Anatomy of the Deep State -- The Shadow Government that calls the shots

'Shadow CIA' buys state secrets for cash via Swiss bank accounts, claims WikiLeaks as it releases 'stolen' files

Five million emails obtained from U.S.-based global security analysis firm Stratfor 'will reveal murky truth about intelligence gathering'

Julian Assange claims firm is monitoring activists for corporate giants and taking information from U.S. government department insiders

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
27th February 2012

Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks today started to publish more than five million confidential emails from the global intelligence company Stratfor.

The emails, dated from July 2004 to late December 2011, are said to reveal the 'inner workings' of US-based firm known as the 'Shadow CIA'.

Among the allegations to emerge is that Stratfor's claim to be a media organisation providing a subscription intelligence newsletter is a front for 'running paid informants networks' and 'laundering those payments through the Bahamas, through Switzerland, through private credit cards'.

Stratfor 'is monitoring Bhopal activists for Dow Chemicals, Peta activities for Coca-Cola', WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claimed at a press conference in London today.

SNIP...

The group said the emails expose a 'revolving door' in private intelligence companies in the U.S., claiming government and diplomatic sources give Stratfor advance knowledge of global politics and events in exchange for money.

CONTINUED ...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2107041/WikiLeaks-releases-stolen-files-Shadow-CIA-buys-state-secrets-cash-Swiss-bank.html

Did the NSA help Bush hack the vote?

Bob Fitrakis
January 9, 2006

What do we make of the President (George W Bush) boldly proclaiming that he has “spy powers?” Does he have X-ray vision too?

When he and his cronies crawl up into Cheney’s bunker with the sign on the door “He-man Woman-haters Club. No Girls Allowed (except Condi),” do they synchronize their spy decoder rings and decide what new absurd folly to unleash on the world?

Illegal invasion of Iraq, suspending writs of habeus corpus, secret CIA torture dungeons, or election rigging? Most people outgrow such childish games and fantasies by the time they’re ten years old. And by age twelve, most understand that the President is not a king. Or a dictator. That U.S. citizens have inalienable rights.

That there are such things as search warrants. If the executive branch of government is going to conduct surveillance on the American people, they have to get a warrant from the judicial branch specifying what they’re looking for and the reasons for the search.

The Bush administration’s utter contempt for the U.S. Constitution and the specific information we now know about its use of the National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance network should further call into question Bush’ 2004 presidential “election.” In a recent revelation, we have learned that the NSA shared the fruits of its illegal spying on behalf of Bush with other government agencies.

What are e-voting machines and central tabulators that pass the voting results over electronic networks from the internet to phone lines? No more than data easily spied on and tapped into. The Franklin County Board of Elections, for example, tells us that it was a “transmission error” in Gahanna Ward 1B, where 638 people cast votes and Bush, the Wonder Boy, received 4258 votes. It’s not magic, nor is it an accident or an act of God. If the vote total wasn’t so hugely illogical, no one would have caught it.

CONTINUED...

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2006/1294

Project PAPERCLIP and the Space Race

Jim Marrs

ON MAY 19, 1945, JUST TWELVE DAYS AFTER GERMANY’S unconditional surrender, Herbert Wagner, creator of the first Nazi guided missile used in combat, landed in Washington, D.C., in a U.S. military aircraft with blacked- out windows.

Wagner was the first of a stream of Nazi scientists, technicians, and others to arrive in the United States in a program that came to be known as Project Paperclip. It began as Operation Overcast, a program authorized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to exploit the knowledge of Nazi scientists. (Overcast was mentioned but not clearly explained in the 2006 film The Good German starring George Clooney.)

This operation was renamed Paperclip and formally authorized in August 1945 by President Harry Truman, who was assured that no one with “Nazi or militaristic records” would be involved.

By mid-November, more Nazi scientists, engineers, and technicians were arriving in America, including Wernher von Braun and more than seven hundred other Nazi rocket scientists.

