March 23, 2017

Do John Podesta and Tony Podesta Have a Connection with Missing Child Madeleine McCann?



John Podesta

JP
Evil

American political consultant who served as White House Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton from October 20, 1998 - January 20, 2001; counselor to Obama from January 1, 2014 - February 13, 2015, and Hillary Clinton's campaign manager in 2016.  Skippy is a suspected pedophile as well.

Tony Podesta

Podesta
Evil

Tony Podesta is an American lobbyist best known for founding the Podesta Group. He has been named one of Washington's most powerful lobbyists and fundraisers.  Tony and his group are under federal investigation for compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

TSA and Airplanes

Anonymous
3 Nov 2017 - 5:33:30 PM

Where is John Podesta?
Where is Tony Podesta?
Did one or both escape the country and was let out?
WHERE IS BO?
WHERE WAS BO YESTERDAY?
What is the difference between commercial and private re: security clearance for departure?
Who is the TSA head?
Which party did he contribute to?
What is of particular interest when researching?
How does Homeland Security interact w/ TSA?
What updated post 9-11 protocols were put in place to prevent/stop inbound/outbound C-level targets?
What local airports are in close proximity to DC?
What happened shortly after 9-11 (specifically with all aircraft)?
Who was authorized to depart? ONLY 1 PLANE was authorized during this 'mandatory forced grounding'.
Who SPECIFICALLY authorized this?
What airport did the departure take place at?
Why is this relevant?
How does it tie together?
Podesta's plane has military escort (i.e. tag) and is being diverted (forced down).
Short delay.
This will be leaked.
Watch the news.
Have faith.
What fake news anchor will not be on air tonight?
Why is this relevant?
What was stated in the past?
Where did the $18b from Soros go?
Why?
Can it be used by bad actors (escape, bribes, rogue contractors, etc.)?
Slush fund?
Did the US gov't seize/stop/track other slush funds that prevent or create risk to operate?
Why did Jared Kushner travel to Saudi Arabia recently?
What is SA known for?
Where do the biggest donations originate from?
Why is this relevant?
What else is relevant w/ SA?
Safe harbor?
Port of transfer?
Why was there a recent smear campaign against JK and POTUS?
Why is the timing important?
Who released the article?
The council of Wizards & Warlocks cannot be defeated.
Nice view up here.
Q

Pedogate / Human Trafficking

Pedogate is child trafficking and pedophilia that is rampant among elites in government, Hollywood and elsewhere.  It also covers child abductions (Haiti / Red Cross) for satanic rituals and human sacrifice (Epstein Island).  The pedo networks are being dismantled by POTUS and allies world wide (3,000+ children saved in Saudi Arabia alone).  Adam Schiff's district in CA is a hot spot for child trafficking in the USA.  The Clinton Foundation is also linked to human trafficking worldwide.

Hollywood / Stars

Hollywood is an extension of Project Mockingbird (CIA brainwashing / psyop).  Hollywood helps shape the D's narrative along with the mainstream media (MSM).  Movies are made to glorify past events and whitewash any wrongdoing.  Hollywood is filled with abused/enslaved children who grew up in the system.  They thought the SHEEP (general population) would follow the stars.

North Korea Not Run by Kim

Anonymous
1 Nov 2017 - 2:13:10 AM

Some things must remain classified to the very end. NK is not being run by Kim; he’s an actor in the play. Who is the director? The truth would sound so outrageous most Americans would riot, revolt, reject, etc.

The pedo networks are being dismantled.

The child abductions for satanic rituals (i.e. Haiti and other 3rd world countries) are paused (not terminated until players in custody).

We pray every single day for God’s guidance and direction as we are truly up against pure evil.



North Korea

North Korea (NK) was not run by Kim Jung-un.  NK was a CIA black ops site.  NK was used by the Cabal/NWO as leverage over other countries and for protection. The NK nuclear threat was real (NK had miniaturization tech in 2004 and ICBM tech in 2009).  NK received uranium via the Uranium One scandal.  NK received missile/nuke tech from Operation Merlin (Nasa/SpaceX/SAPs) and received funding as part of the Iran deal.  NK was to be the war engine to ignite World War III.  This was the biggest cover-up in our history and POTUS stopped it ALL.  NK is now FREED from CIA control and on the path to peace!

