Sonoma author event: A deep dive into the Deep State

“The Deep State has created its own Frankenstein and installed him in the White House”

By Stephanie Hiller | For The Sun

Progressives turned out in force Sunday, filling Stone Hall at the Vintage House Senior Center, to hear a brilliant talk by David Talbot sponsored by Praxis Peace Institute. 

Talbot, the former and founding editor of Salon Magazine and author of several books about politics, has recovered admirably from a stroke two years ago, which he has described in his latest book, released this month, Between Heaven and Hell. 

But on February 9, the subject was “The Deep State Then and Now.”

By Deep State, Talbot explained, “I mean the matrix of largely unelected and unaccountable power that directs national policy no matter who happens to sit in the White House.”

Comparing the tyranny of the Deep State during John F. Kennedy’s brief administration with its role today, Talbot described how the Dulles brothers had undermined Kennedy’s efforts to move the Cold War world toward peace, arranging not only the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, but eventually that of Kennedy himself, followed by assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

These accounts, often dismissed as “conspiracy theories,” with the intent of  invalidating them, have been well documented by Talbot and others, but have not been recognized by an American public as yet unaware of their dark influence. But as Praxis Peace Director Georgia Kelly stated in her opening introduction, Talbot’s analysis is based on meticulous research.

After a deft summary of the role of Allen and John Foster Dulles in running a “shadow government” that Kennedy was not “ruthless enough” to control, and a CIA powerful enough to drive out Nixon, Talbot went on to show how the role of the Deep State has changed. He successfully articulated his view of this complex topic in 25 minutes, framing his discussion with the question, Why is Donald Trump in office, and why is he still alive? 

According to Talbot, the Deep State has “metastasized” into a giant web of interlocking agencies – the FBI, the CIA and the vast National Security Administration – elements of the military, the corporate media, Wall Street executives and industrial titans who “meet regularly at places like Davos and Bilderberg to work out their policy differences.” 

Not now dominated by a few men in high places, as under the tight reign of the Dulles brothers, the Deep State is riddled with factions all opposing one another as recently displayed in the impeachment.

Trump “positions himself as a diehard enemy of the Deep State, attacking its top generals while lavishly increasing their budgets and encouraging the most bloodthirsty warriors within the middle ranks, keeping the Deep State divided and conquered.” This, said Talbot, is “the Trump method.” He has denounced his top generals as “dopes and babies” while bolstering the belligerent middle military, men like Edward Gallagher, who was charged with war crimes by his own horrified men, and pardoned by Trump.

Yet, “Top security have decided to put up with Trump’s temper tantrums because he has made them more powerful with less civilian oversight than any president in American history,” and obscenely fat budgets.

The impeachment was “initiated by anonymous CIA operatives within the White House blowing a loud whistle” and carried out by the more analytical intelligence wing of the Deep State. Adam Schiff, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Nancy Pelosi, ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee “tried to constitutionally bring him down with the support of a CIA “in open rebellion,” “a Press Corp in attack mode,” and finally Bolton, but failed. 

Trump’s “radical corporatism” has seduced and brought into play gambling moguls, corporations, financial elites, and robber barons, and connected them with Russian oligarchs and Middle Eastern despots.

Thus,  he was able to make a “miraculous political escape, breaking through his chains like Houdini,” emerging from impeachment even more powerful, and with more public support.

As the impeachment shows, “today’s Deep State is no longer capable of a perfect storm like the one it performed in November 1963.” Yet it has “created its own Frankenstein and installed him in the White House.

Where all this will lead, no one can predict, but Talbot, who chooses hope over despair, believes the gateway out of this dark scenario lies in the coming election. And while a committed supporter of Bernie Sanders, he’ll go for “anyone but Trump.”