© June 30, 2018
I received an email from Judicial Watch wanting to
take a look at their 3-minute video on the Deep State. The email says the video
is four minutes long but really the actual time is 3:02. The email is dated
6/28/18. The most interesting part for me was the link attached to phrase, “Read
more about the Deep State”. That link goes to a 64-page PDF called a JW special
report entitled, “Exposing the Deep State”.
I encourage to read the Deep State report that includes an
appendix of documents won by JW use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Naturally, in the name of National Security many of those documents are
redacted.
To inspire you to read the whole report I am cross posting
the Executive Summary and Introduction. I am also including the Conclusion
section. Here is the Table of Contents so that know which sections are missing
in my cross post:
Table of Contents
Executive Summary-3
I. Introduction and
Background-5
II. Four Case Studies-8
Case Study # 1: The Environmental
Protection Agency-8
Case Study # 2: The Internal
Revenue Service-13
Case Study # 3: Outside
Organizations, Inside Operations-16
Case Study # 4: The
Intelligence/Law-Enforcement Community-19
III. Conclusion-37
IV. Appendix-41
And here is the text of the email:
Announcing a compelling new
short-form video:
On Issue – “Inside the Deep State!
On Issue – “Inside the Deep State!
Dear Editor/Broadcaster,
I am pleased to announce that Judicial Watch is now launching an exciting new educational, cutting edge video series I believe many in your audience will find captivating and informative...
And, the first, 4 minute edition is now available HERE!
It’s called On Issue – “Inside the Deep State”…
And it provides vital insights into a topic that grows increasingly salient with every passing day.
Fast-paced and fact-filled “Inside the Deep State,” features JW’s highly respected Director of Investigations, Chris Farrell, laying it all out – in his own captivating and highly informative style.
And he does it all in just under four minutes!
Click here now to watch Inside the Deep State…
And then please feel free to use it however you wish to keep your audience On Issue!
Sincerely,
I am pleased to announce that Judicial Watch is now launching an exciting new educational, cutting edge video series I believe many in your audience will find captivating and informative...
And, the first, 4 minute edition is now available HERE!
It’s called On Issue – “Inside the Deep State”…
And it provides vital insights into a topic that grows increasingly salient with every passing day.
Fast-paced and fact-filled “Inside the Deep State,” features JW’s highly respected Director of Investigations, Chris Farrell, laying it all out – in his own captivating and highly informative style.
And he does it all in just under four minutes!
Click here now to watch Inside the Deep State…
And then please feel free to use it however you wish to keep your audience On Issue!
Sincerely,
Carter Clews
Posted by Judicial Watch
Published on Jun 25, 2018
The Deep State is comprised of
legions of political appointees, career civil servants and powerful private
contractors who run the government--no matter who sits in the Oval Office--no
matter which political party controls Congress--and no matter what is the will
of the American people.
No matter who’s in power, they
exert control.
Read more about the Deep State
here: http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/JW-Special-Report-Deep-State-2017.pdf
And now – the Deep State analysis.
*************************
Exposing the Deep State
September 2017
Judicial Watch Logo
Executive Summary
“They pride themselves on operating below the radar – and above the law”
We
face a crisis of the Deep State – “Alt-government,” I sometimes call it. The
actions of the Deep State constitute a direct challenge to our republican form
of government. Working primarily through the intelligence and law-enforcement
agencies, the Deep State is actively engaged in subversive measures designed to
delegitimize Donald Trump, cause the American people to lose faith in their
president, destroy the Trump presidency and eventually impeach him or put him
in jail. -- Judicial Watch
President, Tom Fitton
This
Judicial Watch Special Report analyzes the Deep State, which comprises legions
of political appointees, career civil servants and powerful private contractors
who run the government no matter who sits in the Oval Office. No matter which
political party controls Congress. And, no matter what is the will of the American
people. No matter who’s in power, they exert control. Oftentimes, the liberal
media effectively operates as the propaganda arm of the Deep State.
The shadowy world in which Deep State actors maneuver is
characterized by three disturbing proclivities: Secrecy, surveillance and
subterfuge.
The operatives manning and manipulating the Deep State
demand an activist, interventionist government, both domestically and
internationally. Importantly, their worldview often rejects the beliefs and
values of a majority of patriotic Americans.
