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| John Kiriakau: The Deep State, Donald Trump and Us |
| 2017-03-17 |
| [Reader Supported News] The New York Times said this week that President Trump’s insistence that former president Barack Obama tapped his phone and that the CIA and FBI are leaking information to embarrass him and his administration is evidence that Trump believes there is a "deep state" within the U.S. government working against his presidency. The tone of the article is mocking, and the Times dutifully interviews the likes of former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden and a handful of think tank nobodies who served in the Obama and Bush White Houses. Indeed the Times also says that the term "deep state" is used frequently by Breitbart, the alt-right "news" site run by presidential counselor Steve Bannon, and by other right-wing media sites. But is it so hard to believe that there are elements of the government that don’t like the fact that Trump is rocking their boat or not allowing them primacy in policymaking, a status they enjoyed under both Obama and Bush? As Intercept columnist Glenn Greenwald noted, disliking and distrusting Trump and disliking and distrusting the CIA are not mutually exclusive. It’s not a zero-sum game. Same with the FBI. It’s possible to have a scenario with no good guy. First, what is a "deep state?" It is generally defined, according to the Times, as "a shadowy network of agency or military officials who secretly conspire to influence government policy. It is more often used to describe countries like Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan, where authoritarian elements band together to undercut democratically-elected leaders." I think that description is a gross generalization. And I think the CIA, NSA, and FBI are far more sophisticated than to be so obvious as to invite comparisons to Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan. One of the things that most observers don’t understand is that the CIA will do anything ‐ anything ‐ to survive. All CIA officers are taught to lie. They lie all the time, about everything, to everybody. And they justify it by trying to convince themselves that they are doing it in the national interest, for national security. From my very first day in the CIA, it was drilled into me, as it is into every other employee, that "the primary mission is to protect the Agency." That was the mantra. Couple that with the CIA’s ability to intercept and take over virtually any communications device, and you have a Frankenstein monster. Is it really hard to believe that such an organization would resist a president who challenged it? Is it hard to believe that it would do so surreptitiously? I don’t think so..... About the author: John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #1 Maybe a good first step for Trump would be to pardon Kiriakau. Then hire him to do some housecleaning. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2017-03-17 16:04 |