The Deep State Hiding in Plain Sight

This week on Moyers & Company, longtime expert Mike Lofgren, what he calls the big story of our times, the

deep

state

, is. I would save the red thread that runs through the history of the last three decades, it is how we had deregulation, the financialization of the economy. Wall Street ends the erosion of our civil liberties and perpetuates war funding is provided by and gumowitz fostering the renewal of democracy Carnegie Corporation of New York celebrating 100 years of philanthropy and committed to doing real and lasting good in the world the Ford Foundation working with visionaries on the front lines of social change around the world The Herb Alpert Foundation supports organizations whose mission is to advance compassion and creativity in our society The John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation committed to building a world fairer, greener and more peaceful more information at macfound.org Park foundation dedicated to raising public awareness on critical issues the Kohlberg foundation barbra jean-- Fleischman and by our sole corporate sponsor mutual of America designing customized individual and group retirement products is by that we are your retirement company welcome if you have read John Lecarre's Espionage novels you know that no other writer today has so brilliantly evoked the underground workings of the government perhaps because he himself was once a British spy liquor a has a name for that invisible labyrinth of power he calls the

deep

state

and now an American that you are about to meet in this broadcast has taken advantage of that concept to describe the forces that, according to him, control our government regardless of the party in power, but Mike Lofgren , ZnO intelligence agent, although he had a top secret security clearance, is a numbers man.

A congressional staffer for 28 years with the powerful House and Senate budget committees over the years, while crunching those numbers, he realized they didn't add up, he said they took him to the deep state of the United States itself. United, where elected and unelected figures collude to protect and serve. Powerful Vested Interests Mike Lofgren was so upset that he not only left the Capitol but left the Republican Party and wrote this book. The party ended with how the Republicans went crazy. The Democrats became useless and the middle class was now attacked at our request and exclusively for billmoyers.com. he's written deep state anatomy, you'll want to read it as soon as we finish this conversation Mike Lofgren, welcome it's a pleasure to be here again, but it's a difficult topic to talk about, it would be easier if it were a conspiracy.

I'm describing it, but that's not the case. No, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. This is not a conspiracy that emerged in the dead of night. This is something that is

hiding

in

plain

sight

. It is something we know but cannot connect. the dots or most people not connecting the dots is kind of a natural evolution when there is so much money and political control at stake in the most powerful country in the world, this has evolved over time and you call it the real power in the country. Right, it's a hybrid of corporate America and the national security state, everyone knows what the military-industrial complex is since Eisenhower talked about it in his farewell address.

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or not by the military-industrial complex. The potential for a disastrous surge of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never allow the weight of this combination to endanger our freedoms or democratic processes. Everyone knows Wall Street and its depredations. Everyone knows how American companies act. Both are almost the same. They're both about money, getting as much money out of the country as possible and they're about control, corporate control and political control. You said that this, in your opinion, is the great story of our time.

It is the great story of our time. I would say that the red thread that runs through the history of the last three decades is how we had deregulation, the financialization of the economy, the failure of Wall Street, the erosion of our civil liberties and perpetual war. You write that the secretive and irresponsible deep state floats freely above. The stalemate between both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is the paradox of American government in the 21st century. Well, that's exactly what the common narrative is over the last five years and on a superficial level it's right is that the government is broken.

It's dysfunctional. He is paralyzed. Well that's true. and that's the visible government, the constitutional government that we learn about in civics 101 and it's paralyzed, but somehow Obama can go to Libya, he can murder American citizens, he can collect all of our phone records without anyone's permission, huh, can. Even shooting down a plane carrying the president of a sovereign country without asking anyone's permission and no one seems to link the two: the failure of our visible constitutional state and this other government that operates without constitutional rules or restrictions on the governed. I will say, however, that it's not just the executive branch that's at the heart of this, it's just one of several constituencies that make up what you called the deep state, well, it's all the national security functions of the government, it's the Pentagon, your national security.

It is the State Department, it is also the Treasury because they have a kind of symbiotic relationship with Wall Street, but one thing is that they absolutely control the flow of money and that is why there is such a flow not only of money but of personnel between Wall Street and the Treasury Department. other aspects of the government there is a portion of the judiciary a small portion of the judiciary the so-called Foreign Intelligence Surveillance courts most of Congress doesn't even know how they operate talk a little more about the Nexus the connection between the national security state and Wall Street because this is a theme that runs through your essay.

Do you know that about 30 blocks north of here there is a restaurant that will sell you a truffle for ninety-five thousand dollars? Also in New York Christie's sold a painting by Francis Bacon at auction. For one hundred and forty-two million, now a parallel situation with the national security state, the NSA spent $1.7 billion to build a facility in Utah that will collect one yottabyte of information, the largest amount of information ever written in the history of the world. It costs four hundred dollars by the time the Pentagon finishes paying contractors to transport a gallon of gasoline to Afghanistan, which is a truly outrageous amount of money, both in the case of the national security state and the corporate state, they are sucking money out of the economy like ours infrastructure collapses we have a toy power grid that shuts down every time there is inclement weather tens of millions of people receive food stamps we imprison more people than China an authoritarian state with four times our popular euphoria does anyone see the The disparity between this extravagance for the deep state and the hardship being imposed on the rest of the country is not a natural evolution.

