The Secret Government That Wants All Your Secrets...

by Bill Bonner

Over the years — hardly noticed by the press or the public — a group of insiders has taken control of Washington.

These zombies and cronies — who number in the thousands — have much more power and authority than 100 million voters. Research shows that if they want legislation, they get it. Voters, on the other hand, get what they want only rarely... and probably only because the insiders want the same thing. Taken together, this network of elites comprise the “Deep State.”

But who, exactly, is part of the Deep State? What are their objectives? And why is the Deep State’s spying apparatus such a dangerous, growing threat to your freedoms?
 

Identifying the Deep State

The Deep State, to be clear, describes the way the U.S. government really works, rather than the way it’s supposed to work. In the popular myth, we
have a government that responds, clumsily but eventually, to the will of the people. It is supposed to be “by, for, and of” the people. So we are tempted to believe that what it does is, ultimately, for our own good. We can trust it, in other words, to look out for us. We do not have to fear it. After all, as Hillary Clinton said, “The government is all of us.” But the Deep State is not all of us. It is only some of us.
 

The Deep State is a curious group, comprised of foreign governments, billionaire political donors, lobbyists, international corporations, global organizations, and supra-government agencies. Together, they — along with domestic favored industries, the bureaucracy itself, special interests,and cronies of various stripes andpersuasions — run the U.S. government and control the police, the armed forces, the financial industry, the medical industry, the education industry, and other major parts of the economy.
 

How the Deep State Works

Yes, this may sound like a conspiracy. And it is, in a sense. But not the sort on which you could get a conviction. It is just the natural evolution of a political system. In the beginning, government started out small. But as time goes by, more and more people — usually in loosely organized groups — find ways to
"game the system". They exploit the “government” to gain an advantage or privilege. As this happens, the system retains its outward appearance, but it is corrupted from the inside out so that it gradually ceases to serve the common interest that made it so successful in the first place and begins to serve, primarily, the interests of those who actually control it.
 

Today, while we do still have the same apparent structure of government in the U.S. that we had 200 years  ago, it’s not what it used to be. The words are the same. The form is the same. But, under the hood,  the motor is completely different. The Deep State doesn’t care what you want or who you voted for.  And it definitely doesn’t care about  the nation’s safety. It cares only about its own safety.
 

The Deep State and Its “Enemies”

In 1989, the Deep State faced its biggest challenge. The Soviet Union renounced its goal of world domi nation. The Cold War was over.  This left the security  industry with nothing to provide security against. Huge budget cuts loomed. Early retirements beckoned. That is the beauty... or perhaps the ferocious power... of the Deep State system. It doesn’t require a plan or brain. It doesn’t need a smoke-filled room or a meeting of the minds. It just develops on its own as people use the government for their own purposes. This is an important point in the context of today’s war on terror.

More people probably die from peanut butter allergies than from terrorist attacks. But when people are killed by terrorists, it occupies a big and sensitive spot in the collective imagination. The threat of terrorism, then, helps scare citizens into transferring more of their money to the security industry.  Individual soldiers risk their lives, but the Deep State wants to see terrorists flourish, not eliminated.

Terrorists pose no dangers to the Deep State system; they strengthen it. But you or I, however, might threaten it.  It is unlikely, but a strong candidate may still be able to revive enough of the old atrophied organs and dust off enough of Americans’ old sense of pride, independence, and solvency — so as to menace the Deep State.
 

There might be enough kindred spirits appalled by the theft, disgusted by endless senseless wars,  and shocked by the debts to make possible a march on Washington, and maybe even a real insurrection. Like the Spartacus slave uprising in  72 B.C., an “end the Fed” chant coming from the National Mall... a “stop the wars” banner flying over the Lincoln Memorial... might be enough to deeply unsettle the Deep State. That is why the Deep State so desperately wants to keep tabs on everyone.
 

Everybody’s a Target

Built at a cost of $1.5-2 billion —plus another $2 billion for electronic components — the NSA’s massive data center in Bluffdale, Utah, came online in May 2014.  It consumes about $40 million worth of electricity each year and uses 1.7 million gallons of water each day. You don’t put that kind of hardware in place just to snoop on a handful of terrorists. Instead, the idea is to keep records on everyone so that at any time, the Deep State can find out what it needs to know about anyone.

Bill Binney worked for the NSA for 32 years before blowing the whistle in 2002. He was the one who “created the agency’s mass surveillance program.” Now, that program collects 100 billion emails per day... and 20 trillion communications all together.
 

Washington’s Blog:

If anyone gets on the government’s “enemies lists,” then the stored information will be used to target them. Specifically, [Binney] notes that if the government decides it doesn’t like someone, it analyzes all of the data it has collected on that person and his or her associates over the last 10 years to build a case against him.

All of the information gained by the NSA through spying is then shared with federal, state and local agencies, and they are using that information to prosecute petty crimes such as drugs and taxes. The agencies are instructed to intentionally “launder” the information gained through spying, i.e., to
pretend that they got the information in a more legitimate way... And to hide that from defense attorneys and judges.

Lavrenti Beria headed Stalin’s secret police. He had no access to an NSA-style database. Still, even with his limited resources, “Show me the man, and I will find the crime,” he said. Today,  the secret police never had it so good. And it could get a lot better for them. With the coming of a “cashless” economy, all transactions, no matter how small, may have to pass through the Deep State’s information technologies. With the flip of a switch, your secrets could be revealed and your money could be turned off — a 21st-century assassination.

© 2015 Laissez Faire Books, LLC