Mike Lofgren, a congressional staff member for 28 years, joins Bill Moyers to talk about what he calls Washington’s “Deep State,” in which elected and unelected figures collude to protect and serve powerful vested interests. “It is how we had deregulation, financialization of the economy, the Wall Street bust, the erosion or our civil liberties and perpetual war,” Lofgren tells Moyers.
Transcript
this week on Moyers & Company longtime insider Mike Lofgren what he calls the big story of our times the deep state it is I would save the red thread that runs through the history of the last three decades it’s how we had deregulation financialization of the economy The Wall Street bust the erosion of our civil liberties and perpetual war funding is provided by and gumowitz encouraging the renewal of democracy Carnegie Corporation of New York celebrating 100 years of philanthropy and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world the Ford Foundation working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide the Herb Alpert foundation supporting organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation committed to building a more just verdant and peaceful world more information at macfound.org Park foundation dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues the Kohlberg foundation barbra jean– Fleischman and by our sole corporate sponsor mutual of America designing customized individual and group retirement products that’s why we’re your retirement company welcome if you’ve read the Espionage novels of john lecarre a you know that no other writer today has so brilliantly evoked the subterranean workings of government perhaps because he himself was once a British spy liquor a has a name for that invisible labyrinth of power he calls it the deep state and now an American you’re about to meet in this broadcast has seized on that concept to describe the forces he says are controlling our government no matter the party in power but Mike Lofgren ZnO intelligence agent although he had a top-secret security clearance he’s a numbers man a congressional staff member for 28 years with the powerful House and Senate budget committees over the years as he crunched those numbers he realized they didn’t add up in said they led him to America’s own deep state where elected and unelected figures collude to protect and serve powerful vested interests Mike Lofgren was so disgusted he not only left Capitol Hill he left the Republican Party and wrote this book the party is over how Republicans went crazy Democrats became useless and the middle class got shafted now at our request and exclusively for billmoyers.com he is written anatomy of the deep state you’ll want to read it as soon as we finish this conversation Mike Lofgren welcome good to be here again but this is a difficult subject to talk about it would be easier if it were a conspiracy you’re describing but that’s not the case is it no I’m not a conspiracy theorist of this is not some cabal that was hatched in the dark of night this is something that hides in plain sight it’s something we know about but we can’t connect the dots or most people don’t connect the dots it’s kind of a natural evolution when so much money and political control is at stake in the most powerful country in the world this has evolved over time and you call it the real power in the country correct it is a hybrid of corporate America and the national security state everyone knows what the military-industrial complex is since Eisenhower talked about it in his farewell address we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence whether sought or unsought by the military-industrial complex the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist we must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes everyone knows Wall Street and its depredations everyone knows how corporate America acts they’re both about the same thing they’re both about money sucking as much money out of the country as they can and they’re about control corporate control and political control you said this in your judgment is the big story of our time it is the big story of our time it is I would say the red thread that runs through the history of the last three decades it’s how we had deregulation financialization of the economy the Wall Street bust the erosion of our civil liberties and perpetual war you write that the secret and unaccountable deep state floats freely above the gridlock between both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is the paradox of American government in the 21st century well that’s just the thing the common narrative in the last five years and on a superficial level it’s right is that government is broken it’s dysfunctional its gridlocked well that’s true and that is the visible government the constitutional government we learn about in civics 101 and it is gridlocked but somehow Obama can go into Libya he can assassinate US citizens he can collect all our phone records without a by-your-leave from anyone um he can even bring down a jet carrying a president of a sovereign country without asking anyone’s permission and no one seems to connect the two the failure of our visible constitutional state and this other government that operates according to no constitutional rules or any constraint by the governed you go on to say though that it’s not just the executive branch that is the heart of this that is just one of the several constituencies that make up what you called the deep state well it’s all the national security functions of the government it’s the Pentagon its homeland security it’s the State Department it’s also Treasury because they have a kind of symbiotic relationship with Wall Street but one thing they control the flow of money absolutely and that’s why there’s such a flow not only of money but of personnel between Wall Street and the Treasury Department there’s other aspects of government there’s a portion of the judiciary a small portion of the judiciary the so called Foreign Intelligence Surveillance courts most of Congress doesn’t even know how they operate talk a little bit more about the Nexus the connection between the national security state and Wall Street because this is a theme that runs through your essay do you know that about 30 blocks north of here there is a restaurant that will sell you a truffle for ninety five thousand dollars also in new york christie’s sold at auction a painting by francis bacon for a hundred and forty two million now a parallel situation with the national security state the NSA spent 1.7 billion