Kim Jong-un

Kim
Flipped/Freed

Kim Jong-un is a North Korean politician serving as Supreme Leader of North Korea since 2011 and Leader of the Workers' Party of Korea since 2012.  Kim was freed from CIA control in 2017 and is now making amends with POTUS and the whole world.



The revelation that pedophile Clement Freud was in Praia da Luz the year Madeleine went missing, and is now named as a child abuser, will be a 'shock' to the McCanns. A source close to the couple said: 'It certainly raises a lot of questions. They will be appalled to hear the details.' [Source]

By Angie, Victurus Libertas


Image result for madeleine mccannI would like to take a moment to thank all of the followers of Victurus Libertas.  Thank you for all of your information, all of your help in researching, all of your comments and suggestions.  I got part of the following information from a follower of VL on Facebook.  It was further verified by an insider and more information has been added by other insiders, as well.

This may blow your mind.  Of all the conspiracies the “conspiracy theorists” have come up with in the past several years, they never even came up with anything CLOSE to the reality of what is really going on-  worldwide.

From Wikileaks, we have learned that it is very likely John Podesta (Hillary’s long time friend and currently her campaign manager) and brother, Tony Podesta, are actively very involved in a child sex ring that is literally world wide.  The leaked emails reveal numerous conversations among multiple high up politicians, elites and world figures using code names for “little girls”, “young girls”, “little boys”, “young boys”, “people of ethnicity”, “sperm” and other disgusting sexual oriented words.

Those things along with many other clues from Wikileaks, NYPD and the FBI point to child sex trafficking- possibly including kidnapping and murdering of children for ritualistic purposes.




Interesting Photo Has Emerged

I know that was a long introduction, but I just wanted to make sure everyone is caught up, and it allowed me to explain how we arrived to this point.  I received this picture from a VL follower on FB:

The picture to the left is allegedly Podesta with aged Minvolving a child named Madeleine Beth McCann, who has been missing from Portugal since the evening of May 3, 2007, only days after her 4th birthday… and John Podesta, pictured next to the girl, who looks very similar to the progressive pictures the police have released.

Abduction of Madeleine McCann

According to progressive police sketches, the picture to the right is what Age progression MMadeleine may have looked like in 2013.

According to information online:

Madeleine Beth McCann (born 12 May 2003) disappeared on the evening of 3 May 2007 from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, a resort in the Algarve region of Portugal, sparking what one newspaper called “the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history”. Her whereabouts remain unknown.

Madeleine was on holiday from the UK with her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, her younger twin siblings, and a group of family friends and their children. She and the twins had been left asleep at 20:30 in the ground-floor apartment, while the McCanns and friends dined in a restaurant 50 metres (160 ft) away. The parents checked on the children throughout the evening, until Madeleine’s mother discovered she was missing at 22:00.

house Podestas stayed in

Clement Freud’s Praia da Luz Mansion

This is the $1 million mansion belonging to Clement Freud, that sits only 1/3 of a mile from where Madeleine was abducted.   While searching for their daughter, the McCann’s were invited to this house many times by Freud, claiming it would get them out of the glaring media.

Freud reportedly wrote the McCann’s a letter, inviting them for lunch at the villa in July 2007:
“I have a house in P da L,” he wrote. “Been ashamed of the intrusion into your lives by our media and if you would care to come to lunch/dinner at any time before Wednesday next, do ring and let me know. I cook decent meals.”

 At one of their visits to the mansion, Mrs. McCann has been quoted as saying:  “He gave me one of his looks and a giant glass of brandy, and managed to get a smile out of me with his greeting: ‘So Kate, which of the devout Catholic, alcoholic, depressed, nymphomaniac parts is correct?’

map location of home

Freud’s Kidnappings and Molestations

Freud’s mansion’s location to where Madeleine was abducted is shown on the map to the right.