By 1955, nearly a thousand German scientists had been granted citizenship in the United States and given prominent positions in the American scientific community. Many had been longtime members of the Nazi Party and the Gestapo, had conducted experiments on humans at concentration camps, used slave labor, and committed other war crimes.

Von Braun, who in later years became the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), is one of the more recognizable names of the Paperclip scientists.

Others included:

* Major General Walter Dornberger, a close associate of von Braun’s
* Werner Heisenberg, physicist and Nobel laureate who founded quantum mechanics
* gaseous uranium centrifuge expert Dr. Paul Harteck
* Nazi atomic bomb physicist and military project leader Kurt Diebner
* uranium enrichment expert Erich Bagge
* 1944 Nobel Prize winner Otto Hahn, called the “father of nuclear chemistry”
* scientists Carl Friedrich von Weizsaecker, Karl Wirtz, and Horst Korsching
* physicist Walter Gerlach

CNN reporter Linda Hunt’s 1991 book Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945–1990 first revealed the extent to which Nazi infiltration was aided by persons within the U.S. federal government and military.

Like other researchers, Hunt found many government files pertaining to recruited Nazis “missing” or otherwise unavailable. Despite government claims that Paperclip was ended in 1947, according to Hunt, this project was,

“the biggest, longest-running operation involving Nazis in our country’s history.”

“The project continued nonstop until 1973 - decades longer than was previously thought. And remnants of it are still in operation today,” she wrote.

By the 1990s, when details of Paperclip finally reached the public’s ears, the infusion of Nazis into America’s military-industrial complex was complete.

CONTINUED...

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_paperclip03.htm

Poppy Strikes Gold

Sunday, April 27, 2008
Originally Posted July 9, 2003
By Greg Palast

EXCERPT...

And while the Bush family steadfastly believes that ex-felons should not have the right to vote for president, they have no objection to ex-cons putting presidents on their payroll. In 1996, despite pleas by U.S. church leaders, Poppy Bush gave several speeches (he charges $100,000 per talk) sponsored by organizations run by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, cult leader, tax cheat—and formerly the guest of the U.S. federal prison system. Some of the loot for the Republican effort in the 1997–2000 election cycles came from an outfit called Barrick Corporation.

The sum, while over $100,000, is comparatively small change for the GOP, yet it seemed quite a gesture for a corporation based in Canada. Technically, the funds came from those associated with the Canadian's U.S. unit, Barrick Gold Strike.

They could well afford it. [font color="green"]In the final days of the Bush (Senior) administration, the Interior Department made an extraordinary but little noticed change in procedures under the 1872 Mining Law, the gold rush–era act that permitted those whiskered small-time prospectors with their tin pans and mules to stake claims on their tiny plots. The department initiated an expedited procedure for mining companies that allowed Barrick to swiftly lay claim to the largest gold find in America. In the terminology of the law, Barrick could "perfect its patent" on the estimated $10 billion in ore—for which Barrick paid the U.S. Treasury a little under $10,000. Eureka![/font color]

Barrick, of course, had to put up cash for the initial property rights and the cost of digging out the booty (and the cost of donations, in smaller amounts, to support Nevada's Democratic senator, Harry Reid). Still, the shift in rules paid off big time: According to experts at the Mineral Policy Center of Washington, DC, Barrick saved—and the U.S. taxpayer lost—a cool billion or so. Upon taking office, Bill Clinton's new interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, called Barrick's claim the "biggest gold heist since the days of Butch Cassidy." Nevertheless, because the company followed the fast-track process laid out for them under Bush, this corporate Goldfinger had Babbitt by the legal nuggets. Clinton had no choice but to give them the gold mine while the public got the shaft.

Barrick says it had no contact whatsoever with the president at the time of the rules change.(1) There was always a place in Barrick's heart for the older Bush—and a place on its payroll. In 1995, Barrick hired the former president as Honorary Senior Advisor to the Toronto company's International Advisory Board. Bush joined at the suggestion of former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, who, like Bush, had been ignominiously booted from office. I was a bit surprised that the president had signed on. When Bush was voted out of the White House, he vowed never to lobby or join a corporate board. The chairman of Barrick openly boasts that granting the title "Senior Advisor" was a sly maneuver to help Bush tiptoe around this promise.

