Think this quite important topic are three fantastic historians, all of whom study politics and power in American History. Professor beverly of young university. Professor dirk of duke university. And professor Michael J Allen of northwestern university. Im going to set the stage for with four or five minutes of introductory remarks and will introduce each panelist visually before they speak. Just 15, 20 minutes apiece and then we will open the floor to discussion in this roundtable. So we are here today to talk about the origins and the effects of this thing we call the deep state. It is important to say at the outset what historians always like to say. This is not really new. Today, we call it the deep state. In earlier eras, activists talked about the washington establishment, the power elite, the system, and even the militaryIndustrial Complex. Even though those terms have varied throughout the ages, they usually share a lot in common. So the arguments that typically accompany these terms about the deep state or the washington system, they are almost always conspiratorial. They almost always talk about a cabal within the government that is working in secret to drive policy towards their own ends, the cabals own end, not the good. The people in the deep state seem to range all over the map, depending on the politics of whomever is talking. They can be the intelligence agencies, the cia, the fbi, the military, the National Security council, the bankers, and the globalists, the fossil fuel companies, or unspecified elites. But they almost always have or are pursuing some sort of effort that undermines the government. The message over and over again is that this cabal is either illegitimate itself, it is making the government illegitimate, or it is in cahoots with illegitimate unelected forces, and those bad actors must be opposed and uncovered for the nation to return to its two course. One of the things i always found interesting about it is the arguments really span the political divide in this red and blue state america. You can find common usage of the deep state on both sides. , today we hear today, we are mostly about it from President Trump and his allies in the Republican Party who want to cast out some motivations on the Law Enforcement agency, the fbi, judges, at times the cia. But it was not too long ago when leftwing critics were alleging there was a deep state alliance between, say, halliburton and the Oil Companies and the white house that was ostensibly driving policy in iraq and even afghanistan. So where did these terms come from . What were the earlier analogues . Did they come from the United States . Where they imported from outside the United States . Perhaps the most important question by my light, even more important than asking where they came from is where they are going and what deeper coach will commence our empowering and propelling these arguments forward, giving them force . Historians usually like to look for underlying structure, for specific events or key arguments. What persistent or common conditions exist over time that produce a common response . Even if it has different names and in different places. Basically what we are going to do with our introductory remarks here today. We have three historians here 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. So our first panelist is Michael J Allen. He is associate professor of history at northwestern university, where he researches the history, memory, and politics of american empire in the 20th century. He is the author of until the last man came home pows, mias, and the unending vietnam war, which export the legacies of american defeat in the vietnam war in u. S. Politics and diplomacy. And i just want to add after teaching it this past semester for the first time, it taught me an enormous amount about the strange legacies of the p. O. W. Flags icy in every cemetery and parade i go two. I learned a lot about john mccain and ross perot, too. Thank you for that book. Michael is currently working on a book called new politics, the imperial presidency. The pragmatic leftm and the problem of democratic powe, 1933 to 1981, which offers the first indepth study of how debates sparked by involvement in vietnam altered the very structure and terms of the postworld war ii u. S. Politics and Foreign Policy. So michael is going to start us off with some remarks on how the legacies of distrust from the cold war era actually shape the conversation on the deep state today. Michael . Thank you. I would just like to start by thanking aaron for stepping in. Our original chair and commentator, robert dean, is unable to be here due to a family emergency that call him away. Aaron was generous enough to join us today. And im sure he will have many valuable insights to our conversation later. Let me get started so we have plenty of time to have that conversation. My task here i think is in part to lay out the current conversation about the deep state in the United States and to talk a little bit about american thinking on this problem of state power, particularly in the postworld war ii era, and how it led us to our present moment. In his recent book the deep how would army of bureaucrats protected barack obama and is working to destroy the trump agenda, former chairman of the house mitty on oversight and government reform retired congressman the the subject as a permitted class of democrats, republicans, federal bureaucrats, and entrenched washington, d. C. , and corridor insiders trying to weaponize everything in their power to destroy President Trump. Aided by trucks endorsement over twitter, his ex debuted at number seven on the New York Times best seller list where enjoyed another book, the russia hoax, which debuted