Prof. Beverly gage, prof. Dirk bonker and prof. 2027488000. Im going to set the tone with a few minutes of introductory remarks and introduce each panelist individually, 15 or 20 minutes apiece and then we will open the floor to discussion. We are here today to talk about the origins and effect that we call the deep state and its important to say at the outset what historians always like to say. This is not really new. Today we call it the deep state but in early areas activists spoke about the washington establishment, the power elite, the system, and the military Industrial Complex. Even though those terms very, they usually share a lot in common. The arguments that typically accompany these are almost always conspiratorial. They almost always talk about a cabal within the government working in secret to drive policy toward their own ends, their own ends, not the common good. The actual people seem to range all over the map depending on the politics. They can be the Intelligence Agency, the National Security council, the fossil fuel companies or unspecified elite. They almost always are pursuing some sort of effort that undermines the government. The core message over and over again is that this is either illegitimate itself, its making the government illegitimate or it is in cahoots with unelected forces and shadowy networks are bad actors must be opposed and uncovered for the nation to return to its true course. One of the things ive found interesting is that arguments span the political divide. In this america you can find common usage of the deep state on both sides. Today we hear mostly about it from pres. Trump and his allies in the Republican Party who want to cast doubts on the conduct of Law Enforcement agencies, the left be a fbi, judges, at times the cia but it was not too long ago when leftwing critics were alleging there is a deep state alliance between say halliburton the Oil Companies in the white house ostensibly driving policy. So where do these terms come from their earlier analogs . Did they come from the United States . Perhaps the most important question even more important than asking where they came from is where they going and what deeper cultural currents are empowering and propelling these arguments forward giving them force . Historians like to look for underlying structure for specific events or key arguments. What conditions exist over time that produce a common response even if it has different names in different places . We have three historians who will speak for about 15 minutes each and then we will open the floor to the audience and have a roundtable discussion on the deep state. Our first panelist is Michael J Allen associate professor of history at northwestern where he researches history memory and politics of american empire in the 21st century. He is the author of until the last man came home, pows, mias in the unending vietnam war exporting the legacies of american defeat in us politics and diplomacy, and i want to add after teaching it for the first time, it taught me an enormous amount of the strange legacies of the flights that i see in every cemetery improved i go through. Thank you for that book. Michael is currently working on a book called new politics, the imperial presidency, the pragmatic left and the problem with Democratic Power 19831981 which is the first study of how debate altered the very structure and terms of the post world war ii us politics and Foreign Policy. Michael will start us off on how legacies from distrust from the cold war era on the deep state today. I would like to start thinking erin for stepping in. The original chair and commentator was unable to be here due to a family emergency that called him away and erin was generous enough to join us today. Im sure he will have many valuable insights to add later. Let me get started so that we have plenty of time to have that conversation. My task is in part to lay out what the current conversation about the deep state is in to talk a little bit bit about american thinking of this problem of state power particularly in the postwar edward world war ii era and how it led us to this moment. An army of bureaucrats working to protect obama. Retired congressman jason defined his subjects as the permanent class of democrats republicans, federal bureaucrats and entrench trying to weapon is everything in their power to destroy president pres. Trump. Aided by endorsements, his exposi debuted at number seven on the New York Times bestseller list where it joined the russian hoax, the scheme to clear Hillary Clinton and frame donald trump were spent 10 news 10 years, in the case against the antitrust conspiracy which also debuted at number one and spent 13 weeks on the list. For those of you with the handout you can see these are just three of the many books that have been published by supporters, fox news analysts and the like over the past 18 months or so. These titles which were on the New York Times best seller list at the same time improved on killing the deep state and the fight to save president trump. Like other operatives and supporters who produce such books you have the distinction of battling the deep state be on the page having been called upon, called before a grand jury to testify to his role in coordinating dealings with wikileaks about his plans to push hacked emails from the service to the public in 2016 elections. Having argued in print that the Russian Investigation was a deep state plan engineered by operatives to put the president under investigation, they could not have been surprised when agents knocked on his door with subpoenas to testify which he called line testimony if