In light of the non-stop yammering about Russian meddling in our precious democracy, it’s time to revisit the concept of an American deep state.
Liberal commentators have heaped derision on the term–deep state, depicting it as Trump supporters protecting the president, but this analysis elides the historical relevance of the concept.
In my opinion, the American deep state exists as an unelected shadow government because it represents what Federalist Papers co-author John Jay articulated—“The people that own the country ought to govern it.”
The American deep state thrives on an uninformed and confused populace. The average American is captive to corporate media news and never looks elsewhere for information. Any narrative that counters the official story is deliberately disappeared from view and the result is ignorance of the people and institutions that largely control our country.
The chief player in the American deep state is the CIA. To understand the CIA, it’s incumbent to understand the Phoenix Program (assassinations, death squads, torture, mass detentions, exploitation of information), which since the Vietnam War has been the CIA’s means of controlling populations.
Author Douglas Valentine was the first to document this development in his groundbreaking book–The Phoenix Program, where he gained the trust of CIA insiders to describe their pacification campaign, as first fully developed in Vietnam.
Valentine explains that the Phoenix Program was developed by the CIA in 1967 to combine “existing counterinsurgency programs in a concerted effort to neutralize the Vietcong infrastructure (VCI).” He explained further that “neutralize meant to kill, capture, or make to defect.” “Infrastructure” meant civilians suspected of supporting North Vietnamese and Vietcong soldiers. Central to the Phoenix Program was that its targets were civilians, making the operation a violation of the Geneva Conventions which guaranteed protection to civilians in time of war.
In his latest book–The CIA As Organized Crime, Valentine connects the CIA’s Phoenix Program to Nazi counterinsurgency warfare during WWII. He says that the Phoenix Program bears an eerie resemblance to German Einsatzgruppen-style special forces and Gestapo-style secret police operations on the Eastern Front. “Both programs were extreme forms of repression operating under martial law principles where the slightest form of dissent was deemed to represent the work of the enemy.”
That the U.S. drew upon German counter-insurgency doctrine is well documented elsewhere. This is shown explicitly in a 2011 article published in the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies entitled–German Counterinsurgency Revisited, by Charles D. Melson.
I believe that the CIA based their Phoenix Program counterinsurgency programs after Nazi ones because of the historical period in which the CIA was created and its leading proponents. No individuals are more important to this effort than the two Dulles brothers–Allan and John Foster.
Going further, the Dulles’s, their elite circle of allies, and the actions they took during the 1930’s are the key to understanding the modern American deep state.
The election of FDR and the implementation of the New Deal was a shocking development to the ruling elite of America. This loss of power and prestige was so traumatic that many of them contemplated changes to our representative system of governance. Gazing at Europe for inspiration, Mussolini and Hitler, came in for special praise. And, support.
One of the darkest secrets of the 1930’s, is the fact that US corporations and banks financed German reconstruction under the Nazis, especially their rapidly expanding armaments industries, in exchange for priceless industrial patents. This funding of German industry continued through World War II and involved some of the most powerful and well known US corporations, such as GM, Ford, and IBM. It also involved powerful US banks and investment houses, and influential Republicans, like George W.’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, and the Dulles brothers, Allan and John Foster.
Worried that the defeat of the Nazi’s would cause them to lose their investments, the directors of many of these companies plotted to protect their interests. Law firms like Sullivan and Cromwell specialized in helping to arrange these deals. Before and during the war, the Dulles brothers, Allen (who was a partner in that firm) and John, helped these companies hide their assets. As a result, many Nazi industrialist and their American collaborators maintained their wealth after the hostilites ceased.
Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg once stated that “The Dulles brothers were traitors.” Some historians believe that Allen Dulles became head of the newly formed CIA in large part to cover up his treasonous behavior and that of his clients. One of the most notorious manifestations of this agenda was an attempt to rescue and negotiate with Nazis – against Roosevelt’s wishes – during Operation Sunrise.
Allan and John Foster Dulles are dead but their evil legacy lives on.
With the ongoing revelations of Russia-gate, we should always be mindful of the role of the CIA in disseminating propaganda and disinformation that is complementary to the violent tactics of the Phoenix Program which has been adopted as the model for policing the American empire and maintaining the power of the deep state.
camelotkidd