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This is an ambitious, meticulous examination of how U.S. foreign policy since the 1960s has led to partial or total cover-ups of past domestic criminal acts, including, perhaps, the catastrophe of 9/11. Peter Dale Scott, whose previous books have investigated CIA involvement in southeast Asia, the drug wars, and the Kennedy assassination, here probes how the policies of presidents since Nixon have augmented the tangled bases for the 2001 terrorist attack. Scott shows how America's expansion into the world since World War II has led to momentous secret decision making at high levels. He demonstrates how these decisions by small cliques are responsive to the agendas of private wealth at the expense of the public, of the democratic state, and of civil society. He shows how, in implementing these agendas, U.S. intelligence agencies have become involved with terrorist groups they once backed and helped create, including al Qaeda.
Excellent, but above the capability of average Americans
| Customer Rating:  | | Very good, thorough, thoughtful analysis - not a wild-eyed conspiracty theorist, he's a respectable professor. I wish average people could/would read books such as this, but it's really not possible if you have the sound-bit mental capacity of a flea with ADD. Too bad. We might not have gotten into this mess. But the Karl Roves have had this figured out for a long time -- make the people too stupid to think independently or care - works like a charm (if you're of the Goebbels or Cheney or Machiavelli persuasion). |
outstanding and inspirational
| Customer Rating: | Professor Scott, in his book "The Road to 9/11" provides a detailed analysis and discussion of contradictions in the 9/11 timelines, the reports, the inquiries ... In this regard, I believe that Scott writes in a manner that is quite easy to follow. It is well-written and superb in conclusions. I regret that it might have been more comprehensive - although, it introduces topics, such as the history of and manner of operations of the continuity of government.
In the concluding chapter, Scott rises to his highest potential, not only summarizing the events of that most horrific day, but, it offers the readers insights and arguments inspiring, at least, me, to seriously evaluate the credibility of statements prepared by the US federal government and examine the appropriateness of bottom-up movements to take back our government and return it to the people.
While the first 15 or so chapters were superb, the final chapter is sublime. The is well worth the purchase price, new or used. |
Deep State Doublethink
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Somewhere between George Bush and Noam Chomsky, who believe the 9/11 Commission Report, and David Ray Griffin, who believes "the Bush-Cheney administration orchestrated 9/11" (Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11, 2006, p. vii-viii, ), there is Peter Dale Scott.
Scott doesn't say who did it, but as Ola Tunander puts it,
"Peter Dale Scott exposes a shadow world of oil, terrorism, drug trade and arms deals, of covert financing and parallel security structures - from the Cold War to today. He shows how such parallel forces of the United States have been able to dominate the agenda of the George W. Bush Administration, and that statements and actions made by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld before, during and after September 11, 2001, present evidence for an American "deep state" and for the so-called "Continuity of Government" in parallel to the regular "public state" ruled by law. Scott"s brilliant work not only reveals the overwhelming importance of these parallel forces but also presents elements of a strategy for restraining their influence to win back the "public state," the American democracy."
This is not very different from the more widely held "rogue network" theory described, for example, by Webster Tarpley, as "an outlaw network of high officials infesting the military and security apparatus of the United States and Great Britain." Tarpley sees this network as "ultimately dominated by Wall Street and City of London financiers," but many other candidates have been proposed (Bilderbergers, Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones, Illuminati, CFR, CIA, Mossad, Federal Reserve, etc.).
What these two points of view have in common, if indeed they are different at all, is the idea that there is, or still is, a "public state" (or "non-rogue" network) at all. This sounds comforting, to the extent that it encourages us to think that if we can just expose and get rid of the bad guys, we can "win the country back." The latter expression brings us all the way back into mainstream politics, where anyone dissatisfied with the status quo can complain about the country having gone to the dogs and being desperately in need of change.
It is along this continuum that we lose Chomsky and other advocates of a "structuralist" or "institutional" approach, which they oppose to "conspiracy theory" generally. The system cannot be fixed, they say, by superficial reforms, or by getting rid of the bad guys, because it is based on capitalist imperialism and the profit motive. Even if the "deep state" were exposed and removed, things would not improve significantly because the public state is the real killer. Chomsky's entire (political) oeuvre is dedicated to showing how the US government (and its allies) wreak havoc in the world, not by conspiracy but openly and consistently as the logical and predictable consequence of the economic system it serves.
I think both points of view are flawed. Why Chomsky et al. refuse to acknowledge the evidence for high-level government complicity in "deep state" events like the JFK assassination and 9/11 is simply not comprehensible. They fit easily (and politically very effectively) into a "structural" analysis: both events precipitated imperialist wars -- the latter undeniably, the former arguably.