Something made it happen. We are having a situation where the deep state is essentially out of control. It has had no restrictions since September 11. the equivalent of three Pentagons around the DC metropolitan area holding defense contractors, intelligence contractors, and government civilians involved in the military-industrial complex. There are over 400,000 contractors, private citizens who have top secret security clearances and are the heart and soul of the deep. Let's say, as you describe it, absolutely, it is being privatized, meaning that power shifts from responsible officials to unaccountable ones in contractors, about 70% of the intelligence budget goes to contracts. How new is this?

I mean, back in 2010, the Washington Post published a surprising investigation into what the editors called America's top secret. I mean, we've known about this, right? Yes, we know that, but government intelligence functions are too important to outsource the way we do, it's something that requires absolute discretion and absolute confidence that you are not violating civil liberties and putting this kind of burden on us, so To say it, about private contract employees, I think it is a great disservice, you say that you came to question this, it took you a while, it was a gradual enlightenment that took place. dealing with big numbers and particular details in the budgets that all these agencies were sending you when you were on Capitol Hill, right, you were looking at the numerical solution, what works, what was happening with the numbers at the end of 2001?

Do we appropriate much? of money and it didn't seem to go to Afghanistan, the proximate source of the 9/11 attacks, it seemed to go to the Persian Gulf region and I said, what's going on here? Saddam Hussein didn't bring down the Twin Towers, so the little lights went on and I began to become disenchanted with the normal groupthink that tends to predominate in any organization. At some point in your essay you talk about how groupthink drives the deep state. It does it absolutely as any bureaucratic organization tends to do. What do you mean by groupthink? Well, psychologist Irving Janis called it groupthink.

It is a kind of assimilation of the opinions of your superiors and your colleagues. He is becoming a yes man and in many ways it is unconscious. I remember what Upton said. Sinclair once said that it's hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it, that's certainly part of it. You described Washington clearly and obviously as the headquarters of a deep state, but you talk about some of the others. who are in the game Wall Street is perhaps the ultimate backstop for the entire operation because it generates so much money that it can provide a second career for many of the government agents;

They are going to make more money than they ever dreamed they would. Wall Street and I think a good example of that is the most famous soldier of the last decade, David Petraeus, what did he do when he retired? He left for Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, a Wall Street buyout firm with $90 billion in assets under management. You described him as a kind of avatar of the deep state which he is in some ways because he now represents both extremes. We now see that our present Cincinnatus did not take up the plow when he laid down the sword.

Cincinnatus was the Roman who left his farm to become a general in the war when the war ended he went back to being a farmer that doesn't happen today no, it doesn't the vast majority of generals seem to end up on the boards of defense contractors talk a little bit about what you call this strange relationship between Silicon Valley and the government and how it fits into the deep state. Well, the National Security Agency couldn't do what it does. The CIA couldn't do what it does without Silicon Valley. Now Silicon Valley, unlike defense contractors, primarily sells. for individuals and companies it is not a large government supplier;

However, their services are necessary and have de facto become part of NSA operations. I am sure that the CEOs of some of these companies are trying to hide the fact that this has been mainly voluntary for many years Ameena surveillance surveillance the collection of information on unknown citizens for absolute or commercial purposes, although they have precisely done it themselves and they have assisted the NSA through a FISA warrant for an intelligence or an Intelligence Surveillance Act, so this has been going on for quite some time, but now, like Inspector Reno, they are shocked to find out, but I think their main surprise is that they are now starting to lose market share in foreign countries.

These moguls, as you call them, pose as libertarians who pretend to be libertarians and believe in rugged individualism and so on, but they have been just as intrusive as the NSA has been in terms of collecting your data for commercial purposes instead of the called national security purposes. but they're as into this as the NSA and somehow they managed to manipulate the intellectual property laws so that, in theory, you're subject to a fine of up to five hundred thousand dollars for jailbreaking your phone, which means that if you don't You don't like the carrier of your phone that the manufacturer dictates you must have and you change it without authorization, you have no right to something you bought, could this symbiotic and real relationship between Silicon Valley and the government that reflects the deep state ex

plain

the indulgence that Washington has shown Silicon Valley Oh, intellectual property issues, absolutely people no longer necessarily own the property they buy if they buy it in Silicon Valley, they just have a kind of lease on it if, as you write, the ideologies of the deep state is neither Democrat nor Republican nor left nor right, what is it?