dollars to build a facility in Utah that will collect one yottabyte of information that’s as much information as has ever been written in the history of the world it costs four hundred dollars by the time the Pentagon finishes paying contractors to haul one gallon of gasoline into Afghanistan that’s a real extravagant amount of money in both cases of the national security state and the corporate state they are sucking money out of the economy as our infrastructure collapses we have a tinkertoy power grid that goes out every time there’s inclement weather tens of millions of people are on food stamps we incarcerate more people than China an authoritarian state with four times our popular elation does anyone see the disparity between this extravagance for the deep state and the penury that is being forced on the rest of the country that isn’t a natural evolution something made it happen we’re having a situation where the deep state is essentially out of control it’s unconstrained since 9/11 we have built the equivalent of three Pentagon’s around the DC metropolitan area holding defense contractors intelligence contractors and government civilians involved in the military-industrial complex there are over 400,000 contractors private citizens who have top-secret security clearances and they are heart and soul of the of the deep state as you describe it absolutely it being privatized which means the power shifts from accountable officials to unaccountable in contractors about 70% of the intelligence budget goes to contracts how new is this I mean back in 2010 the Washington Post published a stunning investigation of what the editors called top secret America I mean we have known about this have we not yes we know about this but the intelligence functions of the government are too important to outsource in the manner we have it’s something where absolute discretion is needed and absolute trust that they are not violating civil liberties and to put this kind of a burden if you will on private contract employees is I think become a great disservice you say that that you came to question this it took you a while it was a gradual enlightenment that took place you were dealing with big numbers and particular details in the budgets that all of these agencies were sending to you when you on Capitol Hill right you were seeing the number solution you what works what was happening to the numbers at the end of 2001 is we appropriated a lot of money and it didn’t seem to be going to Afghanistan the proximate source of the 911 attacks it seemed to be going to the Persian Gulf region and I said what’s going on here Saddam Hussein didn’t bring down the Twin Towers so the little light went on and I began to sort of disenchant myself from the normal group think that tends to take over in any organization group think at some point in your essay you talk about how group think drives the deep state it absolutely does just as it tends to drive any bureaucratic organization what do you mean by groupthink well the psychologist Irving Janis called it groupthink it’s a kind of assimilation of the views of your superiors and your peers it’s becoming a yes-man and in many respects it’s an unconscious thing I remember what Upton Sinclair once said it’s difficult to get a man to understand something when this salary depends on him not understanding it that is certainly a part of it you described Washington as clearly and obviously the headquarters of a deep state but talk about some of some of the others who are in the game Wall Street is perhaps the ultimate backstop to the whole operation because they generates so much money that they can provide second careers for a lot of the government operatives they’re going to make more money than they ever dreamed they would on Wall Street and I think a good example of that is the most celebrated soldier of the last decade David Petraeus what did he do when he retired he went to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts a Wall Street buyout firm with 90 billion in assets under management you described him as a kind of avatar of the deep state he is in a way because he now represents both ends of it we see now our present-day Cincinnatus did not pick up the plow when he lay down the sword Cincinnatus was the roman who left his farm to become a general in the war when the war was over he went back to be a farmer that doesn’t happen today no it doesn’t the vast majority of generals seem to end up on the boards of defense contractors talk a little bit about what you call this strange relationship between Silicon Valley and the government and how it fits into the deep state well the National Security Agency could not do what it does the CIA could not do what it does without Silicon Valley now Silicon Valley unlike the defense contractors mostly sells to private individuals and to companies it’s not a big government vendor however its services are necessary and de facto they have become a part of the NSA’s operations I’m sure the CEOs of some of these companies try to obscure the fact that this has mostly been voluntary for many years Ameena surveillance the surveillance the gathering of information about unknowing citizens absolute or commercial purposes though precisely they’ve done it themselves and they’ve assisted the NSA through a FISA Court order for an intelligence or an Intelligence Surveillance Act so this has been going on for quite a while yet now like inspector Reno they are shocked shocked to find out but I think their main shock is that they’re now starting to lose market share in foreign countries these these moguls as you call them pass themselves off as libertarians who they make a big pretence about being libertarians and believing in the rugged individualism and so forth but they’ve been every bit as intrusive as the NSA has been in terms of collecting your data for commercial purposes rather than so-called national security purposes but they’re in it just as heavily as the NSA is and they somehow managed to get the intellectual property laws rigged so that you are theoretically subject to a fine up to five hundred thousand dollars for jailbreaking your phone to me which means if you don’t like the carrier on your phone that the manufacturer dictates you shall have and you change it without authorization you don’t have the right to something you bought could this symbiotic and actual relationship between Silicon Valley and the government reflecting the deep state explain the indulgence Washington has shown Silicon Valley Oh matters of intellectual property absolutely