Later, at least 3 women began coming out with stories of Freud abusing them. The women Freud molested have horrific stories of physical molestation beginning when they were just 10, 11 and 14 years old.

One of Freud’s victims, Vicky Hayes, has claimed Freud groomed her from the age of 14, and at the age of 17 he violently raped her. She said he plied her with champagne and took her virginity. Mrs Hayes gave her horrific account to a local news station, where she recalled being “paralyzed with fear” when the manipulative abuser raped her, then callously advised her to “ring me” if she found out she was pregnant.

She was very alarmed when she realized Freud’s connection to the Madeleine case, after she read about it in a book Kate McCann wrote. She reported her concerns to her local police force in Suffolk, and her son wrote to the Metropolitan Police to pass on his mother’s account and concerns over Freud’s connection to the McCann’s. They received no response, according to TheDailyMail.com.

One of the women to accuse Freud, Sylvia Woosley—who claims Freud kidnapped and began molesting her at the tender age of 10 years old—said she “would like to just return to the child I was before I was molested  physically”.  Sylvia was later brought up as his daughter and invited into his marital bed alongside his actress wife Jill. 

Freud later also lured a 14-year-old to his home, got her drunk and molested her in the bathroom, according to one of the women.

A former British ambassador has now revealed he has been approached by several people making further claims of sexual abuse by Clement Freud, amid fears the MP could have sexually abused dozens more children, according to The Independent.

Police in Suffolk have confirmed the now-known Pedaphile, Clement Freud, was out of the country when Madeleine was abducted.  However, his home had been loaned to friends of his—John and Tony Podesta.

Police Sketch

Here is a police sketch of Madeleine’s abductors:



Do these guys look familiar at all?

John and Tony Podesta?

How about this?

Tony next to sketch
John Podesta next to sketch

Do you see a resemblance at all to either one?

Podestas with sketches       Tony Podesta mole

There is even a matching mole on Tony Podesta and the police sketch, as pointed out in the second picture/sketch.

Confirmed FBI Anon Information

One of our FBI insiders can confirmed the Intelligence community  indicates John and Tony Podesta were in Praia da Luz,  Portugal on May 3rd 2007– the day Madaline McCann vanished.

The Podesta brothers were staying with a friend named “Clem”. Clement Freud, the grandson of psychopathology sex expert Dr. Sigmund Freud, who was known to be a pedophile. This is a quote from our insider:  Of greater interest is that fact that Freud owned a villa in Praia da Luz.”

Now take a look once again at the first photo posted above with John Podesta, sitting with several others in what appears to be a family card game, with the girl to his right:


Image result for madeleine mccann


Distance from 5a to the Freud residence, ~1200 yards/1.1 km by foot.

In this picture of the McCanns jogging, they have just passed Freud's villa.

http://www.mccannfiles.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/zzkgjog2007d.jpg


Purple = McCann's apartment; Green = Smith Sighting; Red = Clement's Villa

Madeleine McCann may have been taken to a luxury villa just half a mile from where she was abducted, Portuguese detectives were told

By James Murray and Ted Jeory, express.co
May 24, 2009

Suspicions were raised because of the behaviour of the people who rented the £1million villa and because video cameras were reportedly seen there along with pictures of children on a wall, the Sunday Express has learned.

Our revelations come as West Yorkshire police prepare to fly to Germany to question 64-year-old convicted paedophile Raymond Hewlett over a sex attack on a girl 25 years ago.

Retired detectives working for Kate and Gerry McCann are also hoping to interview Hewlett to ask him directly whether he knows anything about three-year-old Madeleine’s abduction.

Hewlett is in intensive care at a German hospital recovering from an operation for throat cancer. In the last 24 hours his condition has worsened and there are concerns he may have only days to live.

If well enough, it is expected he will be asked if he ever met paedophiles in the Algarve town of Praia da Luz around the time Madeleine vanished.

One theory the McCanns’ investigators are examining is whether there was a paedophile ring operating in the area two years ago.

The Sunday Express has been conducting intensive inquiries in the resort town and asked scores of people if they saw anyone acting suspiciously.