As time goes on, the disparity between the values and
beliefs of the people and those of the Deep State becomes cumulative, and no
matter whom the people elect to public office, the Deep State takes the nation
in a direction that increasingly diverges from where the people desire to go.
Sometimes, as it has with the Trump presidency, the Deep
State rises to the surface in rebellion, taking aggressive, seditious measures
against a president whose election it opposed and who it perceives to be a
threat to its own agenda and, perhaps, its very survival. As already is clear with the
Trump presidency, the Deep State can turn on any president that threatens its
interests and survival. And left unchecked, it may illegally destroy him.
This Special Report explores the workings of the Deep State
through four case studies, in each of which Judicial Watch is involved in
investigative action and litigation:
§
The Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), involving three JW Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
lawsuits. One lawsuit focuses on the efforts by agency political officials and
civil servants to hide their communications and circum-vent the Federal Records
and Freedom of Information Acts. The second law-suit demands to see documents
surrounding the EPA’s cost-benefit analysis of the Clean Power Plan, which
Judicial Watch suspects to be “fake science” used to justify the Obama EPA’s
health claims in the Clean Power Plan, a scheme to end coal energy under the
guise of combatting alleged global warming. The third lawsuit is aimed at EPA’s
efforts to propagandize the American People illegally to promote its power grab
over a clean water rule it was attempting to promulgate at the time.
§
The Internal Revenue
Service (IRS), involving four JW FOIA lawsuits focusing on the political
targeting of President Barack Obama’s political enemies, including conservative
non-profit organizations and individuals, and the unlawful collusion among the
IRS and other agencies of government, such as the Justice Department, the FBI,
the Department of Health and Human Services, to spy on innocent American
citizens, propagandize them and bring criminal charges against political
enemies of the Obama administration and/or the Deep State.
§
United States Agency for
International Development (USAID)/Soros Open Society Foundations, involving two
JW FOIA lawsuits focusing on the Soros Open Society Foundations’ use of U.S.
taxpayer money channeled through USAID to destabilize and overthrow the
democratically elected governments of Macedonia and Albania.
§
The
Intelligence/Law-Enforcement Community, involving six JW FOIA law-suits, an
additional FOIA request and an advisory/demand letter, all focused on the
surveillance, unmasking and illegal targeting of President Trump and his
associates during the government’s investigation of purported Russian involvement
in the 2016 presidential election and alleged collusion with the Russians by
Trump and his team. The Special Report examines the flood of leaks and innuendos
coming out of the government surrounding Trump and his associates, including
the Gen. Michael Flynn episode; the Obama administration’s misuse of the NSA
database of surveillance intercepts to target and unmask the identities of
Americans; the Trump Dossier and the FBI’s involvement in it; along with James
Comey’s purloined memoranda and the appointment of a special counsel to
investigate Trump and his associates, including unsubstantiated accusations of
obstruction of justice by the president when he allegedly ask Comey to shut
down the Flynn investigation. The Report assembles the evidence at hand and
finds it supports the conclusion that the Deep State, working primarily through
the intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, is actively engaged in
subversive measures (a “soft coup”) designed to delegitimize Donald Trump,
cause the American people to lose faith in their president, destroy the Trump
presidency and eventually impeach him or put him in jail.
At the
beginning of this Special Report, it is observed that the Deep State is not
monolithic but it shares a common mindset and worldview, and it is
characterized by three disturbing proclivities: Secrecy, surveillance and
subterfuge. Secrecy catalyzes and enables surveillance and subterfuge. The only
way to observe and evaluate the workings of the Deep State is to penetrate the
veil of Deep State secrecy that shields the actions of political appointees,
career civil servants, private contractors and their relationship with the
media and outside agents of influence that comprise the Deep State.
This
Special Report concludes that it is time to tear down the wall of secrecy surrounding
the Deep State. President Trump should order federal agencies to stop the
stalling and start obeying the nation’s open-records laws. Until they do, the
dangerously malignant Deep State will continue to grow and undermine American
democracy.