thats what it takes. Special counselor Robert Mueller was quote a deep state operative who had served both the bush and obama administrations as the atty. Gen. From 20012013. He was director of the fbi during those 12 years, not atty. Gen. Is an error that given the conspiracy that he conjures in his work which included quote this pages on the handout and you may want to take a look at it, but which included quote the cia, nsa and other intelligence agencies that maintain a commitment to a globalist new world order in cooperation with the federal reserve, the comptroller of the currency as well as Law Enforcement agencies including the fbi and the doj, to allow Clandestine Operations including illicit drug dealing and supplying weapons to terrorist groups that further the role of the global elite. And who also control the new United Nations the global. Lest we dismiss this long cost of care is as a circus sideshow with little relevance to craft it must be emphasized how central these ideas are for natural Foreign Policy and International Relations at the present moment. The credit engage and are taken seriously by president s top advisers and avid supporters and who motivated consequential government actions as the 2017 firing of james call me. Atty. Gen. William barr creates the of russian meddling in the 2016 election as well as recent news as the us Cyber Command placing malware inside Computers Controlling russian power grid without notifying the president for fear he may countermand the operation or disclose it to russian officials given his distrust of National Security agencies particularly on issues pertaining to russia and Cyber Security but these are only the tip of the iceberg. The deep state is how trump and those around him describe a broader system of invisible and often unaccountable power they see is concentrated in washington but extending to new york paris and berlin with offices in london and park. And includes elements of military and financial might but also includes leading media and intelligence that allegedly dominate the Global Economy and politics. Us president s come and go, compared Political Parties lose an election and when the next but the deep state goes on. It is a state within a state, what trump calls the swamp or at other times, the elites. In march 2018 pole showed 27 of americans had heard of the deep state or will were familiar with that creature. Show that three quarters of americans believed their way a quote of unelected officials who secretly manipulate or direct National Policy. Brought distrust of such people helps make trump hesitant. Trumps war with them is fundamental to all he does and all he represents from his hatred of the press to his disdain for traditional allies and security and trade agreements. To his embrace of rogue regimes to open can count for diplomacy or even civility. In his estimation the powers that be have bullied bankrupted and belittled his people for too long and his presidency represents their comeuppance. However were docked this is a systemic view of power in america and the world and helps to explain why he has upended traditional alliances and expectations in National Security politics. Republicans have prided themselves on their close ties to armed forces and National Security agencies while blasting democrats on defense. Spending lavishly on defense and repeatedly authorizing use of force, both bill clinton and barack obama have it times the case to republican opponents by regularly up pointing republicans as secretary of defense and naming holdovers to head the fbi and cia. The cia which locates the center of an extra constitutional deep state controlling both Political Parties. This tendency to follow in republican footsteps on display in his decision to be keep the secretary of defense despite his services to george bush senior and his oversight of juniors wars in iraq and afghanistan along with obamas decision to keep Robert Mueller on at the fbi is partly responsible for the idea of a permanent security establishment in the present moment. It is one that a congressional staffer put it in his 2016 book, and hope and change really change anything . This is not just a question that he asked. Its a question that sarah palin asked when she said how is that hoping changing thing working out for you . Given this history it is a surprise to see a republican president embroiled in such conflict with National Security bureaucracy including james call me who trump fired soon after taking office, gen. James matus who resigned in protest over the disdain of the president by allies and alliances, and brennan who trump threatened to strip of his acutely thats the clearance. The hostility towards this men surprised washington more than anyone after taking to twitter to delaying what trump called and intelligence briefing on the socalled russian hacking suggestion that perhaps more time was needed to build a case. Chuck schumer to to invest in this and a msnbc to warn him. You take on the Intelligence Community they have six ways on sunday to get back with you. Two months after the report trump remains on valid by his rules and democrats seem to have no plan for bringing him to heal beyond hoping he will text if i testify on capitol hill in ways they have proved incapable of doing themselves which underscores the question of who really rules washington . Elected officials or washington bureaucrats . His battle with the bureaucracy have also called into question pieties that have sustained policy since wilson. On super bowl sunday jump answer critics who accused him of overly close ties to Vladimir Putin who illegally invaded the crimea and is