RUTHFULLY YOURS

Naked is the Best Disguise: The Bipartisan Deep State

One of the mysteries of the deep state is just how deep it is. Like the Kryptos sculpture in the courtyard of the Central Intelligence Agency, it has proven remarkably resistant to decoding since its emergence in the aftermath of World War II, after the creation of the CIA. It is, in a very real sense, its own cipher, hiding in plain sight all along and just daring the civilians to call it by its name: the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party.

As it happens, the leaders of the PBFP sat for a group portrait the other day. The occasion was the funeral of former First Lady Barbara Bush, wife of George Herbert Walker “Poppy” Bush and mother of George Walker Bush, American presidents 41 and 43, respectively. Also in the photograph was the man who beat Poppy, William Jefferson Blythe III, more commonly known as Bill Clinton; and Barack Hussein Obama II, also known as Barry Soetoro, the man who succeeded George W. Bush. And their wives, of course, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, former senator from New York, former secretary of state in the Obama Administration, and the defeated candidate in the 2016 presidential election.

But the man who defeated Hillary—Donald J. Trump, the 45th president of the United States—was nowhere to be seen. The Bush family, which bears him no love after his demolition of heir-apparent Jeb in the 2016 Republican primaries, had made it clear that Trump would not be welcome in Houston. And so the Trump family was represented by First Lady Melania, while the president stayed behind in Washington under the fig leaf of protocol (presidents don’t normally attend first ladies’ funerals) and not wishing to “disrupt” the event.

The picture is less evocative of a group portrait of past presidents as it is of a family, in this case the Kennedys, with Poppy sitting in for old Joe, the crippled paterfamilias, surrounded by the offspring who went on to wreak so much havoc upon the American body politic. For, like some Biblical genealogy, Bush I begat Clinton who begat Bush II, who would have begotten Clinton II were in not for Obama, who might have begotten either Clinton II redux or Bush III (Jeb!) were it not for Trump.

If it all sounds rather incestuous, that’s because it is.

No wonder Trump was not invited. The racket was proceeding quite nicely until he came along.

And so the empire has been fighting back ever since; the minute Trump came down that escalator, the alarm bells started ringing, and white blood cells of the Deep State gathered to attack the intruder. As we’ve seen, crucial to #TheResistance has been the shameful participation of the intelligence agencies, primarily the CIA and the FBI, whose former heads—John Brennan and James Comey—have mounted a relentless Twitter campaign against Trump. Both men have long been a disgrace to their agencies, but their reputations, such as they are, are now permanently besmirched by their dog-in-the-manger behavior.

One of the critical steps in hobbling the new president was the last-minute order by the Obama administration to widen the distribution lists of the NSA intercepts of American citizens, thus allowing many more officials to request the “unmasking” of often-innocents caught up in the web of the National Security Agency’s Black Widow. And among them, very likely, was Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn. As I wrote at PJ Media on February 14, 2017:

With the resignation of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in the face of a howling media mob, the knives are now out not only for other administration officials, but for President Trump himself. Make no mistake about what’s happening here: this is a rolling coup attempt, organized by elements of the intelligence community, particularly CIA and NSA, abetted by Obama-era holdovers in the understaffed Justice Department (Sally Yates, take a bow) and the lickspittles of the leftist media, all of whom have signed on with the “Resistance” in order to overturn the results of the November election.

Mike Flynn, a good man who saw the enemy clearly, and had the courage to name it, saw Russia not as an enemy but a geopolitical adversary with whom we could make common cause against Islam—and who also vowed to shake up a complacent and malfeasant IC—was its first scalp, and an object lesson to new CIA Director Mike Pompeo should he have any reformist notions.

Welcome to the Deep State, the democracy-sapping embeds at the heart of our democracy who have not taken the expulsion of the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party lightly. They realize that the Trump administration poses a mortal threat to their hegemony, and so have enlisted an army of Democrats, some Republicans, the “neverTrumpumpkin” conservative die-hards, leftist thugs, Black Lives Matter and anybody else they can blackmail, browbeat or enlist. They mean business

There’s been a good deal of shouting this week about Stefan Halper, the agent provocateur and FBI “informant” who insinuated himself into the Trump campaign and kicked off a tail-chasing disinformation operation involving Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of this incipient tragedy. And much has been made—especially by the Democrats and their shills in the media—about Halper having ties to various Republican administrations, including those of Nixon, Ford, and Ronald Reagan.

So if he was spying on the Trump campaign, something must have been amiss—right?

Wrong. Halper’s connections to past GOP administrations, plural, are unimportant. Rather it’s his links to one particular Republican president that should concern us. Follow the bouncing ball:

The man who introduced Halper to the intelligence community was his former father-in-law, a CIA analyst and high-ranking official named Ray Cline, who remains to this day something of a legend at the Agency. As the head of the Directorate of Intelligence, Cline was intimately involved in both the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis during the Kennedy administration; although he left Langley in 1969, he continued in the intelligence business both at the State Department and as an academic at Georgetown; but once an Agency man, always an Agency man.

And while Halper was certainly associated with the Republican presidents named above, the one he was closest to was… George H. W. Bush, whose campaign he joined in 1980, when Bush was vying with Reagan for the GOP nomination. But it’s Bush’s previous job that’s of interest here:

G.H.W. Bush became Director of Central Intelligence on Jan. 30, 1976, and stayed in the job for a year, until Jimmy Carter took office. Although Reagan defeated him for the nomination in 1980, he was finagled into putting Bush on the ticket, and thus begat, unwittingly, the Bush dynasty:

George Bush was picked at the very last moment and largely by a combination of chance and some behind-the-scenes maneuvering. Many Reagan advisers have claimed a deal was never close. The post-convention media commentary has largely reflected this view. In fact, Meese and Deaver have gone so far as to declare that Bush was their first choice all along. I take exception to their account…

There was no question that a Bush candidacy would be a hard sell. Among Reagan’s advisers, Nofziger and Casey viewed Bush as a liberal, and others were almost unanimously against him, some even contemptuous… Of the Reagan inner circle, I had the clearest channel to Bush and knew him the best.

Shortly before 7:30, I reached Stefan Halper, a Bush aide. Talking to him from the nearly empty suite, I asked him, in as circumspect a manner as possible, to seek Bush’s assurance that he could support the platform ”with no exceptions.” Halper knew what I meant: Was Bush interested in the job?

At precisely 11:38, the phone was in Reagan’s hand; though they barely knew each other, Reagan dove right in. ‘”George,” he said warmly, “I would like to go over there and tell them that I am recommending you for vice president…” We could hear Bush agreeing at the other end. Reagan then left for the convention center where, shortly after midnight, he took the podium to praise Ford and then to announce his running mate, George Bush.

The author of this account? Richard V. Allen, who served as Reagan’s first national security adviser.

The deep state looks after its own. And this is why—whether “Republicans” or “Democrats”—the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party hates Donald J. Trump.

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