Exposing the Deep
State
“They pride themselves on operating below the radar – and above the law”
We
face a crisis of the Deep State – “Alt-government,” I sometimes call it. The
actions of the Deep State constitute a direct challenge to our republican form
of government. Working primarily through the intelligence and law-enforcement
agencies, the Deep State is actively engaged in subversive measures designed to
delegitimize Donald Trump, cause the American people to lose faith in their
president, destroy the Trump presidency and eventually impeach him or put him
in jail. – Judicial Watch President, Tom Fitton
I. Introduction and
Background
There
is a deeply embedded shadow government in the United States running the affairs
of state – The Deep State or Alt Government, as Judicial Watch President, Tom
Fitton describes it. This shadow government is not monolithic. But, it does not
have to be. Its operatives share a common mindset and worldview. They travel in
the same social circles. And, they walk the same corridors of power.
No matter who’s in power, they’re in control.
They pride themselves on operating below the radar – and
above the law. And, the shadowy world in which they maneuver is characterized
by three disturbing proclivities: Secrecy, surveillance and subterfuge.
In the words of Judicial Watch Director of Investigations
Chris Farrell, the decidedly left-leaning Deep State is “quite comfortable
exercising all of the levers of the organs of the state.” Farrell explains:
They come from a Franco-Germanic
political philosophy that, historically, has always placed the state over the
citizenry. They derive their power and exercise it vigorously through the
state.
As time goes on, this disparity between the values and
beliefs of the people and those of the Deep State becomes cumulative, and no
matter whom the people elect to public office, the Deep State takes the nation
in a direction that increasingly diverges from where the people desire to go.
Deep
State operatives are ensconced in every agency of the government; they have
their own agendas; and many of them think they don’t have to answer to an
elected president, the rule of law or the American people. They also are
enmeshed in and interface with outside networks of organizations, media
companies, universities, think tanks and corporations that share their views,
help shape their views and exert enormous influence on policy and its
day-to-day implementation. The “military-industrial complex” President Dwight
Eisenhower warned about is a reality but it is not the only complex providing
the architecture of the Deep State; there are several of them: the
intelligence/security-industrial complex, the environmental/academic-industrial
complex, to name but two.
The American media complex effectively operates as the
propaganda arm and transmission belt of the Deep State. In a 2013 article
(updated in 2016), former State Department foreign service officer and
congressional policy adviser and analyst, James George Jatras, explains:
American media increasingly have
operated uncritically in conjunction with the bipartisan Washington political
establishment…Among the key features of such cooperation…are:
§
Deficiency of geographic
and historical knowledge as the American norm (the less people know the more
likely they are to believe what they are told, with the least informed most
persuaded of the need to “do something”);
§
Reliance on government
sources, “ventriloquism,” and “information incest” (unknown to the public, much
media “information” comes from government sources);
§
Centralized corporate
ownership (official policy imperatives interface with ratings dollars for six
giant corporate conglomerates);
§
“Para-journalism,” “infotainment,”
and “atrocity porn” as a war trigger (atrocities appear seemingly on cue and
then receive saturation coverage);
§
Demonization “Hitler” memes
and “weaponization” of media (compromise and negotiation have no role in
confronting absolute evil – war is the default option);
§
America and the “international
community,” the “Free World,” and American “exceptionalism” and “leadership;”
disregarding “alternative” media, Ameri-can samizdat (accurate information is
available in “alternative” media, but the major[s] still decide if it exists or
not);
§
“We never make mistakes,” “stay
the course,” and “MoveOnism” (U.S. policy has no rearview mirror);
§
Authors of past blunders
are not discredited, while those who said “tolya so” are ignored).
§ In turn,
media themselves are an integral part of a multifaceted, hybrid public-private
entity with broad range and depth. Variously known as the Establishment, the
Oligarchy, or the Deep State, this entity includes elements within all three
branches of the U.S. government (especially in the military, intelligence, and
financial sectors), private business (the financial industry, government
contractors, information technology), think tanks, NGOs, the “Dem intern,” both
political parties and campaign operatives, and an army of lobbyists and PR
professionals.
§
Looking into the future in
light of 2016 anti-Establishment challenges from Donald Trump and Bernie
Sanders, the shortcomings of Barack Obama’s policies in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine
on top of those of George W. Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan, shrinkage of the
American Middle Class, and increasing public skepticism of the “MSM” in favor
of digital “alternative media,” both the Washington-based oligarchy and its
media component show signs of losing their grip.
