The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 12 | Issue 43 | Number 4 | Oct 20, 2014 The Fates of American Presidents Who Challenged the Deep State (1963-1980) アメリカの深層国家に抗した大統領の運命(1963-1980) Peter Dale Scott In the last decade it has become more and more another, more shadowy, more obvious that we have in America today what the indefinable government that is not journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin have explained in Civics 101 or called observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is two governments: the one its traditional Washington partisan citizens were familiar with, operated politics: the tip of the iceberg that a more or less in the open: the other a public watching C-SPAN sees daily parallel top secret government and which is theoretically whose parts had mushroomed in controllable via elections. The less than a decade into a gigantic, subsurface part of the iceberg I shall sprawling universe of its own, call the Deep State, which operates visible to only a carefully vetted according to its own compass cadre—and its entirety . visible heading regardless of who is 1 only to God. formally in power.3 And in 2013, particularly after the military return I believe that a significant shift in the relationship to power in Egypt, more and more authors between public and deep state power occurred in referred to this second level as America’s “deep the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in the Reagan 2 state.” Here for example is the Republican Revolution of 1980. In this period five presidents analyst Mike Lofgren: sought to curtail the powers of the deep state. And as we shall see, the political careers of all There is the visible government five—Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and situated around the Mall in Carter—were cut off in ways that were unusual. Washington, and then there is One president, Kennedy, was assassinated. 1 APJ | JF 12 | 43 | 4 Another, Nixon, was forced to resign. and deeper politics, much of it a contest between these two types of power. One special feature of To some extent the interplay of these two forms American deep politics since World War Two is of power and political organization is found in all that much of it has been characterized by a series societies. The two were defined by Hannah of conspiratorial deep events: emblematic of the Arendt in the 1960s as “persuasion through ongoing conflict between these two forms of arguments” versus “coercion by force.” Arendt, power and their corresponding mindsets. One is following Thucydides, traced these to the the acknowledged public mindset of openness, common Greek way of handling domestic affairs, egalitarianism, and democracy. The other is the which was persuasion (πείθειν) as well as the global dominance mindset committed to common way of handling foreign affairs, which maintaining and expanding American was force and violence (βία)."4 The two represent hegemony. In domestic policy we often analyze not just different techniques of government but the two cultures as liberals versus conservatives; different cultures and mindsets, in fundamental in foreign policy, doves versus hawks. (Yet tension with each other.5 American liberals when they reach power, such as Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, have also been Hannah Arendt. Source (https://www.google.com/search?q=%22hannah+Arendt%22&client=firefox-a&hs=4xg&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=fflb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=RNNSVIuxMNafyATCsoGYAQ&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAg#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=_IXoain_r_CT4M%253A%3B4Iw7cnq7xoFmxM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.thenation.com%252Fsites%252Fdefault%252Ffiles%252Fhannah_arendt_ap_img.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.thenation.com%252Fblog%252F177180%252Fweek-nation-history-eight-decade) deeply entwined in the militarization of This tension increases, and predictably tips American politics and its global expansion.) But toward violence, if a well-organized open with the recent expansion since 9/11 of extra- community expands beyond its own borders and constitutional agencies like the NSA, it is time to is increasingly occupied with the business of supplement these horizontal distinctions with a supervising an empire. It is repeatedly the case vertical one: between those agencies constrained that progressive societies (like America) expand. by constitutional checks and balances (the public As their influence expands, their democratic state) and those not so constrained (the deep institutions, based at bottom upon persuasive state). Although the deep state as we have power among equals, are supplemented by new, defined it has always existed, its recent radical often secret, institutions of top-down violent expansion has brought it into occasional power for the control of alien populations conspiratorial conflict with the public state, even abroad, often speaking different and unfamiliar with the president. languages. The more the society expands, the more these institutions of violent power encroach National Security Agency. Source (https://www.google.com/search?q=NSA&client=firefox-a&hs=nKM&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=fflb&biw=1213&bih=647&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=wtNSVPjuOYauyQSV5oGgCQ&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAg#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=Fc8cwbKfvkIE0M%253A%3BvAZW_wdUUCe8iM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fupload.wikimedia.org%252Fwikipedia%252Fcommons%252F8%252F84%252FNational_Security_Agency_headquarters%252C_Fort_Meade%252C_Maryland.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fen.wikipedia.org%) upon and supplant the original democracy. The tension between persuasive and violent As a result these nations also experience a deeper power has increased incrementally in recent 2 APJ | JF 12 | 43 | 4 United States history, from the years after World of violent power itself, power associated with War Two through to September 11, 2001. We and deployed in the service of the global have seen the emergence to dominance of what expansion of American military might, which (as used to be called the military-industrial complex, history has shown many times) has the effect to and what in my 2010 book I called the American transform both societies with surplus power and war machine. This is a major change. When the individuals exercising that power.7 Insofar as Eisenhower warned against the military-these power processes govern America without industrial complex in 1961, the values,deriving from its constitution, we can say that institutions and resources that comprised it were they derive from the milieu of the American deep still subordinate elements in American society. state. Today it not only dominates both parties, but is In discussing the deep events of Dallas, also financing threats to both these parties from Watergate, Iran-Contra and 9/11, I will argue even further to the right. A good measure of this that, while the mysteries of these deep events change is that liberal Republicans are as scarce in cannot at present be fully dispelled by historical the Republican Party today as Goldwater analysis (given the tight lock on official Republicans were scarce in that party back in documentation), analysis does point to a pattern 1960. linking them. In American War Machine I wrote That change has been achieved partly by money, that but partly also with the assistance of deep events: events, such as the Kennedy assassination, the historical succession of deep Watergate, the 1980 October Surprise, Iran- events—such as Dallas, Watergate, Contra, and 9/11, which repeatedly have and 9/11—has impacted more and involved law-breaking and/or violence, have more profoundly on America’s been mysterious to begin with, and whose political situation. More specifically, mystery has been compounded by systematic … major foreign wars are typically falsifications in media and internal government preceded by deep events like the 6 records. Tonkin Gulf incidents, 9/11, or the 2001 anthrax attacks. This suggests In saying that these deep events have contributed that what I call the war machine in collectively to a major change in American Washington [the forces striving for society, I am not attributing them all to a single global U.S. dominance, including agent or “secret team.” Rather I see them as elements both inside and outside flowing in part from the socio-dynamic processes 3 APJ | JF 12 | 43 | 4 government, both inside and elements of the global drug outside the United States] may have connection.8 been behind them. These deceptions were not designed to deceive The continuity between all these successive America’s enemies, but first and foremost to deception plots suggests that there may be an deceive the American people, to accept the underlying source for all of them, and that the unilateral initiation by America of illegal wars. repeated appearances of external attacks or The continuity between all these successive threats (from North Vietnam, Nicaragua or Iraq) deception plots suggests that the repeated may be false. I will suggest that for at least a half- appearances of external attacks or threats (from century the conflict between the two mindsets North Vietnam, Nicaragua or Iraq) have all been has given rise to a series of conspiratorial deep false. I will suggest that for at least a half-century events emanating from the hidden recesses of the the conflict between the two mindsets has given American war machine all designed to deceive rise to a series of conspiratorial deep events and coerce the American people so as to sustain emanating from the hidden recesses of the or further military expansion. I will go further, American war machine all designed to deceive and argue that this continuity underlies yet other and coerce the American people so as to sustain significant deep events that led, not to the start of or further military expansion. I will go further, yet another external war, but to the progressive and argue that this continuity underlies yet other militarization and political repression of significant deep events that led, not to the start of domestic American society.