One elderly British resident told us both she and a friend, a retired British woman detective, went to Portuguese police about a couple who rented the villa, which has its own swimming pool.

The resident told us: “I used to meet up with the retired detective to walk our dogs down by the seafront. Both of us became concerned about a couple aged about 30 who rented the villa.

“What struck us was that they drove a very tatty, British-registered small red saloon car. It was one those vehicles you would normally see on a gypsy camp, not going in and out of a very expensive villa.

“We only saw them coming and going in the car and not walking about, which is odd given the location of the villa. We both got the impression they were trying to keep a low profile.’’

Another source said that after Maddie disappeared, search teams combed the seafront, where luxury villas stand next to large areas of barren land.

Anglican priest Paul Luckman, owner and publisher of Portugal News, said: “The location and description of that villa mentioned by your source fits the one that a searcher told me about.

“The searcher told me the villa was empty and somehow they got inside some weeks after Madeleine disappeared.

“The search dog handler said the villa had a room with a kind of amateur studio with video equipment and cameras with children’s toys and pictures of children on the wall.

“He felt it was something to do with paedophiles. He told the police and they seemed to know something about it, but we don’t think they took it any further.”

The Sunday Express took him to the villa and he confirmed that it fits the description and location of the one he was told about.

Although we know where it is, we are not naming the villa for legal reasons as we have been unable to locate the owner.

The British woman resident said: “I know the owner was contacted after we raised our concerns with the police.

"The person was angry because she said she did not know the people who rented it and was annoyed about being contacted by detectives.

"We heard nothing more about it. The day after Maddie disappeared the couple moved out and we didn’t see them again.

“There was an older woman in a very expensive car who visited them during their stay.”

The McCanns’ private investigators have been conducting surveillance on several properties for some time. Retired det­ective inspector Dave Edgar returned from Portugal on Friday night and is pursuing a number of leads he is not prepared to discuss.

Meanwhile, paedophile Hewlett is said to be suffering internal bleeding.

A doctor at the Aachen hospital where he is being treated said: “He is very poorly. Fluid has been seeping into his lungs. He cannot speak. The next few days will be critical.”

Connections between Podesta's brothers and Freud's brother: The Madeleine Mc Cann story (pizzagate)

By Kodo, Voat.co
December 3, 2016

I can't post in my thread anymore. Can a mod explain please? => Thanks to HumbleInfoFarmer for the answer :)

To the point : I think one of the key to pizzagate is connecting Clement Freud to the Podesta brothers, because it will link them to the McCann story.

So far I could just find that an anon FBI informant connected them:

One of our FBI insiders can confirmed the Intelligence community indicates John and Tony Podesta were in Praia da Luz, Portugal on May 3rd 2007– the day Madeleine McCann vanished. The Podesta brothers were staying with a friend named “Clem.” Clement Freud, the grandson of psychopathology sex expert Dr. Sigmund Freud, who was known to be a pedophile

Lucian Freud (the brother) is an artist that painted this. I have seen this during my pizzagate investigation but I can't recall where, please help me out. Is it in Tony's art collection?

Lucian Freud is married to an Epstein, daughter of Jacob. Is there a link betweeen Jacob Epstein and Jeffrey?

Matthew Freud, Clement's son, is in Epstein's black book.

Gerry McCann spent 5 days in Washington 2 month after Maddie's disappearance (22 to 26 July). He met Ernie Allen, CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Is there a connection between Ernie Allen and Podesta?

Thanks a lot to Lostandfound who pointed out that Sarah Latham (Podesta's chief of staff) was PR director at Freud Communication run by Matthew Freud!

This is on going, I'll update with my findings.

[–] Gothamcity

Rupert Murdochs daughter is married to Matthew Freud. Holy crap I didn't know that Epstein family was married in to the Freuds too! Also, Nicole Kidman is godmother to some of Ruperts grandchildren. Her dad was accused of being a massive pedo and there was a YouTube video where a woman says Anthony Kidman was involved in ritualistic abuse and murder and that Nicole was there as a child.

http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/satanic-pedophilia-network-exposed-australia/

[–] LostandFound

I might have something for you, I asks the same a few days ago and turned up one lead. From the post comments "I haven't found a direct connection. I have found one like this John Podesta->Sara Latham->Matthew Freud->Clement

Sara was John's cheif of staff

http://www.p2016.org/clinton/clintonorg.html

She was also the PR director at Freud Communications run by Freud's Grandson Matthew.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud_Communications

Clement is Freud's son.

