Neither Kennedy nor Nixon finished their terms, let alone their intention to bring the CIA under control. But their successive firings of Dulles and Helms left a toxic resentment inside CIA, especially after Nixon’s CIA Director James Schlesinger then purged more that five hundred analysts and more than one thousand people in all from the clandestine service.23 CIA veteran Arabist Archibald Roosevelt, who was a significant player along with former CIA Director Bush in the October Surprise, believed that Nixon’s appointees as CIA Director – James Schlesinger and William Colby – “had both…betrayed their office by pandering to politicians.”24

CIA resentment and concern was not just directed against presidents. The CIA’s Operations Division was also determined to fight a number of limitations imposed on it in the mid-1970s by the responses of a Democratic Congress to the recommendations of the Senate Select Committee chaired by Senator Frank Church. As a result, even before Carter’s election, a number of the CIA’s allied intelligence services, in France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Morocco, had allied in the so-called Safari Club to serve as an alternative source of funding and financing of covert operations.25 In this they used the resources and networks of the drug-laundering Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). CIA assets like Adnan Khashoggi and Bruce Rappaport, assisted by officially retired CIA personnel like Miles Copeland and Jerry Townsend, were part of this global BCCI network. Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal, a key figure in the Safari Club, once admitted candidly that the Safari Club, operating at the level of the deep state, was expressly created to overcome the efforts of Carter and Congress to rein in the CIA.​

 

[Skylar]

Since Trumps taking the oath of office, we have had three leaks of Presidential phone conversation between Trump and the heads of state of Australia, Mexico, and now a conversation with the President of the Ukraine, a critical ally along the border with Russia.

And the evidence that the CIA or the FBI is behind this is....what? Also, presidential conversations generally aren't classified. Which is what made Trump's move of the Ukrainian call to secure servers reserved for top secret national security information so unusual.

This is treason, to betray this confidence and it is coming out of the CIA. Period.

Nope. The constitution is clear on what Treason is. And its nothing to do with telephone calls by the President.

The entire premise of your thread is predicated on a series of fallacies and is thus invalid.

 

[flacaltenn]

I've got several years into the "intel biz" and that phrase is used all the time.. But it does NOT describe the conspirators like Comey, McCabe, Brennan and Clapper who have SERIOUSLY abused their offices, because they are TEMPORARY POLITICAL APPOINTEES who serve only on the whims of POLITICAL leaderships...
The purposes and missions of the Intel community are known by only HANDFULS outside the orb. And so their lives and work just "sails on" while all the drama queen action goes on in the heads of the departments.. Even WITHIN the depts, only handfuls have a COMPLETE PICTURE of what the deep state is doing...

Someone posted this article that was published in 2014, way before trump, and it explores the Deep State and how it has evolved.

From 1960 to 1980 we did not have a single President finish two full terms, which prior to that was unusual in our politics. I think that was mostly due to the rise of the Deep State to displace civilian authority from the shadows of our government and the support industry that surrounds it.

The Fates of American Presidents Who Challenged the Deep State (1963-1980) (1963-1980) | The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus

And in 2013, particularly after the military return to power in Egypt, more and more authors referred to this second level as America’s “deep state.”2 Here for example is the Republican analyst Mike Lofgren:

There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.3​

I believe that a significant shift in the relationship between public and deep state power occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in the Reagan Revolution of 1980. In this period five presidents sought to curtail the powers of the deep state. And as we shall see, the political careers of all five—Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter—were cut off in ways that were unusual. One president, Kennedy, was assassinated. Another, Nixon, was forced to resign....

This tension increases, and predictably tips toward violence, if a well-organized open community expands beyond its own borders and is increasingly occupied with the business of supervising an empire. It is repeatedly the case that progressive societies (like America) expand. As their influence expands, their democratic institutions, based at bottom upon persuasive power among equals, are supplemented by new, often secret, institutions of top-down violent power for the control of alien populations abroad, often speaking different and unfamiliar languages. The more the society expands, the more these institutions of violent power encroach upon and supplant the original democracy.

As a result these nations also experience a deeper and deeper politics, much of it a contest between these two types of power. One special feature of American deep politics since World War Two is that much of it has been characterized by a series of conspiratorial deep events: emblematic of the ongoing conflict between these two forms of power and their corresponding mindsets. One is the acknowledged public mindset of openness, egalitarianism, and democracy. The other is the global dominance mindset committed to maintaining and expanding American hegemony. In domestic policy we often analyze the two cultures as liberals versus conservatives; in foreign policy, doves versus hawks. (Yet American liberals when they reach power, such as Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, have also been deeply entwined in the militarization of American politics and its global expansion.) But with the recent expansion since 9/11 of extra-constitutional agencies like the NSA, it is time to supplement these horizontal distinctions with a vertical one: between those agencies constrained by constitutional checks and balances (the public state) and those not so constrained (the deep state). Although the deep state as we have defined it has always existed, its recent radical expansion has brought it into occasional conspiratorial conflict with the public state, even with the president....