CONTINUED...

http://www.gregpalast.com/poppy-strikes-gold/

The Truth Buried Alive

—By Greg Palast, From The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin/Plume, 2003)

Source: UTNE Reader
April 2003 Issue

EXCERPT...

Bad news. In July 2001, in the middle of trying to get out the word of the theft of the election in Florida, [font color="red"]I was about to become the guinea pig, the test case, for an attempt by a multinational corporation to suppress free speech in the USA using British libel law. I have a U.S.-based Web site for Americans who can’t otherwise read my columns or view my BBC television reports. The gold-mining company held my English newspaper liable for aggravated damages for my publishing the story in the USA. If I did not pull the Bush-Barrick story off my U.S. Web site, my paper would face a ruinously costly fight.(1)[/font color]

Panicked, the Guardian legal department begged me to delete not just the English versions of the story but also my Spanish translation, printed in Bolivia. (Caramba!)

The Goldfingers didn’t stop there. [font color="green"]Barrick’s lawyers told our papers that I personally would be sued in the United Kingdom over Web publications of my story in America, because the Web could be accessed in Britain. The success of this legal strategy would effectively annul the U.S. Bill of Rights.[/font color] Speak freely in the USA, but if your words are carried on a U.S. Web site, you may be sued in Britain. The Declaration of Independence would be null and void, at least for libel law. Suddenly, instead of the Internet becoming a means of spreading press freedom, the means to break through censorship, it would become the electronic highway for delivering repression.

And repression was winning. InterPress Services (IPS) of Washington, DC, sent a reporter to Tanzania with Lissu. They received a note from Barrick that said if the wire service ran a story that repeated the allegations, the company would sue. IPS did not run the story.

I was worried about Lissu. On July 19, 2001, a group of Tanzanian police interest lawyers wrote the nation’s president asking for an investigation–instead, Lissu’s law partner in Dar es Salaam was arrested. The police were hunting for Lissu. They broke into his home and office and turned them upside down looking for the names of Lissu’s sources, his whereabouts and the evidence he gathered on the mine site clearance. This was more than a legal skirmish. Over the next months, demonstrations by vicims’ families were broken up by police thugs. A member of Parliament joining protesters was beaten and hospitalized. I had to raise cash quick to get Lissu out, and with him, his copies of police files with more evidence of the killings. I called Maude Barlow, the “Ralph Nader of Canada”, head of the Council of Canadians. Without hesitation, she teamed up with Friends of the Earth in Holland, raised funds and prepared a press conference–and in August tipped the story to the Globe & Mail, Canada’s national paper.

CONTINUED...

http://www.mapcruzin.com/palast-2.htm

We need loud voices of criticism to change this shadow government no matter which party controls the presidency. A lack of criticism means the citizenry is satisfied with the status quo.

The Pork Barrel World of Judge Mark Fuller

By Scott Horton
Harper's August 6, 2007, 5:14 pm

For the last week, we’ve been examining the role played by Judge Mark Everett Fuller in the trial, conviction, and sentencing of former Alabama Governor Don E. Siegelman. Today, we examine a post-trial motion, filed in April 2007, asking Fuller to recuse himself based on his extensive private business interests, which turn very heavily on contracts with the United States Government, including the Department of Justice.

The recusal motion rested upon details about Fuller’s personal business interests. On February 22, 2007, defense attorneys obtained information that Judge Fuller held a controlling 43.75% interest in government contractor Doss Aviation, Inc. After investigating these claims for over a month, the attorneys filed a motion for Fuller’s recusal on April 18, 2007. The motion stated that Fuller’s total stake in Doss Aviation was worth between $1-5 million, and that Fuller’s income from his stock for 2004 was between $100,001 and $1 million dollars.