So Podesta's chief of staff was Director level in Freud communications which is run by Matthew.

https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1440396

[–] Jem777

I am the poster who tied all these people together earlier regarding McCann. Freud Podesta Epstein Soros Kidman etc. I originally posted awhile back about the Tavistock Institute this is the key or a major key. Formed during the end of WW11 known to have a history involving experiments. Numerous psychoanalysts originated here or have history here I. E. Freud. Scientists from Germany during that time from here. After the war brought to the USA continued some work "monarch program'. Secret societies. My last post on this was removed. FBIanon said this was one of the motherloadsbthe Tavistock Institute it's connections to the elite what it does in secret what it has done historically. Soros is a big part of this.

[–] 0101buckyballs0101

Podesta and Murdoch have ties to Azerbijan

http://azerireport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4338

"The Podesta Group, a D.C.-based lobbying and public relations outfit founded by Tony Podesta, brother of John Podesta, the current special advisor to the Obama administration, has been the registered agent of the Azerbaijani Embassy for several years. On January 1, 2014, the group inked a new agreement to receive $50,000 a month from the embassy, plus expenses to provide "strategic counsel to Azerbaijan on strengthening its ties to the United States government and institutions." This agreement, which was signed by Elin Suleymanov, the Azerbaijani ambassador to the United States, and Anthony Podesta, the head of the Podesta Group, was amended on April 15, 2014, to encompass "additional services" defined as performing "public relations services for Azerbaijan." It is good through July 14, 2014.

"Enter Matthew Freud, the son-in-law of Rupert Murdoch and head of the London-based PR firm Freud Communications. Having reportedly rejected contracts from Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi 10 times, and from ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak five times, Freud was clearly more amenable to a request for representation by the Azeri dauphine. In 2011, he organized what the British satirical weekly Private Eye called "a caviar-rich London party" to "launch" Aliyeva in British high society. Guests at this soirée included Lord Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair's onetime political svengali; Freud's wife and Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth; Lord Browne, the former head of BP; Ed Vaizey, the current British culture minister; Stuart Rose, formerly the top man at Marks & Spencer; and Evgeny Lebedev, the Russian oligarch proprietor of the Independent and Evening Standard newspapers."

Murdoch yacht Rosehearty

http://www.conspiracy-cafe.com/apps/blog/show/prev?from_id=7978088

"The Murdoch yacht is called Rosehearty. It flies the Portuguese flag."

Worth reading for extra context

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/04/the-strange-case-of-gordon-brown-and-the-mccanns/

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/06/clement-freud-part-downfall/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/14/how-clement-freud-invited-kate-and-gerry-mccann-for-lunch-after/

Vertical info on "Freud"

Matthew Freud went to school in Hampstead

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/8633155/Matthew-Freud-from-spiteful-schoolboy-to-super-schmoozer.html

"Rupert Murdoch’s son-in-law never ate chalk at our Hampstead prep school in the 1970s."

Freud's UK "roots" are in Hampstead

http://angirfana.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/hampstead-famous-jews-child-abuse.html

"Hampstead has a statue of Freud at the Tavistock Clinic; and the Freud Museum; and the Anna Freud Centre."

"Hampstead "just happens to be subject to a cover up

http://hampsteadcoverup.com/

http://angirfana.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/hampstead-scandal.html

Police investigating theory that Madeleine McCann was taken by paedophile ring

October 5, 2013  

Portugese detectives are now working on the theory that British paedophiles active in the resorts of the Algarve were responsible

Madeleine McCann was snatched by a paedophile ring, it was claimed yesterday after a fresh police probe.

A team of six Portuguese detectives are investigating the theory that the three-year-old girl was taken by a gang in the Algarve.

