George Rebane

In a republic the only government oversight the people have is through their elected representatives, and that is necessarily political.

The 2feb18 release of the Nunes memo underscores a serious concern that has arisen among most Americans since the Obama era national elections, and now heightened by the suspicious goings on during and after the 2016 presidential campaign and election.  Major federal agencies such as the IRS, EPA, VA, NLRB, CFPB, FBI, and DoJ have all been exposed as behaving in the interest of its bureaucrat managers, and against the interests of Americans whom they were established to serve.  It is not necessary to go through the litany of the specific corruptions both revealed, alleged, and buried.  Anyone can resurrect them by just typing in the agency’s initials along with ‘corruption’ to get a laundry list of historical and current malfeasances.

The barely visible and totally invisible machinations of the federal departments we now label as happening in the ‘Deep State’.  And most Americans understand from the news and government reports that the Deep State may best be viewed as the secretive and mostly hidden fourth branch of government that is nowhere called for in our founding documents, but, putatively under the President, is supposed to implement the laws, regulations, executive orders, and rulings handed down from the three constitutional federal government arms.  Of the three, Congress has the additional job of oversight, to make sure that these bureaus, departments, and agencies are acting according to the intent and prescriptions of their enabling legislation.

One can argue that the Deep State has always been with us, because it comes alive naturally when growing organizations spawn departments whose continued existence, growth, and influence does not depend on the quality of service they provide their designated clients.  But its existence becomes toxic when it comes to be used as a tool for meting out rewards and punishments to satisfy the needs of their sponsors.  In government these sponsors are its politically controlled branches and sub-branches – e.g. Congress and its various committees.

Before the days of radically polarized political parties, oversight of the Deep State had a chance of working because its operating units had a more unified direction, and operating according to its rule book was the safest route for Deep State managers – both parties wanted more or less of the same future for the country.  Such a common vision has now been eroding for the last fifty years, and today our political factions have publicly declared their diametrically opposite futures for America.  As political scientists and historians have concluded, today the two major parties are really in mortal combat, each seeking advantage to completely destroy their opponent.

With this mindset, the party in power naturally resorts to weaponizing the Deep State against the party out of power.  In this enterprise the Left has had a distinct and demonstrated advantage, since its goal is to establish a national collective based on central planning and control by the elites, which fosters the sustenance and growth of government as embodied in the components of its Deep State.  In short, the Deep State is already staffed and operating with the mindset that fosters one party’s objectives and modus operandi.

It is then not a large step from the installation of people such as Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, John Koskinen,  … under whom the likes of ‘career managers’ like James Comey, Lois Lerner, Bruce Ohr, and Andrew McCabe were inspired to initiate and carry out actions that were definitely in the agenda-driven and often intentionally illegal service of their political betters.

When the inevitable scandals do emerge and there is opportunity to shed light and hold accountable those responsible, then it is always the political beneficiaries of the Deep State who leap to the defense and seek to seal the shutters.  They use scurrilous exhortations against the truth seekers, such as transforming the investigation of the rotten managements into unwarranted attacks against the department’s “thousands of hardworking men and women”, when there is no intent or evidence of the investigation or its reporting to impugn their labors.  Such responses are nothing short of political lies intended to pluck the heartstrings of the ignorant and unread.  This kind of lie is often accompanied by more direct and easily detectable lies.  In the Nunes memo case, some opponents of its release told the nation that the memo’s contents would reveal highly secret sources and methods which would compromise our nation’s security.  As is now evident even for the fourth-grade level reader, the memo contains no such revelations.

The fundamental arguments for the release of sanitized reports of investigations into the corrupt activities of the Deep State all rest on the necessary prerequisite, that if we as a people are to govern ourselves, in the manner of The Great Experiment bequeathed by our Founders, then we must see things for ourselves to the maximum extent possible.  And for the part that prudent maintenance of national security – and only national security – requires, then there we must trust the reports and decisions of our elected representatives since we are not a democracy with oversight by the national committee of the whole.

My representatives argued persuasively for the release of this memo to shed light on some of the most recent perversions of the Deep State, and I am grateful that they had the courage to follow through and give us the appropriate information.  I only trust that this is not the only burst of sanitizing sunshine that we see during the coming months, because clearly there is more, much more.

[3feb18 update]  A better example of Deep State’s rogue roots than Hillary’s corrupt international escapades is hard to find.  And even there we must limit our attention to only one of her many – space and time don’t allow a full discussion that is better suited for a large volume or perhaps an anthology.  Here I want us to focus on her uranium dealings with Russia as a real example of collusion corrosive to our nation.  Investigative journalist Anne Williamson has assembled this story – ‘Beyond Imagination: Uranium One’ – in the Jan2018 issue of Chronicles.  I suggest reading it to get a better perspective on our Deep State’s international tentacles, and what yet could and should come out from both Mueller’s investigative wanderings, and in subsequent House Intelligence Committee memos.