The phrase, Deep State, is now a staple of political vocabulary, but people who have not worked in the Washington bureaucracies, especially those tied to national security and intelligence, may not appreciate the meaning. I will try to define it for you. What I offer below is an attempt to define a complex, dynamic system in simple terms. I ask your forgiveness in advance if I have overlooked some key variables.
I place the birth of the Deep State in the early 1990s, during the Presidency of Bill Clinton. It was during Clinton’s presidency that the US government, especially in the areas of intelligence and the military, started outsourcing jobs that once were classified as civil service. Let me give you a current example. Previously, the annual report on international terrorism (it was called Patterns of Global Terrorism during my time in government, but now goes under the name, Country Reports on Terrorism) was prepared by analysts at the Counter Terrorism Center. After 9-11, that job was transferred to the National Counter Terrorism Center. But, sometime in the last ten years, that work was contracted to a consulting firm in Bethesda, Maryland — Development Services Group, Inc.
Here’s another example: One of my bosses at CIA, a gentleman named Randolph “Randy” Pherson, retired in 2000:
and became Pherson Associates’ government work as President from 2003-2021 and served as CEO of Globalytica, a subsidiary of Pherson specializing in classes and publications for international and private industry clients.
His outfit also did work for the CIA — work that previously would have been done by analysts. He and his wife made a good amount of money. I don’t begrudge them, just using them as one example of how one facet of the system works.
One of the consequences of shifting government jobs to contractors is that government spending expanded rapidly and made a lot of former CIA officers millionaires. Pherson Associates is small potatoes compared to companies like Booz Allen and SAIC. Both have profited enormously during the last 30+ years providing contract employees to do US government jobs.
This is not confined to CIA and DOD. Let me tell you about nurses at NIH. There has been a freeze on hiring new nurses at NIH. To meet the demand and serve the patients that receive treatment at NIH, the nursing department is compelled to hire contract nurses. A contract nurse costs the US government twice the salary they would pay if the government simply hired a new nurse.
A critical node of the Deep State is the owners of those companies getting rich off of government contracts, who invariably hire lobbyists and build relations with the contract managers inside the government agency giving them money. This has become a lucrative avenue for a career bureaucrat to cash in, leave government, and make far more money as a contractor.
Does the name Lloyd Austin ring a bell? Secretary of Defense Austin, who retired from military service, was awarded a chair on the board of Raytheon. Then, after a few years doing that, winds up back in the Pentagon as the head honcho. Austin ain’t the only one. He is simply emblematic of what thousands of other former USG employees have discovered — working with contractors can make you wealthy. Former CIA Directors John Brennan, George Tenet and Mike Pompeo are other examples.
Then there are the media corporations. They stay alive by running ads for pharmaceutical companies and providing jobs to former political appointees. The media’s job is propaganda — to ensure the government’s message is pounded into the brains of the populace and to shutdown dissenting voices. Our experience with Covid is a prime example of how this system works.
The Deep State is a revolving door that moves people from jobs on Capitol Hill to jobs in a Presidential administration to jobs in media, defense corporations or think tanks. Rinse and repeat. Follow the money.
Washington’s business practice is best described as political incest. The lobbyists that have proliferated in Washington during the past three decades are the guys and gals handling the money laundering. They sign up clients who want to get government contracts, they hold fundraisers for members of Congress in order to secure legislative support for bills that will get their clients government contracts, and they provide jobs to former members of Congress and the US government who still have friends on the inside. They know who to call and the people on the other end of the phone will take their call.
This is a lucrative, corrupt and powerful system. No one person, or groups of persons, controls it. It is fueled by a desire to make money and influence policy to serve the interests of paying clients. Think of it as a cancerous neural network.
Reprinted with permission from Sonar21.