In other words, Judge Fuller likely made more from his business income, derived from U.S. Government contracts, than as a judge. Fuller is shown on one filing as President of the principal business, Doss Aviation, and his address is shown as One Church Street, Montgomery, Alabama, the address of the Frank M. Johnson Federal Courthouse, in which his chambers are located.

SNIP...

Doss Aviation and its subsidiaries also held contracts with the FBI. This is problematic when one considers that FBI agents were present at Siegelman’s trial, and that Fuller took the extraordinary step of inviting them to sit at counsel’s table throughout trial. Moreover, while the case was pending, Doss Aviation received a $178 million contract from the federal government.

CONTINUED...

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90000762

Smells Like Coup Spirit

By Dwayne Eutsey

April 27, 2001-Thanks to the investigative reporting of journalists such
as Greg Palast, more evidence of a coordinated effort to disenfranchise
tens of thousands of registered voters (mostly African American) is
surfacing in Florida. When these reports are considered within the context
of police roadblocks, cases of intimidation, and possible large-scale
voter fraud and ballot tampering, fears of an orchestrated dirty election
become more substantiated.

There is another aspect of the 2000 election in Florida that remains
largely untouched, however: the possibility of a domestic covert
intelligence operation designed to make certain that America didn't go
Democratic "due to the irresponsibility of its own people," to paraphrase
Henry Kissinger's remark concerning overthrowing the democratically
elected government in Chile.

Perhaps the possibility of such an operation in the US is too far-fetched
to take seriously, or perhaps there isn't enough evidence to proceed with
documenting such suspicions. Unfortunately, history proves that the
former assumption is naive (Watergate, Iran-Contra, and documented CIA
activities against US citizens come immediately to mind). Regarding
evidence, it's the nature of the covert beast to leave no fingerprints and
smoking guns behind (unless you're setting up a patsy). However, if you
can't find a corpse laying around, the stench in the air can often reveal,
nonetheless, that a murder victim's body is covered up somewhere nearby.

What follows here is not an expose of how a CIA-backed coup in Florida
helped kill the democratic process in November. It is an effort, however,
to draw attention to the disturbing stink surrounding events in the 2000
election that are similar to known CIA actions that thwarted democracy in
other countries, namely Guatemala in the 1950s and Chile in 1973. To
avoid the appearance of "conspiracy theorizing" on my part, I've limited
the information presented here to what can be verified. I have also
limited the focus of this survey to very broad similarities. Many others
connections exist and warrant further investigation (such as claims that
former CIA/FBI agent Charles Kane, who was involved in possible absentee
ballot tampering in Florida, played a role in the Bay of Pigs invasion and
CIA coups and dirty tricks around the world. He allegedly retired in the
mid-'70s and would have been employed during the Agency's heyday of covert
operations).

Hopefully, this general overview will help prompt others to conduct a more
thorough look into murky activities that, taken as a whole, suggest the
spirit of CIA-Coups-Past may have paid an unwelcome visit last November to
Florida.

Historical Background

By placing these facts within the larger historical context of CIA coup
activity, many of the baffling events transpiring in Florida last year
begin to make some sense. The same players (CIA, powerful corporations,
rightwing militarists), the same motives (preserving economic/political
power), and even the same tactics (armed violence, fortunately, being one
exception) begin to emerge that suggest some unpleasant connections among
them.

For easier comparison, I break down these similarities according to coup
patterns in Guatemala, Chile, and Florida. Unless otherwise noted, the
information here is from David Halberstam's excellent book, The Fifties,
and from the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with
Respect to Intelligence Activities (Church Report).

Guatemala: Prior to the legitimate election of Jacobo Arbenz to the
presidency in the early '50s, United Fruit Company controls most of the
country's land, economy, and politics. The land reform policies that
Arbenz wants to implement, which would redistribute United
Fruit-controlled land to Guatemalans, threaten United Fruit's economic
interests and political power in the region. United Fruit has close ties
to powerful figures in America, including Allen Dulles (Director of the
CIA) and his brother Foster (Secretary of State). The Dulles brothers and
others portray Arbenz as a communist threat and convince President
Eisenhower that a coup is in America's best interest.

