Conveniently, the Department of Homeland Security has been building 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?
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, coordinated by the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council, 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." Also included are the Department of the Treasury, certain key areas of the judiciary such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and a handful of vital federal trial courts, and select members of the defense and intelligence committees.
Finally, as the Washington Post reveals, there is the private side of this shadow government, which is made up of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances, "a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
8
5
2