thought to have murdered clinical opponents saying you think our country is so innocent . Our country does plenty of killing. Such a frank admission caused the ranking democrat to sputter this is an extra inexplicably bizarre. Does he not see the damage he does with comments like that . Most assuredly he does but he calculates that the damage is merely to insiders who accrue and keep our by denying dirty secrets in order to better see if his people the american deep state which is the sole scholarly work on the subject although we may want to debate just how scholarly it is. Deep state deceptions are quote not designed to deceive the enemies of america but first and foremost to deceive americans conditioning them to the accept authority measures at home and abroad. He and his inhouse intellectuals, steve bannon, sean hannity and whose work includes the fact that he has a phd are teaching voters to think in these terms which were once reserved for graduate seminars via his only reality show theatrics. These ideas predate trump and exist independently. They explain his rise more than his rise explains them. The deep make sense. It accounts for the pronounced and growing economic inequality and helps to explain how and why the privileged and powerful profited handsomely despite failures of 9 11, the iraq war and the Global Financial crisis even as everyone else suffered. Second, explain the bifurcated structure of power where the government is capable of sustaining endless wars and bailing out banks too big to fail but seem unable to address basic needs of an ash of ash americans. And the political movements that they sent to washington to affect change have found themselves stymied at every turn to find this religion illegitimate and unamerican by insiders. Each of these confronted liberals before they fueled trump rallies. All were present at the quote creation of the National Security state and have existed alongside the state and the permanent war that the United States entered into a 1941. To find conservative responses to managerial liberalism in the 1930s and 40s including a position to an enlarged military establishment that he and his successor helps create which senators like taft warn put america on a slippery slope. His successors made peace with the state, liberals came to expect that the consensus had substituted the pursuit of profit and power for the promise of social democracy. Argued American Power had expanded and become concentrated among a small country of executive Decision Makers who he called the ones who decide who operated according to what he called a military definition of reality reinforced through what he called administrative routines in intimate groups and accessible to the public. Rather than paint this in economic terms as a progressive historian might he emphasized the interlocking and overlapping nature of corporate and state power. In washington as well as at west point here get a small group of men gained power through appointment rather than elections with unified authority unchallenged in congress were his quote differences between the parties so far as National Issues are concerned are very narrow and very mixed up. Contemporaries coined the phrase the establishment antecedent to the deep state to describe the power elite. Interestingly conservative claim to be the first to use the word establishment in a speech in 1956 admitting the audience was confused by his meeting. But he borrowed the term from henry fairly who used it in 1955 to refer to quote the home matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised exercise. A web of associations sowed dents and assumptions so deep he said they do not need to be articulated. He himself referred to what he called the executive establishment, the military establishment, the permanent war establishment and the National Establishment throughout his book. The establishment is a general term for those who hold the principal measure of power irrespective of what administration occupies the white house. The perfect establishment figure was quote the republican called to service in a Democratic Administration or vice versa. There were, he quipped, pivotal figures who made possible the cold war consensus. For contemporary revisionist busy redefining Us Diplomatic history to emphasize continuity and consensus rather than conflict and rupture there was something inherently suspect about shape shifters who one power not by winning arguments but by forging consensus behind closed doors. These are a generation of left scholars and activists who learn to scrutinize washingtons best and brightest to understand why leaders embarked on duplicitous disasters in cuba i run chile and the Watergate Complex in the 60s and 70s. Liberals blamed figures like george bundy the republican Henry Stimson turned harvard dean who led to could democratic residents to disaster in vietnam as their National Security advisor while some blamed Henry Kissinger who worked in the white house before joining the Nixon Administration the convergence between the republican and democratic parties to eliminate foreignpolicy from political and campaigns. Both of these agree the only way to fix the broken system of missed governance and establish greater democracy in america was to abolish the Political Party stalemate in favor of what sts called 2 genuine parties centered around issues and essential values. Both sides set out to do just that. The left liberal reformers who stripped democrats of power by intraparty reforms while rockefeller and conservatives perched rockefeller republicans from their ranks backed up by congressional liberals who launched a decad