Chile: Despite CIA covert efforts to defeat him, socialist Salvador
Allende is elected as president in 1970. His plan to nationalize Chilean
industries poses a direct threat to the reactionary Nixon Administration
and the multinational corporate interests it represents. Prior to
Allende's election, the CIA spent years and millions of dollars waging a
propaganda war to maintain a US/corporate-friendly government in Chile.
After the election, the Agency is instrumental in implementing Henry
Kissinger's desire to thwart Allende's policies and in supporting a
military coup being planned by General Augusto Pinochet.

Florida: Strategically important in the CIA's covert war against Cuba
(and other troublespots throughout Central and South America), Florida has
been home to CIA mercenary training camps since at least the '50s (such as
one in Opa-Locka).

There is also an interesting Bush connection to Florida (apart from Jeb
Bush holding the state's governorship). According to a report in The
Nation, days after the Kennedy assassination in 1963 a memo from J. Edgar
Hoover stated that a "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency"
had been briefed regarding the reaction of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in
Miami to the murder. Although George H.W. Bush claims the name he shares
with the "Mr. George Bush of the CIA" is coincidental, a source for the
story observed: "I know [Bush] was involved in the Caribbean. I know he
was involved in the suppression of things after the Kennedy assassination.
There was a very definite worry that some Cuban groups were going to move
against Castro and attempt to blame it on the CIA." (see Joseph McBride,
"'George Bush,' CIA Operative," The Nation, July 16/23, 1988, p. 42).

The Players

What follows is a very general review of similar interests and
organizations involved in some manner in Guatemala, Chile, and Florida.

Guatemala:

CIA: Director Allen Dulles is a key player in organizing the coup.

Multinational: United Fruit Company is known as "el pulpo" ("the
octopus" because of its pervasive influence over so many facets of the
country.

Rightwing Militarists Takeover: A reactionary military junta is installed
after the coup, fronted by the CIA-selected Carlos Enrique Castillo Armas.
The junta is responsible for the mass murder of dissidents and years of
brutal repression.

Chile:

CIA: For a detailed analysis of widespread US covert activities in Chile,
see the Church Report.

Multinationals: "In addition to providing information and cover to the
CIA, multinational corporations also participated in covert attempts to
influence Chilean politics." Church Report. Among the corporations
actively opposed to Allende's election and his socialist experiment were
ITT, Pepsi-Cola, and the Chase Manhattan Bank.

Rightwing Militarists Takeover: With CIA support and the blessings of the
Nixon Administration, General Augusto Pinochet establishes a brutal and
reactionary military junta after the coup. As in Guatemala, the junta is
repressive and responsible for the mass murder of dissidents (including
Americans Charles Horman and Frank Terrugi, both of whom were tortured and
executed. According to a US State Department memo dated August 25, 1976,
the CIA "may have played an unfortunate part" in both deaths. See
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/19991008/01-04.htm).

Florida:

CIA: At least one "former" CIA operative (Charles Kane) is implicated in
shady activities during the Florida election. The attorney for those
investigating Kane's involvement in tampering with absentee ballots said
Kane's efforts were part of a "sinister underground conspiracy." ("Florida
Official Admits Helping GOP," Associated Press, December 7, 2000).

Multinationals: Oil, insurance, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, etc., all have
concerns about a Gore presidency and its potential for regulatory
activism. These corporations are eager to bring "business special
interests into politics so they can take over the regulatory bodies of
government and regulate themselves. ("America in the Grip of Bush's 'Iron
Triangle,'" The Observer, December 3, 2000).

Rightwing Militarists Takeover: The Bush Administration has established
"itself as the most brazenly rightwing of modern times. As the ecstatic
head of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation enthuses, the new crowd
are 'more Reaganite than the Reagan administration.'" (The Guardian,
April 25, 2001). Among the appointments Bush has made are Cold Warriors
(e.g., Donald Rumsfield), old Iran/Contra characters and intelligence
operatives (e.g., John Negroponte and Otto Reich; see The Nation, May 7,
2001: "Lie to the Media, Get a Job," by Eric Alterman).

