The Deep State: The Unelected Shadow Government Is Here to Stay

Guest Post by John W. Whitehead

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

America’s next president will inherit more than a bitterly divided nation teetering on the brink of financial catastrophe when he or she assumes office. He will also inherit a shadow government, one that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country.

To be precise, however, the future president will actually inherit not one but two shadow governments.

The first shadow government, referred to as COG or continuity of government, is made up of unelected individuals who have been appointed to run the government in the event of a “catastrophe.”

The second shadow government, referred to as the Deep State, is comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes right now.

The first shadow government, COG, is a phantom menace waiting for the right circumstances—a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, an economic meltdown—to bring it out of the shadows, where it operates even now. When and if COG takes over, the police state will transition to martial law.

Yet as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it is the second shadow government, the Deep State, which poses the greater threat to our freedoms. This permanent, corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and beyond the reach of the law.

This is the hidden face of the police state.

These two shadow governments, which make a mockery of representative government and the “reassurance ritual” of voting, have been a long time in the making. Yet they have been so shrouded in secrecy, well hidden from the eyes and ears of the American people, that they exist and function in contravention to the principles of democratic government.

As the following makes clear, these shadow governments, which operate beyond the reach of the Constitution and with no real accountability to the citizenry, are the reason why “we the people” have no control over our government.

The COG shadow government plan was devised during the Cold War as a means of ensuring that a nuclear strike didn’t paralyze the federal government.

COG initially called for three teams consisting of a cabinet member, an executive chief of staff and military and intelligence officials to practice evacuating and directing a counter nuclear strike against the Soviet Union from a variety of high-tech, mobile command vehicles. If the president and vice president were both killed, one of these teams would take control, with the ranking cabinet official serving as president.

This all changed after the attacks of September 11, 2001, when it became clear that there would be no warning against a terrorist attack. Instead of waiting until an attack occurred to mobilize part-time bureaucrats and activate evacuation schemes, George W. Bush opted to change COG and establish a full-time, permanent shadow government, stationed outside the capital, run by permanently appointed (not elected) executive officials.

COG has since taken on a power—and a budget—of its own.

Incredibly, under the Obama administration, the plans for the shadow government have expanded and grown far more elaborate and costly than many realize. It is what investigative journalist William M. Arkin refers to as “the latest manifestation of an obsession with government survival.”

In much the same way that the nation was taken hostage after 9/11 by color-coded terror alerts and “See Something, Say Something” campaigns that transformed us into a fearful, watchful nation of suspects, the government’s efforts to prepare us for a so-called national disaster have, in turn, left us a constant state of near-emergency and acclimated us to the sight of militarized police, military drills on American soil, privatized prisons, the specter of internment camps, and the erosion of constitutional rights, especially as they pertain to so-called “extremists,” domestic or otherwise.

Study the COG plans carefully, however, and you’ll find that the concern isn’t so much about protecting our government as it is about protecting the nation’s governmental elite.

As Arkin reports: “Countless billions have been spent on this endeavor over the years, a secret orgy of preparedness going on behind the scenes, one that ensures Washington can defend itself, take care of its own, and survive no matter what.”

To this end, the government has invested heavily in the “architecture of fear”: massive underground bunkers—the size of small cities—which are sprinkled throughout the country for the government elite to escape to “in case of an imminent nuclear strike so that they can set up a kind of Administration-in-exile, directing every order of business from retaliation to recovery.”

These bunkers, strategically located around the nation’s capital and in key states, represent a who’s who on the shadow government’s payroll, with every department and agency represented, from the Department of Education and the Trademark Office to the Small Business Administration and the National Archives.

No sector has been overlooked: military, surveillance, counterintelligence, scientific, political, judicial, corporate contractors, as well as computer programmers, engineers, fire fighters, craftsmen, security guards, branch chiefs, financial managers, supply officers, secretaries and stenographers, all of whom have been entrusted with special ID cards allowing them clearance into the doomsday survival sites. They’ve even included individuals tasked with patent and trademark processing. They even have contingency plans to save priceless works of art.

The Federal Relocation Arc near Washington DC will reportedly serve as the emergency bunker for “every Cabinet department (and every government organization deemed essential).” Site R, a 700,000-foot facility inside Raven Rock Mountain near Camp David, will serve as a backup Pentagon. Peters Mountain near Charlottesville, Va., is the likely site for the nation’s domestic spies to hide out. Congress will retire to a subterranean facility near the posh Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, which served as an internment facility for Japanese, Italian and German diplomats during World War II. And a 600,000-square-foot complex inside Virginia’s Mount Weather is expected to be the primary relocation site for the White House, the Supreme Court and much of the executive branch.

