Joining me here to talk about i think this quite important topic are three fantastic historians, all of whom study politics and power in American History. Professor beverly gage 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 individually before they speak for 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 military Industrial 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 ends, 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 core 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 shadowy figures or bad actors must be opposed and uncovered for the nation to return to its due 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 mostly about it from President Trump and his allies in the republican party, who want to cast out some motivations on the Law Enforcement agencies, the fbi, judges, at times the cia. But it wasnt 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 . How new are they . 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 cultural proponents are 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. So thats basically what were 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 explored 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 i see in every cemetery and parade i go to. 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 left and the problem of democratic power, 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 called 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 sort of led us to our present moment. In his recent book the deep how an army of bureaucrats protected barack obama and is working to destroy the trump agenda, former chairman of the House Committee on oversight and government reform retired congressman, 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 trumps endorsement over twitter, his expose debuted at number seven on the New York Times best seller list where it joined another book the russia hoax, which debuted at number one on the list and has spent ten weeks there. And janine pirros liars, leakers and the case against the antitrust conspiracy, which also debuted 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 best seller list at the same time in the fall of 2018 improved upon the general course of killing the deep state the fight to save President Trump, which spent just 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, corsey had the distension 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 investigation was, quote, a deep state plan engineered by democrat operatives to put the president under an investigation with unlimited scope, unquote, corsey could not have been surprised when fbi agent stopped on his door with subpoenas to testify, which he called forced lying 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 an error typical of corseys work, but one that makes little difference, given the expansive conspiracy that he conjures in his work, which included, quote and this page is on the handout. You might want to take a look at it, because its fairly amazing. 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 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 International 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 craft 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 present moment. First and foremost, 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 ongoing inquiry into the origins of the fbis investigation of russian meddling in the 2016 election, as well as recent news as the Cyber Command placing malware inside of computers, controlling the russian power grid without notifying the president , for fear he might count countermand the operation or disclose it to russian officials, given his dit dstrusf National Security agencies, particularly on issues pertaining to russia and cybersecurity. These examples are only the tip of the iceberg. Just as it is the only 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 Branch Offices in london and menlo park. It includes the key elements of military and financial might in the United States and europe. It also includes leading media and intelligentsia that allegedly dominate the Global Economy and geopolitics. As Jason Chaffetz 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 threequarters of americans believe there was a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct National Policy. In broad distrust of such people helped make trump president. It 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 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 america and the world, and helps to explain why trump has upended political alliances and traditions. Since Richard Nixons election, repu5t79m have prided themselves on the close ties to the Nations Armed forces and its National Security agencies, while blasting democrats on weak on defense. Democrats have tried to disprove such things. By spending lavishly on defense. Both bill clinton and barack obama have at times ceded 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, unquote. 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 sr. s cia director and his oversight of george bush jr. s iraq wars in iraq and afghanistan, along with keeping Robert Mueller on at the fbi is possible for the idea of private security establishment in the present moment. Former republican congressional staffer put it in his 2016 book the deep state, did hope and change really change anything . Its not just a question that lofton asked but its a question that sarah palin famously asked when she said how did that whole hopy, changy 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 james mattis, who resigned, 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 official washington more than anyone. When president elect trump took to twitter to needle brennan for an intelligence briefing on the socalled russian hacking, unquote, suggesting more time was needed to build the case, Chuck Schumer took to msnbc to warn him. Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from sunday of getting back at you, unquote. Two and a half 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 beyond 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. Foreign policy since woodrow wilson. On super bowl sunday 2017, for instance, trump responded to 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 plenty of ki killing. Such a frank admission caused ranking democrat on the House Intelligence Committee adam schiff to sputter, this is insxlikable i inexplicably bizarre as it is untrue. Does he not see the damage he does with comments like that . Most aassuredly, trump does. But he weighs the damage done mainly to washington insiders who accrue 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 ones 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 helps to explain how and why the privilege and powerful profited so handsomely in recent decades, despite their failures in 9 11, the iraq war and the Global Financial crisis, even as everyone else suffered. Second, it explains the oddly bifurcated structure of power in the United States, where the federal government is capable of sustaining wars and bailing out banks that fail 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 legitimate, and unamerican, by government insiders whom insurgents dont respect but cannot evict from power. Each of these conundrums before they fueled the rage at trump rallies. While theyve become more acute during the last 20 years, all were present, quote, at the creation if you will at the National Security state. And theyve existed along the state of the current state of war that the United States entered into in 1941. Distrust 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 like senator robert taft warned put the 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 that substituted the pursuit of profit and power for the promise of social democracy offered in the new deal. C. Wright mills 1956 book the power elite targeted American Power and had expande