Tactics

Media Manipulation/Reality Distortion

Guatemala: CIA "deftly created a fictional war over the airwaves, one in
which the government troops faltered and refused to fight and in which the
liberation troops were relentlessly moving toward Guatemala City."
Halberstam

Chile: "Press placements [by the CIA] were attractive because each
placement might produce a multiplier effect, being picked up and replayed
by media outlets other than the one in which it originally came out."
Church Report

Florida: John Ellis, Bush's first cousin, at the rightwing Fox News
decides to declare the state for Bush after 2 a.m., causing the other
networks to do likewise, creating the lasting (and false) impression that
Bush won the election.

Press Collusion

Guatemala: " . . . one crucial ingredient left for the success of the coup
. . . was the cooperation, voluntary and involuntary, of the American
press. This meant it was necessary for the press corps to tell the public
that the coup was the work of an indigenous Guatemalan force." Halberstam

Practically all American reporters cooperate, with the exception of NYT
reporter Sydney Gruson. After CIA director Allen Dulles puts pressure on
the Times, Gruson is removed from covering Guatemala. "It was an important
moment," writes Halberstam, "a warning to the paper's top executives about
the potential difference between the agenda of the secret government and
that of serious journalism."

Chile: Excerpts from the Church Report . . ."The most common form of a
propaganda project is simply the development of 'assets' in media
organizations who can place articles or be asked to write them."
"According to CIA documents, the Time correspondent in Chile apparently
had accepted Allende's protestations of moderation and constitutionality
at face value. Briefings requested by Time and provided by the CIA in
Washington resulted in a change in the basic thrust of the Time story on
Allende's September 4 victory and in the timing of that story." "According
to the CIA, partial returns showed that 726 articles, broadcasts,
editorials, and similar items directly resulted from Agency activity. The
Agency had no way to measure the scope of the multiplier effect . . . but
concluded that its contribution was both substantial and significant."

Florida: After Election Day, airwaves are saturated with rightwing
commentators, such as Ann Coulter, accusing Gore of being a "nutcase" who
is trying to steal an election that was, at the very least, in dispute; at
the most, it was a victory for Gore. (See "GOP Won by Planting Seeds of
Deception, by Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, December 14, 2000).

Lewis Lapham of Harper's noted that the "poisonous language" and
"paranoid" arguments being aired at the time were mostly coming from
rightwingers (although the Democrats were not free from "unctuous
statement, rank hypocrisy, and bitter diatribe." Still, when it came to
rancor and speciousness, he "didn't find the same sort of stupidity on the
Democratic side of the dispute."

A sidenote on the Press and the CIA: There are a number of articles
exposing the connections between the US media and the CIA. The most
famous expose was Carl Bernstein's "The CIA and the Media" in the October
20, 1977 issue of Rolling Stone. In it, Bernstein reveals the cooperation
during the '50s and '60s between major US media outlets and the
intelligence community, including, CBS, New York Times, Time, the Miami
Herald, and hundreds of others. The NY Times recently reported,
ironically enough, that the CIA has included news wire services (the now
Moonie-owned UPI, for example) as part of its "regular propaganda
apparatus;" this apparatus also included "Miami exile contacts with
Florida papers."

Although this report is based on a CIA document from the early '60s, it
was also reported this year (or underreported) that US Army psychological
operations personnel (responsible for spreading propaganda) were placed at
CNN's TV, radio, and satellite bureaus during the Kosovo war. (From a
report by Alexander Cockburn in Counterpunch, cited among AlterNet's Top
Ten Censored Stories of 2000).

Staging "Spontaneous" Revolts/Protests

Guatemala: CIA creates the "rebel army" that is supposed to be an
indigenous uprising. "One of the CIA's main responsibilities was to keep
American journalists out of the area lest they find out how pathetic
Castillo Armas's army really was." Halberstam

Chile: "The CIA was directed to undertake an effort to promote a military
coup in Chile to prevent the accession to power of Salvador Allende."
(This particular coup fell apart). Church Report.

