Where Democracy Goes To Die

The "Deep State." I confess that until recently, I had never heard that term. In fact, I would have never imagined such a thing. When Ross Perot started talking about "black helicopters" during the 1992 election, he was famously mocked by both Clinton and Bush as a conspiracy nut. In 1997, when Bill Clinton attacked Iraq during his impeachment, nutty right wingers were ridiculed for accusing him of trying to divert attention from his impeachment. Ironically, Hollywood had presaged exactly this kind of thing in the Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro movie "Wag the Dog." 

In 2003, George Bush used "faulty" intelligence reports of weapons of mass destruction to justify a second invasion of Iraq. After now more than a dozen years of war, there is only limited evidence of a mass weapons program on the scale that Bush used to justify the invasion. Conspiracy theories erupted, alleging that Bush and the intelligence community made the whole thing up so to continue a war against Saddam Hussein. But anyone making such allegations was labeled "unpatriotic," and loony.

President Obama came into office promising a complete change in direction of American foreign policy. His goal was to withdraw from the cycle of perpetual war, put our allies out in front of their own defense, close down the intelligence apparatus that led to the second Gulf War, enhanced interrogation techniques, rendition, and what he viewed as American overreach. After eight years and two terms, he was unable to do almost anything, except withdraw from one war, only to get us into another one.

Like him or hate him, Donald Trump is the first civilian President we've had since before World War II. He does not come from Washington, he hasn't spent decades working his way up through the government, and he hasn't ever held elected office. Like President Obama, President Trump wants to withdraw from the cycle of perpetual war, put our allies (like NATO) out in front of their own defense, and generally end what he also thinks is American overreach. He has been critical of the intelligence community for "faulty" intelligence. It hasn't even been two months and he has already been the victim of illegal leaks from the intelligence community, false incrimination, and a general conspiracy deep inside the government to undermine his credibility.

I could not support Hillary Clinton because she thought she was above the law. As I've said in my articles, she thinks she's above the law because she is above the law. I can think of nothing more dangerous to American democracy than a narrow class of individuals who are truly beyond justice.  Until now. Individuals inside our government believe that they are entitled to commit treason by leaking classified information. They believe that they are allowed to wiretap a presidential candidate's staff and surrogates during a campaign. They believe that they can drag us into war on a false premise. They believed and may still believe that they can drone strike Americans overseas and collect every phone call, text message and key swipe made by Americans, our enemies and our allies. 

If these things are true, then these individuals represent the greatest threat to our freedom that our nation has ever faced. We will all have to judge for ourselves. Posterity will judge us.

Wiretapping

According to the New York Times (hardly a pro-Trump publication), Trump and his surrogates, including former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, were wiretapped. Those wiretaps led to at least one transcript showing that General Flynn had some contact with Russian diplomats before the President was sworn in. Flynn subsequently resigned. The source allegedly came from either our intelligence agencies or  a "counterintelligence investigation"  being conducted by the FBI. 

Three individuals in the Trump campaign were targeted, we only know the identities of two: Trump Campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and national security advisor, Michael Flynn. Both were, obviously, top officials within the Trump presidential campaign. Both resigned after anonymous sources inside the intelligence community leaked that both men were being "investigated" for alleged "ties to Russia." We are left to assume whether the third person was Donald Trump...

In order to target either man with any kind of monitoring, the government - that is, the Obama administration - had to go to a super secret federal court named "FISA," and get a warrant. U.S. intelligence is not allowed to act on U.S. citizens on U.S. soil without; (1) a domestic mandate from the FBI into an ongoing investigation; or (2) a warrant from a FISA court. FISA was set up to make it easier to wiretap Americans who are suspected of terrorist ties or who are otherwise suspected of being "foreign operatives."

The first possibility can be ruled out. As the FBI stated repeatedly during the election, there was no investigation into Donald Trump's alleged "ties to Russia." The FBI recently rebuffed the allegation that they had wiretapped the campaign, calling it "completely false." Perhaps they are telling the truth. Perhaps they are being crafty with their words. Perhaps Trump himself was not wiretapped but his advisors were. It doesn't matter. If you are investigating Trump's advisors, you are investigating Trump. This is because if Trump advisors were being bugged, then Trump's communications with those advisors were also swept up in the "investigation." Let's assume the FBI is telling the plain truth.

That leaves U.S. intelligence agencies and FISA. Shortly after the President's inauguration, several news outlets reported that the Obama administration sought three separate FISA orders during the final three months of the presidential campaign. These FISA request were leaked, again illegally, to news outlets in an effort to bolster the case that Trump had somehow colluded with Russian intelligence to steal the election.

