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Trump Versus
the Deep State
By Eric Margolis
January 16,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- As President-elect Donald Trump fights off fierce
assaults by the massed national security apparatus,
Democrats, the neocon Praetorian Guard, and a host of
other political foes, I am feeling a sharp sense of déjà
vu.
Trump claimed
that these attacks were like ‘living in Nazi Germany.’
Not so. The president-elect could have found a much
better analogy: Moscow in August, 1991.
I was in
Moscow, Central Asia and the Caucasus covering the
Soviet Union’s last days and meeting with senior KGB
leaders. What a dramatic and exciting time it was. In
fact, on my first night in Moscow a Russian friend and
I, fired from drinking potent Georgian moonshine,
managed to wake up the then director of KGB, Viktor
Chebrikov, at two am by playing very loud music under
his apartment. He kept stamping on the floor. My
Russian-Georgian friend said, ‘just ignore the old
fool.’
Two years
later, another old Soviet fool, KGB chief Vladimir
Kryuchkov, tried to overthrow the reformist leader
Mikhail Gorbachev. A so-called ‘gang of eight’ of senior
Communist Party officials, intelligence bigwigs and
military men secretly formed to overthrow party leader
Gorbachev.
Reformist
Gorbachev was trying to remake the Communist Party, end
its brutal policies, stop the stalemated war in
Afghanistan, and allow restive nationalities, like the
Baltic peoples, to edge away from the USSR. Gorby also
wanted to cut way back on military spending – then
almost 40% of GDP – that was bankrupting the Soviet
Union. He sought good, peaceful relations with the West.
These policies
enraged Moscow’s security agencies, its hardline
Communist elite (‘nomenklatura’) and vast military
industrial complex. Gorby’s proposed budget cuts would
have put many of them out of business. So they decided
to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev to save their own skins.
The coup utterly failed and its drunken, bungling
leaders jailed.
We are
observing something similar today in Washington, hence
my sense of déjà vu. Trump has suggested he may reduce
the bloated CIA and 16 other US intelligence agencies
that spend over $70 billion annually, not including
‘black’ programs, on who knows what? Tapping
communications and assassinating assorted Muslims from
the air no doubt.
Trump has
called for an ‘even-handed’ approach to the question of
Palestine, enraging neocons who fear Israel’s headlock
on Congress and the White House may be loosened. The
neocon press, like the Wall Street Journal, NY Times and
Washington Post, have been baying for Trump’s blood. Not
since World War II has the media so dramatically dropped
its mask of faux impartiality to reveal it true
political agenda.
Adding to his
list of foes, Trump is now under attack by religious
fundamentalists in Congress for his sensible attitude to
Russia. The vast military industrial complex is after
Trump, fearing he may cut the $1 trillion annual
military budget and efforts to dominate the globe.
Members of Congress under orders from the pro-war
neocons are trying to undermine Trump.
They are all
using Russia as a tool to beat Trump. The hysteria and
hypocrisy over alleged Russian hacking is unbelievable
and infantile. Sen. John McCain actually called it a
grave threat to American democracy, thus joining the
Soviet old fools club. Of course Russia’s spooks probe
US electronic communications. That’s their job, not
playing chess. The US hacks into everyone’s commo,
including leaders of allied states. It’s called
electronic intelligence (ELINT).
But don’t blame
the wicked Moscovites for revealing how Hillary
Clinton’s Democratic National Committee rigged the
primaries in her favor against Sen. Bernie Sanders. That
cat was well out of the bag already.
It’s not
Russian TV (for whom I occasionally comment) that is
undermining America’s democracy, it’s the nation’s
neocon-dominated media pumping out untruths and
disinformation. Ironically, Russian TV has become one of
the few dissenting voices in North America’s media
landscape. Sure it puts out government propaganda. So
does CNN, MSNBC and Fox. At least RT offers a fresher
version.
Watching our
intelligence chiefs and Sen. McCain trying to blacken
Trump’s name by means of a sleazy, unverified report
about golden showers in a Moscow hotel, is particularly
ignoble.
It’s also a
laugh. Every one who went to Moscow during the Cold War
knew about the bugged hotel rooms, and KGB temptresses
(known as ‘swallows’ -after the birds) who would knock
on your door at night and give you the old Lenin love
mambo while hidden camera whirled away. I asked for 8×10
glossies to be sent to my friends. But sadly for me, the
swallows never came though I did meet some lovely
long-legged creatures at the Bolshoi Ballet. So-called
honey traps were part of the fun of the cold war.
Humor aside,
it’s dismaying to hear senior US intelligence officials
who faked ‘evidence’ that led to the invasion of Iraq
and used torture and assassination attacking Donald
Trump. Of course their jobs are at risk. They should be.
The CIA, in particular, has evolved from a pure
intelligence gathering agency into a state-sanctioned
Murder Inc that liquidates real and imagined enemies
abroad. The KGB used to do the same thing – but more
efficiently.
Our
intelligence agencies are a vital component of national
security – which has become our new state religion. But
in true bureaucratic form (see Parkinson’s Laws) they
have become bloated, redundant and self-perpetuating.
They need a tough Trump diet and to be booted out of
politics. This past week’s display of the deep state’s
grab for power – a sort of re-run of one of my favorite
films, ‘Seven Days in May’ – should remind all thinking
Americans that the monster police state apparatus
created by President George W. Bush is the greatest
threat to our Republic.
Eric S.
Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated
columnist. His articles have appeared in the New York
Times, the International Herald Tribune the Los Angeles
Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej
Times, Nation – Pakistan, Hurriyet, – Turkey, Sun Times
Malaysia and other news sites in Asia.
http://ericmargolis.com/ |
