HOW THE DEEP STATE TOOK DOWN NIXON:

Since the publication of Secret Agenda, books such as Len Colodny’s and Robert Gettlin’s Silent Coup (1991), James Rosen’s The Strong Man (2008), and Geoff Shepard’s The Real Watergate Scandal (2015) and The Nixon Conspiracy (2021) have drawn on declassified documents and unsealed judicial and congressional hearings to help us better understand what really happened. Although these authors disagree about many details, they agree that Nixon was removed from office not because he endangered the constitutional order, but because his bureaucratic and political enemies plotted successfully against him. And while scholars shy away from endorsing some of the more dramatic claims that have been made over the years, the best of them understand Watergate not in terms of the conventional narrative, but as an institutional “conflict” in which Nixon was the most important casualty. Nixon had to go—not because of a bungled break-in, but because he challenged the national-security state.

Thanks to the revelations concerning Felt, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s role in Nixon’s downfall is better understood. The Central Intelligence Agency’s role, however, remains mysterious. It was only one of several US intelligence agencies spying on Nixon and his officials, but Langley’s role in Watergate set it apart. As Hougan shows, it infiltrated and sabotaged “The Plumbers,” the covert unit responsible for the Watergate burglaries, run by several figures in Nixon’s re-election campaign committee with connections to the White House. It was the CIA that set in motion the events that forced Nixon from the presidency.

The CIA, the military, and other agencies spied on the White House because Nixon the president acted differently than Nixon the politician. As congressman, senator, and vice president, Nixon was a dyed-in-the-wool Cold Warrior. While this position earned him the ire of media and academic elites, especially when he exposed the treason of their darling Alger Hiss, anti-Communism was at the time a fairly conventional position within military and intelligence circles. In backing Nixon in 1968, his supporters in the military and intelligence communities thought they were getting a hawk who would stop trying to micromanage the Vietnam War and national security from the White House.

Nixon had other ideas.

Read the whole thing.

DEEP STATE UPDATE:

A growing body of evidence shows U.S. govt officials, agencies, & contractors demanding Facebook & Twitter censor ordinary Americans. Now, an influential censorship advocate has admitted that she worked for the CIA. Who is she? Why is she so influential?https://t.co/XP9NAljN4G

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) April 3, 2023

ROGER KIMBALL: When agents of the deep state hector you about “the rule of law,” laugh in their faces.

THE DEEP STATE PROTECTS ITS OWN: Pentagon Won’t Name Official Who Divulged Misleading Info About Chinese Spy Balloons During Trump Admin. “The Pentagon won’t address or explain the misleading statements. They won’t identify the person or persons who issued all those statements.”

THEY’RE NOT COMPETENT, JUST SELF-CENTERED, ENTITLED, AND UNPRINCIPLED: Deep State? After the China balloon fiasco, call it the Derp State.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t a threat to democracy.

UPDATE: From the comments: “The way you know that 9/11 wasn’t organized by the CIA was that the attack worked.”

Ouch. José Ramon Fernandez smiles.

PAULA BOLYARD, FOR OUR VIP SUPPORTERS: You Knew the Deep State Was Bad. Did You Know It Was This Bad? “The number of federal agents is now in excess of 200,000, according to an OpentheBooks oversight report — a force larger than the U.S. Marine Corps. The investigation found that ‘One hundred three executive agencies outside of the Department of Defense spent $2.7 billion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment between fiscal years 2006 and 2019 (inflation adjusted). Nearly $1 billion ($944.9 million) was spent between fiscal years 2015 and 2019 alone.'”

ROGER KIMBALL: The Deep State vs Donald Trump saga is not over.

The great comedy was that the entire charade was the work of state actors that, in various capacities, had actually fabricated the whole story. Hillary Clinton’s team had the idea, paid for the bogus “research,” while willing stooges in the media and intelligence services eagerly embraced the narrative.

As the investigations went on and one dirty actor after the next was exposed, jettisoned, then rewarded with a position at some left-wing media outlet, we thought we were slowly peeling back the onion and that, eventually, we would get to ground zero, the truth about the greatest assault on what Nancy Pelosi taught us to denominate “our democracy” in history.

But no, there was never going to be a ground zero. The point was not to “achieve closure.” It certainly wasn’t to uncover the truth. The point was the process, and the end of the process was, first of all, to destroy Trump and, beyond that, to reassert the Wizard-of-Oz-like prerogatives of the Deep State.

The January 6 Committee, illegally constituted as it was, was a continuation of that work by other means — more or less in the sense that Carl von Clausewitz had in mind when he said that war was “nichts als die Fortsetzung des politischen Verkehrs mit der Einmischung anderer Mittel.” Ever since Donald Trump glided down the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his bid for the presidency, the leviathan has been out to get him.

Biden has called January 6th, the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War,” which would be big news to residents of Pearl Harbor, Oklahoma City, and lower Manhattan.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Twitter Files Expose Dangerous Deep State-Big Tech Revolving Door. More here.

It does seem that rather a lot of shady intel/law enforcement types found work controlling content at social media companies.

YES, INDEED:  Elon Musk Claps At Fauci And The Deep State Claps Back. 