Built into the side of a mountain, Mount Weather, near Bluemont, Va., is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This self-contained facility contains, among other things, a hospital, crematorium, dining and recreation areas, sleeping quarters, reservoirs of drinking and cooling water, an emergency power plant, a radio/television studio and a full-time police and fire department.

There is also an Office of the Presidency at Mount Weather, which regularly receives top-secret national security information from all the federal departments and agencies. This facility was largely unknown to everyone, including Congress, until it came to light in the mid-1970s. Military personnel connected to the bunker have refused to reveal any information about it, even before congressional committees. In fact, Congress has no oversight, budgetary or otherwise, on Mount Weather, and the specifics of the facility remain top-secret.

These facilities reinforce a troubling government mindset that treats the American people as relatively insignificant and expendable. Because you know who’s not on the list of key-individuals-to-be-saved-in-the-eventuality-of-a-disaster? You and me and every other American citizen who is viewed as a mere economic unit to be tallied, bought and sold by those in power.

Not to worry, however. The government hasn’t completely forgotten about us.

In the event of a “national emergency”—loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions”—the executive branch and its unelected appointees will be given unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power.

In such an event, the Constitution will effectively be suspended, thereby ushering in martial law.

However, writing for Radar magazine, Christopher Ketcham suggests that the government won’t have completely forgotten about the rest of us. In fact, Ketcham believes that the government also has plans to imprison hundreds of thousands of “potentially suspect” Americans in detention camps.

Ketcham describes a program created by the Department of Homeland Security that relies on a database of Americans who might be considered potential threats in the event of a national emergency. Referred to by the code name Main Core, this database reportedly contains the names of millions of Americans who, “often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.”

Sounds unnervingly like the objectives of the government’s new Domestic Terrorism Czar and the Strong Cities network, which will be working to identify and target potential extremists, doesn’t it?

Under Ketcham’s scenario, if a terrorist attack occurs, the president will declare a national emergency, activating COG procedures and throwing the country into martial law with the shadow government at the helm. The administration will then round up the “dangerous” Americans listed in Main Core and place them in one of the many internment camps or private prisons built for just such an eventuality.

For all intents and purposes, the nation is one national “emergency” away from having a full-fledged, unelected, authoritarian state emerge from the shadows. All it will take is the right event—another terrorist attack, perhaps, or a natural disaster—for such a regime to emerge from the shadows.

As unnerving as that prospect may be, however, it is the second shadow government, what former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren refers to as “the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power,” that poses the greater threat right now.

Consider this: how is it that partisan gridlock has seemingly jammed up the gears (and funding sources) in Washington, yet the government has been unhindered in its ability to wage endless wars abroad, in the process turning America into a battlefield and its citizens into enemy combatants?

The credit for such relentless, entrenched, profit-driven governance, according to Lofgren, goes to “another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.”

This “state within a state” hides “mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day,” says Lofgren, and yet the “Deep State does not consist of the entire government.”

Rather, Lofgren continues:

It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street.

All these agencies are coordinated by the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council. Certain key areas of the judiciary belong to the Deep State, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose actions are mysterious even to most members of Congress. Also included are a handful of vital federal trial courts, such as the Eastern District of Virginia and the Southern District of Manhattan, where sensitive proceedings in national security cases are conducted.

The final government component (and possibly last in precedence among the formal branches of government established by the Constitution) is a kind of rump Congress consisting of the congressional leadership and some (but not all) of the members of the defense and intelligence committees. The rest of Congress, normally so fractious and partisan, is mostly only intermittently aware of the Deep State and when required usually submits to a few well-chosen words from the State’s emissaries.

In an expose titled “Top Secret America,” The Washington Post revealed the private side of this shadow government, made up of 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances, “a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government.”

Reporting on the Post’s findings, Lofgren points out:

These contractors now set the political and social tone of Washington, just as they are increasingly setting the direction of the country, but they are doing it quietly, their doings unrecorded in the Congressional Record or the Federal Register, and are rarely subject to congressional hearings…

The Deep State not only holds the nation’s capital in thrall, but it also controls Wall Street (“which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater”) and Silicon Valley.

As Lofgren concludes:

[T]he Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change… If there is anything the Deep State requires it is silent, uninterrupted cash flow and the confidence that things will go on as they have in the past. It is even willing to tolerate a degree of gridlock: Partisan mud wrestling over cultural issues may be a useful distraction from its agenda.

Remember this the next time you find yourselves mesmerized by the antics of the 2016 presidential candidates or drawn into a politicized debate over the machinations of Congress, the president or the judiciary: it’s all intended to distract you from the fact that you have no authority and no rights in the face of the shadow governments.