FISA courts have adjudicated over 35,000 application requests. They have rejected exactly 12. Two of those were the first two requests to wiretap Donald Trump or his surrogates. The Obama administration's third request was granted, although we do not know who, exactly, was the target. However, we can assume that it was General Flynn. We know this because he was, in fact, wiretapped, and a transcript of one of those conversations was leaked to the New York Times. It is indisputable that: (1) there was a wiretap; (2) targeting a Trump advisor; (3) ordered by someone in the government; (4) during the election; and (5) there is a record of all of this. In other words, officials inside the Obama administration, either in the intelligence community or in the FBI, wiretapped Trump advisors during the presidential campaign. The evidence is overwhelming. 

The only remaining question is whether President Obama knew it or ordered it. Frankly, I'm not sure which prospect is scarier, the sitting President wiretapping an opponent's campaign in order to sabotage him, or some Deep State conspiracy to thwart the will of the American people. 

Either is plausible. President Obama used FISA to wiretap a Fox News reporter and his parents after he sourced a news report with an intelligence leak. On the other hand, no matter your feelings about President Obama, he has never been corrupt. Overly aggressive, perhaps, but outright corrupt, no.

That leaves the Deep State conspiracy. Unelected intelligence operatives believe that they are entitled to collude with the FBI, the Administration, and the news media in an effort to interfere with a U.S. Presidential Election. The "ties to Russia" narrative is what conspiracy theorists would call "a false flag;" A diversion to turn the attention of the American people away from their true objective, which was to defeat an anti-establishment candidate in favor of a pro-establishment candidate.  

I believed Ross Perot was nuts. I believed that President Clinton had no choice but to attack Iraq when Hussein tried to use his impeachment to weaken the coalition occupation. I believed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that Hussein was going to give them to Al Qaeda. I believed that the intelligence was simply "faulty" when those weapons were not found. I believed that President Obama changed his mind about ending the cycle of perpetual war, or closing Guantanamo Bay.

But, I do not believe that Donald Trump or any of his surrogates are foreign agents who colluded with Russian intelligence to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. It is perhaps the dumbest thing I've ever heard, and it will, hopefully, be the downfall of the Deep State.

The Emerging Police State

This is where Democracies go to die: 

Unaccountable "Deep States," secret courts, wiretapping political opponents, "fake news," and leaked propaganda, all in favor of a limitless government and perpetual war. The FBI Director said last week that, because of modern technology, "no one can escape" the reach of the FBI. Wikileaks simultaneously disclosed secret CIA and NSA programs operating out of Frankfurt, Germany that allow them to hack every single phone, computer, and tablet in the world. They can turn on your internet, activate your camera, record your conversations, and track your every movement, all without your knowledge. 

We should all be terrified, not because we are going to do anything illegal or because we have something to hide. Privacy is a basic human dignity and absolutely essential to the preservation of a free state. To strip away one's privacy is to dehumanize that person. There is absolutely no guarantee that these unaccountable government agents will not abuse their power and humiliate you. You are at their mercy and there is nothing you can do about it when they can monitor your every word and your every movement. As with General Flynn and Paul Manafort, the mere fact of an "investigation," leaked to the media, ruins careers. In a world without privacy, innuendo, suspicion, and suggestion are dispositive, and you have no recourse once your life is destroyed. It is the exact definition of a police state. It is not the America we inherited.

I say again, this is where Democracy goes to die.

"Ties to Russia"

Exactly seven people in the United States thought Donald Trump would become President. No one predicted that he would beat a skilled primary field and then lose the popular vote, but beat one of the most established political candidates in decades. No one. Not even the all-powerful Russians. To think that Vladimir Putin had the foresight to secretly pick Donald Trump, and his future advisors, as foreign agents who would go on to become the Trump Administration is asinine in the highest degree. It did not happen.

Instead what happened is the DNC and Clinton's Chief of Staff, John Podesta, got hacked. They deserved to get hacked. (According to Wikileaks, for example, Podesta's password to one of his email accounts was, wait for it, "password.") From that point on, the Russian narrative was born and the Obama Administration used the alleged Russian hacking as an excuse to wiretap the opposition party's campaign. The tail wagged the dog.

A part of our Democracy did in fact die the day a wiretap was placed on a Trump surrogate during the campaign. We should all be outraged, reject the false narrative, and hold every single person involved in that decision criminally responsible. If we do not, then our democracy is indeed dead.