at number one on the list and has spent 10 weeks there. And janine. s liars, leakers, and the case against the antitrust conspiracy, which also debut number one and spent 13 weeks on the list. These are just three of the many many books that have been published by trump insiders, supporters, fox news analysts, and the like over the past 18 months or so. These three titles, which were all on the New York Times vessel or list at the same time in the fall of 2018 improved upon the general course hes improving the deep state, the fight to save president from, which spent three weeks on the New York Times list earlier in 2018. But like other trump operatives and supporters who produced such books over the past year, it had the distinction of battling the deep state be on the page, having been called before a grand jury to testify to his role in coordinating the Trump Campaign dealings with wikileaks about his plans to push russian hacked email from dnc servers in the public in the 2016 election. Having argued already in print that the russia election was a deep state plan engineered by democratic operatives to put the president under an investigation with unlimited scope, could not have been surprised when fbi agent stopped on his door with subpoenas to testify, which he called forced line testimony, if that is what it takes to achieve deep state political objectives. After all, special Counsel Robert Mueller was according to corsi a deep state operative who served both the bush and obama administrations as the attorney general from 2001 to 2013. In fact, mueller was director of the fbi during those 12 years, not attorney general. It is one that makes little difference, given the expensive conspiracy that he conjures in his work, which included, and his pages on the handout, you may want to take a look at it because it is fairly amazing, the cia and other intelligence agencies that maintain a commitment to a global list new world order in cooperation with the federal reserve, the comptroller of the currency, as well as federal Law Enforcement agencies, including the fbi and doj, to allow clandestine operations, including illicit drug dealing and supplying weapons to terrorist groups that further the new world order goals of the global elite who also control the united nations, the International Monetary fund, and the european union. I could not get that all out in a single breath. Lest we dismiss this long cast of characters as simply a circus sideshow with little relevance to matters of state and diplomacy, it must be emphasized how central these ideas of a deep state conspiracy are to national politics, Foreign Policy, and International Relations at the current moment. They are taken seriously by the president. , his top advisers, and most avid supporters, and motivated such actions as the 2017 firing of fbi james comey, attorney general William Barrs investigation of russian meddling in the 2016 election, as well as recent news such as placing malware inside the russian per good without notifying the president for fear he might countermand the operation or disclose it to russian officials given his distrust of National Security agencys, particularly on issues pertaining to russia and cybersecurity. These examples are only the tip of the iceberg. Just asit is only the sign of a deeper problem. The deep state has allowed trump and those around him to describe a broader system of often invisible and unaccountable power that they see as concentrated in washington, but extended to new york, paris, berlin, with offices in london. It includes the key elements of military and financial might in the United States and europe. It also includes leading media and intelligentsia that dominates the Global Economy and geopolitics. As jason put it, u. S. President s come and go. Political parties win one election and lose the next, but the deep state goes on. It is the state within a state. What from calls, the swamp, or at other times, simply the elite. These ideas are broadly understood. The march 2018 poll showed just 37 of americans had heard of the deep state or were familiar with that nomenclature. However, it also showed that three quarters of americans believe there was a group of unelected government and military officials with equally manipulate or direct national policy. The broad distrust of such people helps make trump president. It is fundamental to all he does and 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 his open contempt for diplomacy or even civility. In trumps estimation, the powers that be have bullied, bankrupted, and belittled him and his people for too long. His presidency represents their comeuppance. However reductive, this is a systemic view of power in its operation in the world and america. Why comcast uptrump has upended politics. Republik and supported themselves on their close ties to the Nations Armed forces and its National Security agencys since the nixon election while blasting democrats as weak on defense. Democrats have tried to disprove such things. Both bill clinton and barack obama have at times conceded the case to their republican opponents by regularly appointing republicans as secretary of defense and naming republican holdovers to head the fbi and cia. The cia which corsi locates as the center of an extraconstitutional deep state that controls both parties. This tendency to follow in republican footsteps on display in obamas decision to keep robert gates as the secretary of defense despite his services as george bush seniors cia director and his oversight of george bush juniors iraq wars in iraq and afghanistan. Along with keeping Robert Mueller on the bip report it was possible for the idea of a private security establishment in the present