people no longer necessarily own their property that they buy if they’re buying it from Silicon Valley they simply have a kind of lease on it if as you write the ideologies of the deep state is not democrat or republican not left or right what is it it’s an ideology I just don’t think we’ve named it it’s a kind of corporatism now the actors in this drama tend to steer clear of social issues they pretend to be merrily neutral servants of the state giving the best advice possible on national security or financial matters but they hold it very deep ideology of the Washington Consensus at home which is deregulation outsourcing deindustrialization and financialization and they believe in American exceptionalism abroad which is boots on the ground everywhere it’s our right to meddle everywhere in the world and the result of that is perpetual war you see it is shadowy and more ill-defined more ill-defined than what it’s more ill-defined than simply saying Wall Street or saying the military-industrial complex or saying Silicon Valley or the corporations it’s a symbiosis of all of the above here’s your summing up quote as long as appropriations bills get passed on time promotion lists get confirmed black or secret budgets get rubber-stamped special tax subsidies for certain corporations are approved without controversy as long as too many awkward questions are not asked the gears of the hybrid state will mesh noiselessly is that the ideology that is a government within a government that operates off the visible government and operates off the taxpayers but it doesn’t seem to be constrained in a constitutional sense by the government is there a solution to the way the system works in I think we’re starting to see some discord in the ideology of the factions that make up the deep state we’re seeing Silicon Valley jumps ship they are starting protests against the NSA we’re seeing the Tea Party bailing out against the deep state they may be wrong on many economic issues but I don’t think they’re necessarily wrong on this one so the public could be doing wise I think they are there’s a much more vivid debate going on in the country about surveillance ever since the revelations by Edward Snowden Mike Lofgren thank you very much for being with me thanks to the journalist Lee Fang we have another revelation into how the deep state enterprise works writing for the Republic report a nonpartisan nonprofit that investigates money in politics he takes up that controversial trade deal called the trans-pacific partnership that President Obama is trying to push through Congress with minimum debate and no amendments controversial because some of its provisions reportedly enable corporate power to trump representative government even go around domestic courts and local laws one is said to prevent governments from enacting safeguards against another bank crisis another to empower corporations to sue governments for compensation if save environmental protections or regulations on tobacco and drugs interfered with future profits because of the secrecy we don’t know everything that’s in the draft agreement senator Elizabeth Warren calls it a chance for these banks to get something done quietly out of sight that they could not accomplish in a public place with the cameras rolling and the lights on which brings us to two officials chosen by President Obama to lead those trade negotiations leafing reports that they received multi-million dollar bonuses as they left giant financial firms to join the government Bank of America gave this man Stephan Selig more than nine million dollars in bonus pay as he was nominated to become the Undersecretary of Commerce for international trade and this man Michael Froman got over four million dollars when he left Citigroup to become the current US Trade Representative now both are no doubt honorable men they are all honorable men but when push comes to shove and the financial interest of huge corporations are on the table we can only hope they will act as independent men not faithful servants of the deep state but given the secrecy we may never know according to Lee Fang many large corporations with a strong incentive to influence public policy give executives bonuses and other incentive pay they take jobs within the government among them Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley JP Morgan Chase the Blackstone Group Fannie Mae Northern Trust Citigroup even provides an executive contract that Awards additional retirement pay upon leaving to take a full-time high-level position with the US government or regulatory body I’m not making this up you get a bigger incentive if you leave Wall Street to go regulate Wall Street so it is the Fox is groomed for the chicken coop and the deep state grows coming up on Moyers & Company a powerful new book breaks the code of dog-whistle politics dog-whistle politics doesn’t come out of animus at all it doesn’t come out of some desire to hurt minorities it comes out of a desire to win votes and in that sense I want to start using the term strategic racism it’s racism as a strategy it’s cold it’s calculating it’s considered it’s the decision to achieve one’s own ends here winning votes by stirring racial animosity and and here’s a hard difficult truth most racists are good people they’re not sick they’re not ruled by anger or raw emotion or hatred they are complicated people reared in complicated societies they’re fully capable of generosity of empathy of real kindness but because of the idea systems in which they are reared they’re also capable of dehumanizing others and occasionally of brutal violence at our website billmoyers.com remember to read the complete text of my Clough goons essay anatomy of the deep state and then tell us what you think I’ll see you don’t wait a week to get more moyers visit billmoyers.com for exclusive blogs funding is provided by and gumowitz encouraging the renewal of democracy Carnegie Corporation of New York celebrating 100 years of philanthropy and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world the Ford Foundation working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide the Herb Alpert foundation supporting organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation committed to building a more just verdant and peaceful world more information at macfound.org Park foundation dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues the Kohlberg foundation barbra jean– Fleischman and by our sole corporate sponsor mutual of America designing customized individual and group retirement products that’s why