§
The possibility exists for
a peaceful evolution to a less warlike posture (impacting media as well) that
would refocus on America’s domestic needs. Alter-natively, the existing order
could risk a major war in a desperate bid to save its wealth, power, and
privileges – with unforeseeable consequences for America and the world.
The operation of the Deep State is not a meticulously
organized conspiracy, mastermind-ed and controlled by any central authority
operating out of a fortified bunker. Nor does it need to be. The agendas of the
politicians, bureaucrats and contractors that populate the Deep State are
frequently the same, or complementary, and the huge sums of taxpayer money
involved tie them together inextricably. And, they ineluctably travel in the
same, invariably elitist circles. Rather, the Deep State is like a systemic
disease of run-away cells, replicating and metastasizing to serve their own
interests and survival. In short, a cancer.
The Deep State has a life of its own, independent of whoever
is president or whichever political party controls the Congress. Though it
prefers to operate through sleight of hand, with smoke and mirrors, at times it
may rise to the surface and become the handmaiden of overzealous and overreaching
presidents who serve its interests – as it did when Barack Obama weaponized the
permanent bureaucracy inside the IRS, the FBI and other intelligence and
regulatory agencies against the American people and his (and the Deep State’s)
political opponents.
Most frequently, the Deep State recedes back into the
shadows where its agents quietly advance their own agenda and obstruct
troublesome elected officials (and the public that supports them) in a million
different ways, large and small, deliberate and devious. Sometimes, of course, it rises
to the surface in rebellion – as it has with President Donald Trump, taking
aggressive, seditious measures against a president whose election it opposed
and who it perceives to be a threat to its own agenda and, perhaps, its very
survival.
The Deep State is more insidious than mere partisanship, and
it is more dangerous because it is permanent. While presidents and Members of
Congress come and go, the Deep State remains permanently, growing ever more
powerful – and predatory. As already is clear with the Trump presidency, the
Deep State can turn on any president that threatens its interests and survival.
And left unchecked, it may destroy him.
III. Conclusion
Professor Patrick H. O’Neil of the University of Puget
Sound, in a January 2015 article, “The Deep State: An Emerging Concept in
Comparative Politics,” concisely elucidates the underlying foundation of the
Deep State (p.4):
… as a foundational logic, the deep
state justifies its existence through the necessity of tutelage over both state and society. The deep state views itself
guardian of national values against internal and external foes. In short, the
deep state does not necessarily trust the government, state (perhaps even
military) or society to pre-serve the nation. Accordingly, actors within the deep state can justify an array of actions against the government, society, and
state as necessary to defend against “traitors” to the nation and national
ideology. The amorphousness of the deep state
is accompanied by the belief that its members are the symbolic core of the
nation. (Emphasis added.)
At the
beginning of this Special Report, it was observed that the Deep State is not
monolithic but it shares a common worldview and is characterized by three
disturbing proclivities: Secrecy, surveillance and subterfuge. Secrecy
catalyzes and enables surveillance and subterfuge. The only way to observe and
evaluate the workings of the Deep State is to penetrate the veil of Deep State
secrecy that shields the actions of political appointees, career civil
servants, private contractors and their relationship with the media and outside
agents of influence that comprise the Deep State.
That’s
why Judicial Watch is in court day after day shining the light on the
activities of the Deep State. It is time to put an end to the obsessive,
oppressive and destructive secrecy in government. If the rule of law is to
survive, if America’s constitutional protections are to endure, it is essential
to roll back the sinister secrecy that allows, indeed encourages those
operating in the Deep State to hold themselves above the law and beyond the
Constitution.
There is a way to rein in the Deep State but it requires a
commitment to extreme transparency by elected officials. It requires determined
leadership from the White House and serious bi-partisan action on the part of a
committed Congress to expose the goings on inside the permanent D.C.
bureaucracy and the connections between the Deep Staters, the media and the
outside agents of influence.
There
is plenty of blame to go around for the transparency failures that foster the
Deep State, most recently the Obama administration’s executive over reach and
the veil of secrecy President Obama pulled over his administration to hide it.