moment. Former republican congressional staffer put it in his 2016 book the deep state, did hope change anything . It is a question that sarah palin famously said after, how did the whole hope and change thing work out for you . It is a surprise to see a republican president embroiled in such conflict with the National Security bureaucracy, including fbi director james comey, who trump fired soon after taking office, secretary of state secretary mattis, and former cia director john brennan, who trump threatened to strip of his secret clearance after he repeatedly accused trump of treason along with the aforementioned mueller and his witchhunt of the administration. Trumps hostility towards these men surprised officials washington more than anyone. When president took to twitter to needle brennan for an intelligence briefing on the socalled russian hacking suggesting more time was needed to build a case, Chuck Schumer took to msnbc to warn him. Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence committee, they have six ways from sunday of getting back at you. 2. 5 years later and two months after the mueller report, trump remains unbound by washingtons rules and democrats have no plan to bring him to heal be on hoping that mueller will testify on capitol hill. In reality, ways they have proved incapable of doing themselves, which only underscores the question of who really rules washington, elected officials or washington bureaucrats . Trumps battle with the bureaucracy have also called into question pieties that have sustained u. S. Policy since woodrow wilson. On super bowl sunday, 2017, for instance, trump answered critics who accuse them of that accused him of close ties to Vladimir Putin by saying you think of a country is so innocent . Our country does killing it caused adam schiff to say this is it makes with the we bizarre as it is untrue. Does he not see the damage he does with comments like that . Most assuredly, trump does. But he caculates the damage done is mainly to washington insiders who accrue and keep power by denying their own dirty secrets in order to better deceive his people. As retired berkeley defense professor wrote in the deep state, which is a scholarly work on the subject although we may want to debate how scholarly it is, deep state deceptions are not designed to deceive americas enemies, but first and foremost to deceive americans, conditioning them to accept security measures at home and warmaking abroad. Trump and his inhouse intellectuals, steve bannon, sean hannity, jerome corsi, whose works always include the fact that he has a phd, are teaching voters to think in these terms, which once were reserved for graduate seminars via his own reality show theatrics. But these ideas predate trump. They exist independently of him. They exploit his rise more than his rise explains them. The deep state makes sense to trump voters for obvious reasons. First and foremost, it accounts for the pronounced and growing economic inequality in the United States and the world and help explain how and why the privilege that powerful profited so handsomely in recent decades despite their failures of 9 11, the iraq work, and the Global Financial crisis. Even as everyone else suffered. Second, its makes went structure of power in the United States where the federal government is capable of sustaining wars and bailing out banks but is unable to address basic needs of ordinary americans. Finally, explains why insurgent political movements and the politicians they sent to washington to affect change have found themselves stymied at every turn, defined as a illegitimate, and unamerican, by government insiders whom insurgents dont respect but cannot depict for power. Before they fueled the rage at trump rallies, they were during the obama years. While frustrations have become more acute over the last 20 years, all were present at the creation, if you will, of the National Security state and have existed along the state of the current state of war the United States entered into in 1991. They defined conservative responses to Franklin Roosevelts managerial liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s, including opposition to an enlarged military establishment that he and his successor harry truman helps to create, which conservatives likened to robert taft and put a nation on a slippery slope to a garrison state. If tafts successors made peace with the Security State, left liberals came to suspect the cold war consensus it required had substituted the pursuit of profit and power for the promise of social democracy offered in the new deal. The 1956 book the powerly target American Power had expanded in the 1940s and 1950s and had become concentrated among a small copper of executive decisionmakers, who were called the ones who decide. They operated according to a military definition of reality that was formed and reinforced through what he called administrative routines in small closed intimate groups. That were accessible to the public. He emphasized the interlocking and overlapping nature of corporate and state power. In washington as well as on wall street. At west point. He argued a small group of men gain power through appointments rather than elections. With the unified authority unchallenged by politicians and congress, where he set the differences between the two parties so far as National Issues are concerned are very narrow and very mixed up. His contemporaries soon coined the phrase the astonishment establishment to describe the elite. William f buckley claimed to have been the first to use the word the establishment in a speech to the National War College in 1956, admitting his audience was confused by its meaning. But he borrowed the term from british generalist