It's an ideology I just don't think we havenamed is a kind of corporatism now the actors in this drama tend to stay away from social problems, they pretend to be cheerfully neutral servants of the State who give the best possible advice on national security or financial issues, but they maintain a very deep ideology of the Consensus of Washington at home, which is deregulation, outsourcing, deindustrialization and financialization, and they believe in American exceptionalism abroad, which acts on the ground everywhere. our right to interfere in all parts of the world and the result of that is perpetual war.

You see, it's obscure and it's more ill-defined, more ill-defined than it is, more ill-defined than just saying Wall Street or saying the military-industrial complex or saying Silicon Valley or the corporations is a symbiosis of all of the above here's your summary quote as long as appropriations bills are passed on time promotion lists are confirmed black or secret budgets are stamped with a special tax subsidies for certain corporations are approved without controversy, as long as too many questions are not asked uncomfortable, the gears of the hybrid state will mesh silently is that the ideology that it is a government within a government that operates from the visible government and operates from the taxpayers, but does not appear to be limited in a constitutional sense by the government .

Is there a solution to the way the system works? I think we are starting to see some discord in the ideology of the factions that make up the deep state. We're seeing Silicon Valley abandon ship, they're starting protests against the NSA, we're seeing the Tea Party bailing out the Deep State, they may be wrong on a lot of economic issues, but I don't think they're necessarily wrong on this one, so the public might be doing the right thing. I think so. There is a much more intense debate in the country about surveillance since the Edward Snowden revelations.

Mike Lofgren. Thank you very much for being with me. It's good to be here. Bill. Thanks to journalist Lee. Fang we have another revelation about how the deep state enterprise works writing for the Republic report a non-partisan nonprofit that investigates money in politics he takes up that controversial trade deal called the trans-Pacific partnership that President Obama is trying to push in Congress with minimal debate and no controversial amendments because some of its provisions supposedly allow corporate power to prevail over representative government, even bypassing national courts and local laws, one is said to prevent governments from enacting safeguards against another banking crisis, another empowers corporations to sue governments for compensation if they safeguard the environment.

Tobacco and drug protections or regulations interfered with future profits because of the secrecy that we don't know everything that is in the draft agreement. Senator Elizabeth Warren calls it an opportunity for these banks to do something quietly out of

sight

that they couldn't accomplish in a public place with cameras rolling and lights on which brings us to two officials chosen by President Obama to lead those negotiations. commercials thumbing through reports that they received multimillion-dollar bonuses by leaving giant financial companies to join the government that gave them Bank of America. This man, Stephan Selig, received more than nine million dollars in bonuses when he was nominated to become Under Secretary of Commerce for international trade and this man, Michael Froman, received more than four million dollars when he left Citigroup to become the current US Trade Representative, now you are both no longer I doubt you are honorable men, you are all honorable men, but when things get ugly and the financial interests of large corporations are on the table, we can only hope that you will act like men independent, not as faithful servants of the deep state, but given the secret that we may never know.

According to Lee Fang, many large corporations with a strong incentive to influence public policy give executives bonuses and other salary incentives, taking jobs within the government, including Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Blackstone Group, Fannie Mae Northern Trust, Citigroup even offers an executive contract. which provides additional retirement pay when leaving Wall Street to take a full-time, senior position in the U.S. government or a regulatory agency. I'm not making this up. You get a bigger incentive if you leave Wall Street to regulate Wall Street, so the Fox is set for the roost and the Deep State fattens on its prey, coming to Moyers & Company, a powerful new book breaks the code of politics of dog whistles.

The dog whistle policy does not arise from animosity at all. It does not arise from a desire to hurt minorities. It arises from a desire to win votes and in that sense I want to start using the term strategic racism. It is racism as a strategy. It is cold. It is calculating. It is considered. It is the decision to achieve one's own ends. Here you win. votes sparking racial animosity and here is a hard and difficult truth. Most racists are good people. They are not sick. They are not governed by anger, raw emotions or hatred. They are complicated people raised in complicated societies.

They are fully capable of doing so. empathy generosity of real kindness, but because of the systems of ideas in which they are raised, they are also capable of dehumanizing others and occasionally brutal violence on our website billmoyers.com. Remember to read the full text of my Clough Bullies Anatomy Essay. deep status and then tell us what you think. I'll see you there and I'll see you here next time. Don't wait a week to get more moyers. Visit billmoyers.com for exclusive blogs, essays and video articles. Funding is provided by and Gumowitz encourages the renewal of democracy Carnegie Corporation of New York celebrates 100 years of philanthropy and is committed to doing real, lasting good in the world The Ford Foundation works with visionaries on the front lines of social change in around the world the Herb Alpert Foundation supports organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation is committed to building a more just, green and peaceful world more information at macfound.org Foundation Park dedicated to raising public awareness on critical issues the Kohlberg barbra jean-- Fleischman Foundation and by our only mutual corporate sponsor in America who designs customized individual and group retirement products, that's why we are your retirement company.