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suzanna

YIKES!!!

John W. Whitehead?

I thought this kind of material only emanated from the crazy
conspiracy theorists like Dave Hodges and David Icke and
Alex Jones.

Underground bases, oh my.

Westcoaster
Westcoaster

@Admin: “The Federal Relocation Arc near Washington DC will reportedly serve as the emergency bunker for “every Cabinet department (and every government organization deemed essential).” Site R, a 700,000-foot facility inside Raven Rock Mountain near Camp David, will serve as a backup Pentagon.”

It took me a while to regain my composure after reading this post and then rolling on the floor laughing. How many times have I already posted here on TBP that Cheney is still running the show from this very facility? In fact Cheney and Rumsfeld have both been behind these COG plans going back to the Ford admin, and the COG was initiated on 9/11 and is still running.

yahsure
yahsure

I never hear a thing about those czars.

Westcoaster
Westcoaster

@Admin: Thanks for your concern, but Hell yes! Cheney may not live there, but back during he and “W”‘s reign it was reported that’s exactly where he was, Site R. Face it, Cheney is the King of the neo-cons, and it’s their agenda Obama has continued to support. It has only been post-Putin’s Syrian action that Obama has expressed doubts about our intervention in the ME.
And it’s a fact Cheney and Rumsfeld were the driving force behind development of the COG and these underground cities.
A good friend of mine who was a contractor with DOD confidentially told me about a Colonel who took him on a very long elevator ride down to one such facility. He said when they reached bottom, both got out, went down a corridor that opened to a six lane road, which was lighted but empty of traffic. He asked the Col. WTF and the Col said it was built”just in case we need it”. And this was NOT a known COG site.

Dutchman
Dutchman

I hear Cheney’s heart runs on that 0 W – 40 Extended Performance Mobil-1.

rhs jr
rhs jr

I can’t say who runs the Shadow Government but it probably has a lot more to do with Bilderberg and NYC Bank’s Basements than DUMBs and it ain’t Soros, Gates, Cheney,or Kissinger who are more like bishops than castles or kings and probably nobody but them, Satan and God knows who is the queen.

ROCKETMAN
ROCKETMAN

Yet another article clamoring about martial law being put in effect. Ask yourself this. Who is going to enforce this martial law? Add up all the law enforcement in the U.S.(5-10million) then add our military to that number(5million). Of course I was very liberal with the numbers to the upper side. SO PLEASE TELL ME HOW 15MILLION ARE GOING TO CONTROL 330+MILLION WHEN EVERYTHING IS GOING BATSHIT CRAZY? Our army is currently at 31% readiness. They are not ready to fight their way out a wet paper bag. Our navy is smaller than the navy was in 1910 before the first world war. How many people are going to stay and fight for our govt when their wives and daughters are getting gang raped in their homes. How many of our military are going to stick around when their families are getting the same treatment? Stop giving into the propaganda that the govt is going to control us in the future during a disaster man made or natural. What is coming our way is indeed very bad and yes many will die. But how many of you citizens believe that Americans after seeing what was done during Katrina where they disarmed law abiding citizens that we are going to sit back and take it this time? I am not and neither should you.

Westcoaster
Westcoaster

@Admin: No I’m not backing off one bit. Perhaps you should educate yourself on the subject of “COG”:

The 9/11 Plan: Cheney, Rumsfeld and the “Continuity of Government” (COG)

Anonymous
Anonymous

Rocketman,

I once watched a news clip of the Jews being loaded onto RR cars by the NAZI’s.

Thousands and thousands of Jews loading into the cars under the supervision of maybe a half dozen very young looking German soldiers with Mauser rifles.

Martial law has never had superior numbers to enforce it, just well organized and dedicated ones.

ROCKETMAN
ROCKETMAN

Mr. Anonymous,

No one has to fire a shot or even load a gun to shut these clowns down. All that is needed is for the truck drivers to come off the roads and the coal miners to come out of the mines. No truckers or miners no fuel or electric. No electric, no command and control or communication. Game, set and match.

Why do you think that they are so hot and heavy about getting all these natural gas pipelines in the ground and running? Thats right, a endless supply of energy to run generators.

Stucky

“SO PLEASE TELL ME HOW 15MILLION ARE GOING TO CONTROL 330+MILLION …”
—— Rocketman

Ask yourself this — “How is it possible that 535 control 330 million?”

Get it?

ROCKETMAN
ROCKETMAN

Stucky,

Because we allow them too.

Because the powers to be have distracted us with the NFL, College football/Basketball, NASCAR, Kim Kardashians big fat ass(I sure you are a fan) Fox news, stupid movies and the list could go on and on for years.