Florida: Republican operatives are bussed into Miami in a GOP-orchestrated
campaign to shut down the recount effort and intimidate (and even
physically assault) Democratic election officials.

Targeting Special Groups for Propaganda

Chile: "The covert propaganda efforts in Chile also included 'black'
propaganda-material falsely purporting to be the product of a particular
individual or group . . . the CIA used 'black' propaganda to sow discord
between the Communists and the Socialists and between the national labor
confederation and the Chilean Communist Party." Church Report

Florida: African Americans received calls the weekend before the election
from a speaker who falsely claimed to be with the NAACP, asking them to
vote for Bush. (Midwest Today, December 2000: "Scary Facts About the
Florida Vote," by Larry Jordan).

Conclusion

Where does mere coincidence end and meaningful patterns begin? Even if
the events in Florida listed here (along with the more detailed reports
being filed by investigative journalists) are removed from the context of
covert actions, it is easy to conclude that something profoundly
disturbing happened in the previous election.

Reviewing the increasing amount of evidence demonstrating just how dirty
the 2000 election was, however, is it so unreasonable to think that those
interests whose hands remain sullied from Florida would have sunk one
notch lower into the murky depths of covert operations? What are the
limits when the objective is to grab power at any cost?

And what will those who seized that power do next time in order to hold on
to it?

SOURCE (I remember this from DU, but now the NSAGOOGLE finds it on Bartcop): http://www.bartcop.com/coupsp.htm

Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection

by Edwin Black
Sunday, November 9, 2003

Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a so-called Master Race.

But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little-known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.

Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving" the human race. In its extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.

California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the 20th century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little-known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles Goethe, as well as members of the California state Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.

Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.

CONTINUED...

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/offSiteArchive/www.sfgate.com/index.html

The notion of the “Deep State” as outlined by Mike Lofgren may be useful in pointing to a new configuration of power in the US in which corporate sovereignty replaces political sovereignty, but it is not enough to simply expose the hidden institutions and structures of power.

What we have in the US today is fundamentally a new mode of politics, one wedded to a notion of “power unaccompanied by accountability of any kind,” and this poses a deep and dire threat to democracy itself, because such power is difficult to understand, analyze and counter.

I would suggest that what needs to be addressed is some sense of how this unique authoritarian conjuncture of power and politics came into place. More specifically, there is no mention by Lofgren of the collapse of the social state that began in the 1970s with the rise of neoliberal capitalism, a far more dangerous form of market fundamentalism than we had seen in the first Gilded Age. Nor is there a sustained analysis of what is new about this ideology.

The biggest problem facing the US may not be its repressive institutions, modes of governance and the militarization of everyday life, but the interiority of neoliberal nihilism, the hatred of democratic relations and the embrace of a culture of cruelty. The role of culture as an educative force, a new and powerful force in politics is central here and is vastly underplayed in the essay (which of course cannot include everything). For instance, in what ways does the Deep State use the major cultural apparatuses to convince people that there is no alternative to existing relations of power, that consumerism is the ultimate mark of citizenship and that making money is the essence of individual and social responsibility?

<...>

But there is another more structural reason the Deep State may have peaked in the extent of its dominance. While it seems to float above the constitutional state, its essentially parasitic, extractive nature means that it is still tethered to the formal proceedings of governance. The Deep State thrives when there is tolerable functionality in the day-to-day operations of the federal government. As long as appropriations bills get passed on time, promotion lists get confirmed, black (i.e., secret) budgets get rubber stamped, special tax subsidies for certain corporations are approved without controversy, as long as too many awkward questions are not asked, the gears of the hybrid state will mesh noiselessly. But when one house of Congress is taken over by Tea Party wahhabites, life for the ruling class becomes more trying.