On the other hand, is this notion of a coexisting deep and public state not precisely the state of doublethink Orwell described in 1984 -- "holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them" (Orwell, 1984)? How is it possible, logically, to have both at the same time? The concepts, it seems to me, are mutually exclusive. If the deep state exists, there can be no public state, by definition. The same is true of the rogue network. There can be no rogue network within the government controlling the government, because if that is the case the rogue network is the government.
This is not "semantics." Scott is not talking about the public face, the propaganda mask, that "bad" governments use to disguise their evil nature. There would be nothing new about that. He is talking about two governments ("states"), a good one and a bad one, that are so intertwined they can hardly be told apart, like Jekyll and Hyde. This is what Scott's oeuvre is all about -- showing us how closely intertwined they are. My problem with this is that precisely because they are so intertwined, I see no point in trying to distinguish them.
Worse, Scott's theory in the end exonerates the very institutions (CIA, FBI, Military Intelligence, etc.) he impugns. Like his friend John Newman, who can present a mountain of evidence proving that Oswald was a CIA agent without implicating the CIA as an institution, Scott does not locate the deep state in the CIA or any other government agency, or in the government at all, since the "overworld" extends far beyond the US government into organized crime, international banking and finance, transnational corporations, foreign intelligence agencies, etc. Thus "9/11 was an inside job," for Scott, does not mean the (US) government did it. Ditto for JFK, and all other "deep events."
As long as this doublethink holds, one is paralyzed. One cannot blame the government, or agencies of the government, because they didn't do it. Despite the overwhelming evidence tying them to all sorts of misdeeds, they are innocent as institutions because they are, after all, part of the "public state." This is where Newman leaves us, and it is where Scott leaves us. Maybe there is something about being a former intelligence officer (Newman) or a (Canadian) diplomat (Scott) that prevents them from taking the final, logical step, which I see as inevitable. If everything, or even half, of what they say is true, the government did do it, and only the government can solve the so-called "mysteries" and rectify the situation, whereupon it follows that we must try to remake the government into a true "res publica." Rather than exonerate the CIA as an institution, for example, it should be completely reformed (or abolished) as an institution. Since this can probably not be done without reforming the overarching institution, the government, of which it is a part, we can now rejoin Chomsky et al. in calling for fundamental change. I wonder if Maj. Newman and Prof. Scott would be with us on that one.
Michael D. Morrissey
August 26, 2008
http://www.mdmorrissey.info/deepstate
There is also a useful discussion at http://www.911blogger.com/node/17364#comment |
Someone asked where was Cheney on 9-11?
| Customer Rating: | | See 'Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil' by Michael C. Ruppert and Catherine Austin Fitts |
Very useful study of the US state
| Customer Rating: | The American author Peter Dale Scott shows how the richest 1% control key covert parts of the US state, including the Pentagon and the CIA. The private power of this military-financial complex has been secretly growing ever since President Truman founded the CIA. The US state serves the class interests of Wall Street's owners, not the national interest.
The US state is becoming more repressive: in 1970, 31% of California's budget went to higher education and 4% to prisons, by 2005, 12% and 20% respectively.
Scott shows how the US state built up fundamentalist Islam. From the 1950s, the CIA, allied with MI6, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, used the mullahs and the Muslim Brotherhood against secular nationalism across the Middle East. Later the CIA outsourced its operations to MI6, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the Saudis, the Shah, the French intelligence service, Egypt and Morocco. In Latin America, the US state backed the fascist Operation Condor run by the military dictatorships of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay, funded by South Korea, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia.
Scott describes how the US and British states have fomented wars across Asia. From 1986, the CIA, MI6 and Pakistan's intelligence service launched guerrilla attacks from Afghanistan into Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In 1988 the US and Pakistani states promised to end military aid to the mujehadin when Soviet forces left Afghanistan; Thatcher and Bush ensured that they broke that promise.
Scott shows how the drive for oil determines much of US foreign policy. For example, in 1997, the Wall Street Journal stated, "The Taliban are the players most capable of achieving peace. Moreover, they are crucial to secure the country as a prime trans-shipment route for the export of Central Asia's vast oil, gas and other natural resources."
In sum, Scott shows how the US state is not a force for peace and progress, as Gordon Brown fondly believes, but backs war and reaction. Its ruling class wants to continue their disastrous attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan: it believes what Kissinger said in 2005, "Victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy."
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