And now, unbelievably, those same secrecy policies seem to be on auto-pilot in
the Trump administration. Thank-fully, though, when it comes to sunshine
actions, the Trump White House has a solution at hand – if only it would use it
– that is both elegantly simple and breathtakingly radical. The Freedom of
Information Act allows for the executive branch to make “discretionary
disclosures.”
As
Judicial Watch Director of Investigations, Chris Farrell has noted:
“In plain English, that means President Trump and his
cabinet secretaries can release whatever they want—whenever they wish to do so.
They can exercise their discretion to release records that are of broad general
and news media interest concerning important policy issues and/or the operation
of the federal government. These
discretionary disclosures take nothing more than the stroke of a pen.”
Beyond the “discretionary disclosures” provision of the
Freedom of Information Act, Executive Order 13526, signed by President Obama in
2009, and the Supreme Court ruling in Department
of the Navy v. Egan (484 U.S. 518 (1988)) confirm that under the
Constitution, as chief executive, the
president has the legal power to declassify information immediately, on his say
so alone. As the Court stated in Egan:
The President, after all, is the
“Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” U.S. Const.,
Art. II, 2. His authority to classify and control access to information bearing
on national security…flows primarily from this constitutional investment of
power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional
grant.
During
the presidential campaign, Candidate Trump pledged to drain the swamp. There is
no better way to drain the swamp than to impose extreme transparency on the
Deep State where the swamp festers and putrefies. Regrettably, however, instead
of applying the transparency remedy, as JW’s Chris Farrell reports, “The Department
of Justice under Attorney General Sessions is currently making the exact same
legal arguments as the Obama administration—and using all the double-talk and
excuses from the Obama era, too.”
Freedom of Information Act officers in the executive branch
are over-worked and under-appreciated, a situation that has severely restricted
the effectiveness of the law. But it doesn’t take congressional action or a
spending increase to change that. President Trump could trigger a FOIA
revolution simply by ordering a new era of extreme transparency and discretionary
disclosure.
Micha Morrison said it perfectly in Judicial Watch’s Investigative Bulletin:
“Extreme transparency could bring
huge benefits. Swamp draining would get super-charged boosters. The president
could seize the moral high ground in the Russia-connection case with the
re-lease of his tax returns and all relevant White House documents. On the
Judicial Watch docket, among the records that could be quickly produced are:
the Comey memo; records related to former National Security Adviser Susan Rice
and the “unmasking” controversy; re-cords related to the so-called “Russian
dossier;” records relating to the controversial “tarmac meeting” in Arizona
between former Pres-ident Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch;
FBI and intelligence community files on the Hillary Clinton email investigation;
never-revealed draft indictments of Mrs. Clinton in the Whitewater
investigation; and notes and reports to then-Secretary of State Clinton in the
Benghazi affair.”
Beyond the president’s imposing extreme transparency through
discretionary disclosures, immediate action also is needed to pave the way for
activist citizens and outside watchdogs, such as Judicial Watch, to investigate
and expose corruption and malfeasance within the government.
§ President
Trump not only should use the power of discretionary disclosures, he also
should commit to a revolution of “extreme transparency” and set it in motion by
issuing an executive order to break the logjam of FOIA requests he inherited
from President Obama and which are now piling up under his own administration.
§ Congress
should join the revolution by reforming the Freedom of Information Act and giving
private citizens, the press and watchdog groups stronger and better tools to
hold the government to account.
§ Congress
and the president together should seize the opportunity when the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act comes up for reauthorization later this year and:
1. Provide for
greater public access to government records inside the intelligence and
law-enforcement agencies, and especially the proceedings in and opinions of the
FISA Court; and
2. Place new
limits on the NSAs authority to conduct warrantless searches and restrict other
agencies’ authority to use NSA intercepts to conduct domestic surveillance on
Americans.
It’s time to tear down the wall of secrecy surrounding the
Deep State. President Trump should order federal agencies to stop the stalling
and start obeying the nation’s open-re-cords laws. Until they do, the
dangerously malignant Deep State will continue to grow and undermine American
democracy.
______________________
Intro to JW’s ‘Exposing
the Deep State’
Intro by John R. Houk
© June 30, 2018
_______________________
Exposing the Deep State
If you would like additional
copies of the report please contact:
Judicial Watch 425 Third
Street, SW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20024
Member Services: 1 (888)
593-8442 FAX: (202) 646-5199