You won’t see Lame Brain McCain or Chuckie Schumer lifting one finger to protecting your sorry ass now will you. No they will be deep underground plotting how they are going to tell you what to do.

THIS IS THE ONLY TIME THAT I WILL RESPOND TO YOUR JIBBERISH. I FOUND YOU OFFENSIVE AND YOUR COMMENTARY IS OFTEN FILLED WITH ERRORS THAT YOU SPEW AS IF YOU ARE SOME AUTHORITY ON THE WORLD AS A WHOLE. ITS SAD YOU HAVE SUCH A SORRY LIFE BUT DO ALL OF US A FAVOR AND GO PLAY IN ANOTHER SANDBOX WE DONT LIKE YOU IN OURS.

Stucky

ROCKETMAN

Yes, I do spout jibberish, and I am a dumbass.

You’re also right about my sorry life. I can’t believe how much fucking time and effort I’ve given here. What a waste.

You’re right … I need to get out of your sandbox.

SO, FUCK ALL YOU TBPers. EVERY FUCKING ONE OF YOU. FUCK YOU LLPOH. FUCK YOU SSS. FUCK YOU TE. FUCK YOU HOPE. FUCK YOU EL COYOTE. AND FUCK ALL THE REST OF YOU COCKSUCKERS.

Seriously. Fuck you all. I’m sick and fucking tired of this bullshit. I’ve finally had enough.

B
B

Rocket Man-many sheep are led by one ram

B
B

Rocket Man-P.S. Stucky is an asshole. A shit flinging asshole

rhs jr
rhs jr

B, I was a “shepherd” 30 years and the ram usually follows the flock which follows the smartest old ewe. About the sheeple vs TPTB, those commie kids at Mizzu would love to be kapos. If you have a brain and are at a college like that, transfer before Liberal Illness turns you into a Useful Idiot too.

Olga
Olga

Inflation – the constant growth that allows for a constant skim. No growth and the skim becomes evident and is shut down.

IMO I think it comes down to the big banks – or the “one bank” if through shareholders and owners things can be traced up and up and up to fewer and fewer folks.

The rest of the clowns are all parasites – paid off with wealth and power to keep the skim in place.

No skim and all the parasites go away as well but the further the parasite exists downstream of the initial skim the more ideologies and greed are required.

Knowledge of the skim is unnecessary when dogmas and beliefs can be indoctrinated and propagandized, when education and information is controlled – the skim is then protected and cocooned within a culture that literally defends out of ignorance and nescience the very cancer that is destroying it.

IMO what John Whitehead is writing about are the clowns and their clubs devoted to maintaining and gaining the power, wealth and control doled out by those in the shadows running the skim.

Whether or not the clowns see into the shadows – or even understand the shadow and skim are there – is irrelevant.

The skim – recognized or not – is giving them what they desire, the power, wealth and control to rule the rest of us.

hardscrabble farmer

SO, FUCK ALL YOU TBPers. EVERY FUCKING ONE OF YOU. FUCK YOU LLPOH. FUCK YOU SSS. FUCK YOU TE. FUCK YOU HOPE. FUCK YOU EL COYOTE. AND FUCK ALL THE REST OF YOU COCKSUCKERS.

Seriously. Fuck you all. I’m sick and fucking tired of this bullshit. I’ve finally had enough.

?

Someone is not being a very good digital citizen.

https://www.google.com/search?q=digital+citizenship&rlz=1C1AVNE_enUS655US655&espv=2&biw=1600&bih=775&tbm=isch&imgil=wMqlYipY_lKwoM%253A%253Bwrd-Sny4e5W60M%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.pps.k12.pa.us%25252FPage%25252F4253&source=iu&pf=m&fir=wMqlYipY_lKwoM%253A%252Cwrd-Sny4e5W60M%252C_&usg=__6A838XrQZ24qaKm-BWQj-VHOO1g%3D&ved=0CEcQyjdqFQoTCJLDuc7AiMkCFUhiJgodN9YGTw&ei=dEZDVpK5G8jEmQG3rJv4BA#imgdii=wMqlYipY_lKwoM%3A%3BwMqlYipY_lKwoM%3A%3BhTTdgKnA-mIKFM%3A&imgrc=wMqlYipY_lKwoM%3A&usg=__6A838XrQZ24qaKm-BWQj-VHOO1g%3D

John Coster
John Coster

Great quote from Thomas Jefferson. It describes the human motivations that fosters the growth of tyrannical institutions. I confess that I have had a terrifying vision of Cheney’s brain alive in some translucent vat of bubbling fluid attached to numerous wires by which he transmits his evil orders to his minions in the Deep State. Seems like we have many opportunities these days to ponder the nature of EVIL.

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