An unnamed source said in a Portuguese newspaper yesterday: “The work of the Policia Judiciaria inspectors is based on a line of investigation which points to paedophile rings in the Algarve.”

A number of convicted British paedophiles thought to have been in Portugal when Madeleine vanished are also believed to feature in a new list of 41 potential suspects drawn up by the Met.

Paedophile networks with UK connections are believed to have been operating in Portugal for years because of lax sex offence laws. It is one of only two countries in Europe without a sex offenders’ register.

The Portuguese claim comes after Met Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said he too has a new theory about Maddy’s disappearance.

Scotland Yard has raised hopes of a breakthrough after an unprecedented “targeted attack” on the phone data of holidaymakers from 31 countries in the Praia da Luz area on May 3, 2007, when she went missing.

They have found three more potential suspects than before.

Kate McCann wrote of her fear that her daughter was KIDNAPPED by a PAEDPHILE in her 2011 book.

She ACCUSSED Portuguese police of covering up a series of child abuse cases before Maddy vanished.

The McCanns were first warned of an alarming number of Algarve incidents by British consul Bill Henderson.

Kate discovered five cases of British children being sexually abused in their beds while on holiday.

She wrote: “It broke my heart to read the terrible accounts of devastated parents and the experiences of their poor children. What these cases do demonstrate however, is that British tourists in holiday accommodation were being targeted.

“It is so hard not to scream from the rooftops about how these crimes appear to have been brushed under the carpet.”

An artist’s impression of a man who may have abducted Madeleine was released six months after she went missing. The image, drawn by an FBI-trained forensic artist, shows a dark-haired man walking with a child cradled in his arms.

Suspect: this image of a man carrying a child was released after Madeleine went missing
Kate and Gerry posed with a computer-generated image of what Madeleine might look like on the fifth anniversary of her disappearance last year.

The picture, created with the McCann family, shows how she would look aged nine.

The couple will appear in a TV appeal in light of “fresh, substantive material’ unearthed by the Metropolitan Police probe.

And police are expected to reveal a new theory that they say will give a “different understanding” about the case.

The Crimewatch programme, which will be screened on October 14, will feature a reconstruction of the events on the night of Madeleine’s disappearance.

Equivalent programmes in Germany and the Netherlands, where most other tourists in Praia da Luz come from, will also broadcast the material.

Madeleine McCann 'was snatched by Algarve-based paedophile ring', claims Portuguese paper
By Daily Mail (article was taken offline shortly after publication)


October 2, 2013
  • Maddie 'was snatched by Algarve-based paedophile ring', Portuguese paper claims as police contact ALL tourists staying in Praia da Luz when she disappeared
  • Correio da Manha says new inquiry 'points to paedophile ring in Algarve'
  • A team of six Portuguese detectives are now said to be working on theory
  • Met officers now plan to make a list of everyone at resort at the time
  • Anyone at Praia da Luz resort in 2007 may get a call from officers
  • A £5m case review lead to a 'new theory' about to be aired on Crimewatch
  • Appeal on October 14 will be first time McCann's and Portuguese police have stood side by side since parents were named as suspects in case
Portuguese police are working on the theory that Madeleine McCann was snatched by a paedophile ring based in the Algarve region, it was claimed today.

The daily newspaper Correio da Manha says a team of six Portuguese detectives are making further inquiries based on the premise that the three-year-old from Leicestershire was taken by a professional gang working in the popular tourist region.

The report quoted unnamed sources saying: 'The work of the Policia Judiciaria inspectors is based on a line of investigation which points to paedophile rings operating in the Algarve.'

The theory was put forward as it emerged that thousands of tourists worldwide are to get a call from police investigating the little girl's disappearance in 2007.

Scotland Yard is trawling through phone records of holidaymakers from more than 30 countries who were staying in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz when the three-year-old went missing during a family holiday.

The mammoth task comes ahead of a television appeal by Kate and Gerry McCann in light of ‘fresh, substantive material’ unearthed by the Metropolitan Police investigation into their missing daughter.

Detectives revealed yesterday that they have an important ‘new theory’ which is due to be unveiled in a BBC Crimewatch appeal featuring a reconstruction of her disappearance.

