On December 15th last year, John Robb, writing at his blog ‘Global Guerrillas’, postulated that the CIA was trying to topple the US government.
There’s an electoral coup underway.
. . .
The stealth effort, led by liberals who believe Trump is a danger to the US, has been underway since the election.
That effort only gained traction with Republican electors when the CIA leaked that Russia had intervened in the US election to help Trump win.
Of course, the timing of the CIA’s leak wasn’t random.
It was something much more sinister. It was an opening salvo by the CIA to actively influence the Electoral College and stop Donald Trump from becoming President.
In other words, the CIA is trying to topple Trump.
Why? Self preservation.
The real reason is that Trump was working with Peter Thiel to corporatize the intelligence gathering of the United States around companies, like Palantir, that can adopt and employ technology much faster and with more efficacy. In other words, Trump is planning to turn the CIA and the NSA into peripheral collection systems.
That was unacceptable to the CIA, an agency with a strong sense of self-importance.
There’s more at the link.
At the time, I dismissed Mr. Robb’s concerns. Frankly, I thought he’d gone way off into la-la land.
After the events of this past week, with Buzzfeed’s ‘revelation’ of the damning (and completely false) allegations against Mr. Trump, and CNN’s barely-disguised support of those allegations, and Mr. Trump’s revelation that it was intelligence agencies who were leaking details of his meetings with them, rather than his staff, and Glenn Greenwald’s assertion that the ‘deep state‘ has gone to war with President-elect Trump . . . one has to wonder.
Was – and is – Mr. Robb, in fact, correct? Are we seeing an active conspiracy by at least some intelligence professionals to overturn the results of the elections, and prevent Mr. Trump from taking office – or, at least, have him do so with a seriously tarnished and diminished reputation, that will prevent him from acting against those who have inflicted the damage? And is that why Mr. Trump has maintained his own security team, over and above the protection provided by the US Secret Service? Is his own team there to protect him against the machinations of ‘deep state’ agencies and individuals?
It looks increasingly as if I may owe Mr. Robb an apology.
Peter
EDITED TO ADD: I’ve done a follow-up post with a video of a discussion between Tucker Carlson, of Fox News, and Glenn Greenwald, on the conflict between the ‘deep state’ and President-elect Trump. It adds more fuel to the fire.
I think that it goes far, far deeper than that. The long serving professional bureaucrats who run the government look at themselves as being the real power that runs the government, and look at politically elected leaders as being a sideshow.
After all, it is the regulators at the ATF, FCC, FAA, and others who actually make the regulations and rules that govern society. Congress may pass laws, but the administrative agencies are the ones who tell us what it means. When a citizen is accused of wrongdoing by an agency, they must appear in an administrative hearing before a career bureaucrat, not a judge.
They have great power, and people who have power are very reluctant to give it up. What we are seeing now is the result of an outsider who is claiming that he wants to reduce the power of the career government employees. They will fight him tooth and nail, and there are millions of them.
Doesn't surprise me a bit. People who get entrenched in power will do ANYTHING to maintain it.
What is scary in an ironic fashion, is if the CIA is trying to overturn the election, how bad a job they are doing. They only got 2 out of 30+ needed electors to change their votes.
If this is the best the CIA can do, Trump needs to purge them, not for disloyalty but incompetence.
Peter:
Who would an "American" Kim Philby work for and which American organisation would he penetrate today?
That's key to understanding the answer you're looking for.
Divemedic:
"They will fight him tooth and nail, and there are millions of them …"
Actually, most likely not.
It'll be like a "Jack Reacher" fight.
He doesn't have to fight "millions of them".
He only has to fight a handful in a way that is very public and very destructive to them.
"Les autres" will then fall into line.
The present administration has led a secret war creating, training, arming and supplying ISIS, ISIL (call it what you will) whilst claiming to to fight they very force they created. The worry the truth will come out is what has fueled these attacks.
If I recall, John F. Kennedy was furious with the CIA for mal-advising him about the forces needed at the Bay of Pigs, advice which was contrary to that provided him by Army Intelligence / DIA, and that he had considered action against them for that.
His intention, unfortunately, did not make much progress.
John in Indy