BUT THE DEEP STATE’S TOTALLY A CONSPIRACY THEORY MYTH YOU GUYS:

NO. HE’S PART OF DEEP STATE DECEIT:  Has The Trump Raid Made Bill Barr Forget All About Deep-State Deceit?

MARK JUDGE: “My Son Hunter:” A Cry of Defiance Against the Deep State.

A BLIND MAN CAN SEE THIS:  The Raid on Mar-A-Lago: A Desperate Act by the Deep State.

BUT THE “DEEP STATE” IS A MYTH: Alex Berenson Sued Twitter Over Being Banned and Was Reinstated. “It’s a long segment so don’t miss the key material near the end, explaining why he settled with Twitter and how he’s moved on to publishing documents showing that the federal government pressured Twitter to ban him. Twitter had accepted him, he says, and White House people said they wanted him banned, and, within 6 weeks, he was banned. That clip should be put alongside this other Joe Rogan clip, from one day earlier. Here’s Mark Zuckerberg talking about the FBI’s pressuring Facebook to moderate content.”

I remember all the people yammering at the time: Private companies can do what they wannnttt!!!!

First, that hasn’t been true for more than my lifetime. Second, when they do it at the behest of the government, it loses its private character.

Far too many alleged libertarians were making that argument. I hope they’ve learned their lessons, but I doubt it.

DEEP STATE ALERT: Former Head of CIA Thinks Republicans Are More Dangerous Than ISIS and al-Qaeda.

PAULA BOLYARD: We’ve Got the Deep State on the Run. Here’s What Needs to Happen Next.

DON’T GET COCKY — A CORNERED RAT IS DANGEROUS: Deep State Burns Its Bridges to Get Trump—and Now It’s Fighting for Its Life.

WHAT TRUMP MIGHT HAVE DONE TO THE DEEP STATE: Jeffrey Tucker reminds that, while it’s long forgotten now, former President Donald Trump signed an executive order — 13957 on Oct. 21, 2020 — late in his tenure that would have taken a significant step toward bringing the permanent bureaucracy under control.

Biden, of course, reversed the order shortly after being sworn-in as Trump’s successor. Having had a small part in bringing about the Reagan Revolution’s partially successful reforms of the federal personnel system, I agree Trump’s EO could have made a huge difference. Coulda-woulda-shoulda.

I suspect a President DeSantis would resurrect something quite similar, but nothing short of a remarkably powerful, durable and united political will in both the White House and the Congress will be able to bring it to fruition.

WHEN CORPORATIONS ARE AN ARM OF THE STATE: Whistleblower Docs Reveal Deep State Desire to Deputize Big Tech as Speech Police.

BEHOLD MY SHOCKED FACE:  Secretary Hillary Clinton and the Deep State: A RICO Criminal Conspiracy.

MORE EVIDENCE RUSSIAGATE WAS ‘DEEP STATE’ INVENTION: Margot Cleveland has been one of the handful of journalists who have consistently from the beginning of the Russiagate scandal stayed on top of this increasingly unbelievable scandal.

Today in The Federalist, Cleveland points out evidence CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that claimed Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was itself “easily spoofed” by others connected to the plot to frame Donald Trump.

“Concerns over CrowdStrike’s analysis reemerged after Special Counsel John Durham indicted former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann for allegedly lying to FBI General Counsel James Baker. That indictment and other documents filed in the Sussmann criminal case revealed that cyber-security experts assisted tech executive Rodney Joffe in crafting deceptive data and white papers to create the false appearance of a secret communication network between Trump and the Russian-based Alfa Bank. Sussmann then fed this ‘intel’ to the CIA and FBI.

“After the election, Sussmann also provided the CIA with deceptively cherry-picked data to suggest a connection between Trump or his transition team and Russians, using cyber-tracking of a Russian Yota cell phone. To compile both the Alfa Bank and Yota phone hoaxes, according to the indictment, Joffe exploited proprietary information he had access to because of his positions in various tech companies. More troubling still was the revelation that Joffe used sensitive data from the Executive Office of the President in his attempt to frame Trump.”

There is more, much, much more to come.

IT’S AS IF TWITTER WAS A VITAL TOOL OF THE DEEP STATE/MEDIA ALLIANCE:

ASHLI BABBITT, ROSANNE BOYLAND, AND VICTORIA WHITE:  All victims of the Deep State and the corruption of our government.

Marxists kill.

Justice for Ashli Babbit and Rosanne Boyland. #SAYTHEIRNAMES.

NOT UNLESS THE DEEP STATE TELLS THEM TO: Erik Wemple: Are the sites who reported false information about the Steele dossier going to correct the record?

OPEN UP THE DEEP STATE TO SCRUTINY: Justices Gorsuch & Sotomayor Dissenting from Refusal to Hear Case About Public Access to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Opinions. “This case presents questions about the right of public access to Article III judicial proceedings of grave national importance. Maybe even more fundamentally, this case involves a governmental challenge to the power of this Court to review the work of Article III judges in a subordinate court. If these matters are not worthy of our time, what is?”

This will have some people speculating about the susceptibility of justices to blackmail by these agencies. Which is ironic, since Chief Justice Roberts seems to see protecting the Supreme Court’s legitimacy as his special role.