In saying that these deep events have contributed collectively to a major change in American society, I am not attributing them all to a single agent or “secret team.” Rather I see them as flowing in part from the socio-dynamic processes of violent power itself, power associated with and deployed in the service of the global expansion of American military might, which (as history has shown many times) has the effect to transform both societies with surplus power and the individuals exercising that power.7 Insofar as these power processes govern America without deriving from its constitution, we can say that they derive from the milieu of the American deep state.

In discussing the deep events of Dallas, Watergate, Iran-Contra and 9/11, I will argue that, while the mysteries of these deep events cannot at present be fully dispelled by historical analysis (given the tight lock on official documentation), analysis does point to a pattern linking them....

The continuity between all these successive deception plots suggests that there may be an underlying source for all of them, and that the repeated appearances of external attacks or threats (from North Vietnam, Nicaragua or Iraq) may be false. I will suggest that for at least a half-century the conflict between the two mindsets has given rise to a series of conspiratorial deep events emanating from the hidden recesses of the American war machine all designed to deceive and coerce the American people so as to sustain or further military expansion. I will go further, and argue that this continuity underlies yet other significant deep events that led, not to the start of yet another external war, but to the progressive militarization and political repression of domestic American society.

Later I came to state this conclusion more forcefully:

Since 1959, virtually all of America’s major foreign wars have been wars 1) induced preemptively by the U.S. war machine and/or 2) disguised as responses to unprovoked enemy aggression, with disguises repeatedly engineered by deception deep events, involving in some way elements of the global drug connection.8​

These deceptions were not designed to deceive America’s enemies, but first and foremost to deceive the American people, to accept the unilateral initiation by America of illegal wars....

The antagonism between CIA operatives and the White House did not begin with Carter. It was so acute right after the Bay of Pigs and the firing of CIA Director Dulles that Kennedy told one of the highest officials of his Administration that he wanted 'to splinter the C.I.A. in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”21 In 1972 Nixon fired Helms after the Watergate break-in because he believed Helms “was out to get him;” and he gave orders to Helms’s replacement, James Schlesinger, “to turn the place inside out.”22

Neither Kennedy nor Nixon finished their terms, let alone their intention to bring the CIA under control. But their successive firings of Dulles and Helms left a toxic resentment inside CIA, especially after Nixon’s CIA Director James Schlesinger then purged more that five hundred analysts and more than one thousand people in all from the clandestine service.23 CIA veteran Arabist Archibald Roosevelt, who was a significant player along with former CIA Director Bush in the October Surprise, believed that Nixon’s appointees as CIA Director – James Schlesinger and William Colby – “had both…betrayed their office by pandering to politicians.”24

CIA resentment and concern was not just directed against presidents. The CIA’s Operations Division was also determined to fight a number of limitations imposed on it in the mid-1970s by the responses of a Democratic Congress to the recommendations of the Senate Select Committee chaired by Senator Frank Church. As a result, even before Carter’s election, a number of the CIA’s allied intelligence services, in France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Morocco, had allied in the so-called Safari Club to serve as an alternative source of funding and financing of covert operations.25 In this they used the resources and networks of the drug-laundering Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). CIA assets like Adnan Khashoggi and Bruce Rappaport, assisted by officially retired CIA personnel like Miles Copeland and Jerry Townsend, were part of this global BCCI network. Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal, a key figure in the Safari Club, once admitted candidly that the Safari Club, operating at the level of the deep state, was expressly created to overcome the efforts of Carter and Congress to rein in the CIA.​

All that WAS "reigned in" in the latter 60s by the Church commission and Congress... ALL Intel orgs were PROHIBITED from interfering or running operations DOMESTICALLY... With the exception of the FBI Intel folks who were really limited in their capabilities anyways...

But considering that there are CIA fingerprints all over the spying on the Trump campaign and the pranking and compromising of some campaign members, and that Brennan and Clapper BOTH played key roles in abusing the phony ass "Steele dossier" and FISA abuse and setting up full on overseas "compromising missions' on Page and Papadopolous, several others, with foreign assets -- AND we now have "CIA whistleblowers" being used as political hand grenades about PRIVILEGED CIC communications with foreign leaders -----

You'd THINK that there was NO restrictions on Intel grroups acting domestically anymore.. That pandora box is once again opened.. But I have STRONG feeling, it's gonna get nailed shut again.. Ask yourself how the CIA is suddenly "a check" on the Chief Exec by spying and PUBLICLY RELEASING details of diplomatic discussions...

Things were "groovy" when I was involved.. All our focus was on FOREIGN threats and assessments. So I never experienced or noticed a SHRED of evidence that our Intel agencies were turned on US... I'm sure the long-timers and rank/file deeply RESENT the political shift and treasonous behavior....