Who Really Runs America?

Who Really Runs America?
(MyImages - Micha/Shutterstock)
Jeffrey A. Tucker
4/29/2024
Updated:
5/3/2024
0:00
Commentary

We’ve all surely had dark thoughts that the CIA is really running the United States, including many media venues. Maybe that’s been true for decades, and we just didn’t know it. If so, let’s just say that it would explain a tremendous amount of what has otherwise been clouded in secrecy.

How would this be possible? Knowledge is power, and secret knowledge is full control. Even fake knowledge means power and control, as we found out in the phony Russiagate investigation early in President Donald Trump’s term. They hounded the new administration for years under a completely fake scenario in which Russia somehow got President Trump elected.

Yes, that was an intelligence operation all along, one directly designed to overthrow an election, a “color revolution” on our own soil.

How dare an agency not elected by the people and evading oversight and public accountability put itself ahead of the Constitution and the rule of law? It has been going on for many decades as the agencies have gained ever more power, even to the point of forcing a full lockdown of the United States and even the world under a false pretense.

None of this is verifiable precisely because of the secrecy involved. It’s not as if the intelligence community is going to send out a press release: “Democracy in America is an illusion. We know because we control nearly everything, plus we aspire to control even more.”

The incredulous among us will shoot back: Look at what you are saying! Your conspiracy theory is non-falsifiable. The less evidence you have for it, the more you believe it. How in the world can we argue with you? Your position is not really plausible, but there is nothing we can do to convince you otherwise.

Let’s grant the point. Still, let’s not dismiss the theory completely. Based on a New York Times piece that appeared last week, it contains more than a grain of truth. The article is titled “Campaign Puts Trump and the Spy Agencies on a Collision Course.”

“Even as president, Donald J. Trump flaunted his animosity for intelligence officials, portraying them as part of a politicized ‘deep state’ out to get him,” the article reads. “And since he left office, that distrust has grown into outright hostility, with potentially serious implications for national security should he be elected again.”

Ok, let’s be clear. If the intelligence community led by the CIA is not the “deep state,” what is?

Further, it has been proven many times over that the deep state is in fact out to get him. This is not even controversial. Indeed, there is no reason for these journalists to write the above as if President Trump is somehow consumed by some kind of baseless paranoia.

Let’s keep going here.

“Trump is now on a possible collision course with the intelligence community. ... The result is a complicated and possibly destabilizing situation the United States has never seen before: deep-seated suspicion and disdain on the part of a former and perhaps future president toward the very people he would be relying on for the most sensitive information he would need to perform his role if elected again,” the article reads.

Wait just a moment. You are telling us that all previous presidents have had a happy relationship with the CIA? That’s rather interesting to know. And deeply troubling too, since the CIA has been managing regime change the world over for a very long time and is now directly involved in U.S. politics at the most intimate level.

Any president worth his salt should absolutely have a hostile relationship with such an agency, if only to establish clear civilian control over the government, without which it’s not possible to say that we live in a constitutional republic.

And now, according to the NY Times, we have one seeking the presidency who does not defer to the agency and this is destabilizing and deeply problematic. Who does that suggest really rules this country?

Is the NY Times itself guilty of the most extreme conspiracy theory imaginable, or is it just stating facts as we know them? I’m going to guess that it is the latter. In this case, every single American should be deeply alarmed.

Crazy huh? As for the phrase “never seen before,” we have to push back. What about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, and Calvin Coolidge? They were all previous presidents, according to the history books that people once read.

There was no CIA back then. If you doubt this, I’m pretty sure that your favorite AI engine will confirm it.

One must suppose that when the NY Times says “never seen before,” it means in the post-war period. And that very well might be true. John F. Kennedy defied them. We know that for certain. The mysteries surrounding his murder won’t be solved fully until we get the documents. But the consensus is growing that this murder was really a coup by the CIA, a message sent as a lesson to every successor in that office.

Think of that: We live in a country today where most people readily admit that the CIA probably killed the president. Amazing.

It’s intriguing to know at this late date that the Watergate “scandal” was not what it appeared to be, namely an intrepid media holding government to account. Even astute observers at the time believed the mainstream narrative. Now we have plenty of evidence that this too was nothing but a deep state attack on a president who had lost patience with it and provoked another coup.

All credit to my brilliant father who speculated along these lines at the time. I was very young with only the vaguest clue about what was happening. But I recall very well that he was convinced that Richard Nixon was set up in a trap and unfairly hounded out of office not for the bad things he was doing but for standing up to the deep state.

If my own father, not a particularly political person, knew this for certain at the time, this must have been a strong perception even then.

You hear the rap that these agencies—the CIA is one, but there are many adjacent others—are not allowed by law to intervene in domestic politics. At this point and after so much experience, this comes across to me like something of a joke. We know from vast evidence and personal testimony that the CIA has been manipulating political figures, narratives, and outcomes for a very long time.

How involved is the CIA in journalism today? Well, you might suppose that as a traditionally liberal paper, the NY Times itself would be highly skeptical of the CIA. But these days, they have published a long string of aggressively defensive articles with titles such as “It Turns Out that the Deep State Is Awesome” and “Government Surveillance Keeps Us Safe.” We can add this last piece to the list.

So let’s just say it: The NY Times is CIA. So too are Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Slate, Salon, and many other mainstream publications, including major tech companies such as Google and Microsoft. The tentacles are everywhere and ever more obvious. Operation Mockingbird was just the beginning. The network is everywhere, and the practice of manipulating the news is wholly normalized.

Once you start developing the ability to see the markings, you simply cannot unsee them, which is why people who think and write about this can come across as crackpot crazy after a while.

Have you considered that maybe the crackpots are exactly right? If so, shouldn’t we, at bare minimum, seek to support a presidential candidate with a hostile relationship with the intelligence community?

Indeed, that ought to be a bare minimum standard of qualification. There is simply no way we can restore civilian control of government and constitutional government until this agency can be thoroughly reined in or abolished completely.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press, as well as 10 books in five languages, most recently “Liberty or Lockdown.” He is also the editor of "The Best of Ludwig von Mises." He writes a daily column on economics for The Epoch Times and speaks widely on the topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.