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The House vote to defund the NSA’s illegal surveillance programs was equally illustrative of the disruptive nature of the Tea Party insurgency. Civil-liberties Democrats alone would never have come so close to victory; Tea Party stalwart Justin Amash (R-MI), who has also upset the business community for his debt-limit fundamentalism, was the lead Republican sponsor of the NSA amendment, and most of the Republicans who voted with him were aligned with the Tea Party.

The final factor is Silicon Valley. Owing to secrecy and obfuscation, it is hard to know how much of the NSA’s relationship with the Valley is based on voluntary cooperation, how much is legal compulsion through FISA warrants and how much is a matter of the NSA surreptitiously breaking into technology companies’ systems. Given the Valley’s public relations requirement to mollify its customers who have privacy concerns, it is difficult to take the tech firms’ libertarian protestations about government compromise of their systems at face value, especially since they engage in similar activity against their own customers for commercial purposes. That said, evidence is accumulating that Silicon Valley is losing billions in overseas business from companies, individuals and governments that want to maintain privacy. For high-tech entrepreneurs, the cash nexus is ultimately more compelling than the Deep State’s demand for patriotic cooperation. Even legal compulsion can be combatted: unlike the individual citizen, tech firms have deep pockets and batteries of lawyers with which to fight government diktat.

This pushback has gone so far that on Jan. 17, President Obama announced revisions to the NSA’s data collection programs, including withdrawing the NSA’s custody of a domestic telephone record database, expanding requirements for judicial warrants and ceasing to spy on (undefined) “friendly foreign leaders.” Critics have denounced the changes as a cosmetic public relations move, but they are still significant in that the clamor has gotten so loud that the president feels the political need to address it.

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http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/dc-insider-theres-shadow-govt-running-country-and-its-not-re-election

The term “Deep state” comes from Turkey. They invented it after the wreck of a speeding Mercedes in 1996 in which the passengers were a Member of Parliament, a beauty queen, a local senior police captain, and an important drug trafficker in Turkey who was also the head of a criminal paramilitary organization – the Grey Wolves – that went around killing people. And it became very obvious in Turkey that there were a covert relationship between the police who officially were looking for this man – even though a policeman was there with him in the car – and these people who committed crimes on behalf of the state. The state that you commit crimes for is not a state that can show its hand to the people, it’s a hidden state, a covert structure. In Turkey, they called it the Deep state...

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31782

The Deep State, The Shadow Government and the Wall Street Overworld

The “deep state” was defined by the UK newsletter On Religion as “the embedded anti-democratic power structures within a government, something very few democracies can claim to be free from.”10 The term originated in Turkey in 1996, to refer to U.S.-backed elements, primarily in the intelligence services and military, who had repeatedly used violence to interfere with and realign Turkey’s democratic political process. Sometimes the definition is restricted to elements within the government (or “a state-within-the state”), but more often in Turkey the term is expanded, for historical reasons, to include “members of the Turkish underworld.”11 In this essay I shall use “deep state” in the larger sense, to include both the second level of secret government inside Washington and those outsiders powerful enough, in either the underworld or overworld, to give it direction. In short I shall equate the term “deep state” with what in 1993 I termed a “deep political system:” “ one which habitually resorts to decision-making and enforcement procedures outside as well as inside those publicly sanctioned by law and society.”12

Like myself, Lofgren suggests an ambiguous symbiosis between two aspects of the American deep state:

1) the Beltway agencies of the shadow government, like the CIA and NSA, which have been instituted by the public state and now overshadow it, and

2) the much older power of Wall Street, referring to the powerful banks and law firms located there.

In their words,

It is not too much to say that Wall Street may be the ultimate owner of the Deep State and its strategies, if for no other reason than that it has the money to reward government operatives with a second career that is lucrative beyond the dreams of avarice – certainly beyond the dreams of a salaried government employee.13

I shall argue that in the 1950s Wall Street was a dominating complex. It included not just banks and oil firms but also the oil majors whose cartel arrangements were successfully defended against the U.S. Government by the Wall Street law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, home to the Dulles brothers. This larger complex is what I mean by the Wall Street overworld...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-state-the-deep-state-and-the-wall-street-overworld/5372843