The appeal on October 14, which will be first time that the McCanns have stood shoulder to shoulder with police since they were wrongly declared suspects by the Portuguese investigation, is seen as highly symbolic.

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, who is leading the Met’s review into the case, claims they have identified ‘genuinely new’ leads and ‘substantially different’ material after a two-year, £5million review.

Gerry McCann has been in Lisbon this week to pursue a libel action against a former Portuguese police chief who claims he and his wife covered up the girl's death

He believes a vast database of mobile phone traffic in Praia da Luz around the time she went missing could hold the key to the mystery.

Detectives want to use the data to build a comprehensive picture of who was in the resort for the first time.

They have sent letters of request to 31 countries asking police to help identify thousands of holidaymakers, local residents and workers visiting or living in the village from the vast phone log collated between April 28 and May 3, 2007.

Officials in mostly northern European countries, including Portugal, are being asked to check criminal records and evidence logs for the mobile phone numbers, although police admit it may be virtually impossible to trace the owners of pay as you go phones six years on.

Detectives hope the log will be the source of new witnesses as well as identifying any known sex offenders in the area at the time, even though 99 per cent of those numbers are likely to represent innocent holidaymakers and locals.

The data shows a timeline of calls made and their destination, although it does not include text messages.

The log was recovered by the Portuguese police although it has never been properly analysed due to the sheer scale of the task.

Praia da Luz has a population of more than 3,000 residents living over an area of eight square miles, but in the summer months that number swells as mainly British, German and Dutch tourists flock to the popular beach resort.

Police say they are having to do it ‘the hard way' comparing the inquiry, named Operation Grange, to ‘finding a needle in a haystack’, as more traditional methods of capturing evidence such as CCTV were not available in the coastal town.

Mr Redwood said: ‘We are doing it the hard way quite frankly. This is not just a general trawl, this is a targeted attack in relation to that database to see if it assists us in finding out what happened to Madeleine McCann at that time.

‘A lot of the focus is not necessarily to find a suspect, but also witnesses. We’re trying to understand who was there for a range of reasons.

‘If you were in Praia da Luz at the time, you may get a routine phone call from the police.’

Madeleine went missing from an apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007, as her parents dined with friends at a nearby tapas restaurant.

The shambolic Portuguese inquiry into her disappearance was shelved in 2008.

But in a crucial step forward, Portuguese police have now appointed six detectives to help British police investigate 41 ‘persons of interest’ scattered across Europe.

Fifteen of those suspects are British, but detectives say they are close to eliminating three individuals from their inquiries.

The new team of senior detectives operating from Faro have been given permission to interview suspects, take statements and conduct their own inquires, although the Portuguese have refused to reopen their own investigation.

Scotland Yard began a Home Office-funded review in 2011 following the intervention of David Cameron.

Operation Grange, which is now a full-scale investigation, has amassed 39,148 documents, of which 21,614 have been processed so far, relating to information from Portuguese Police, eight private investigators and other British forces, such as Leicestershire Police.

More than 4,900 fresh lines of inquiry have been created.

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, of the Metropolitan Police, said officers had a ‘new theory’ about her disappearance.

On the forthcoming Crimewatch appeal he said: ‘There is new information not previously presented. Fresh, substantive material upon which to make an appeal.

‘It’s substantially different. It’s not just a bland ‘can you help us’ appeal, there is some different material and a different understanding to be presented.’

He also said equivalent Crimewatch programmes made in Holland, Germany and possibly Ireland, will be broadcast.

Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns’ spokesman, said: ‘Kate and Gerry remain very grateful to the Met for the work they are doing in liaison with the Portuguese authorities.

‘Their forthcoming appearance on Crimewatch is an important stage in that ongoing process. Naturally, they hope it will lead to information that will provide the breakthrough to finding Madeleine.’ 

Related:

Sir Clement Freud exposed as a paedophile as police urged to probe Madeleine McCann links

President Trump Press Conference

March 22, 2020 

In the press conference Trump announced: 'We were able to get a young woman released from a certain area who was being horribly accosted, horribly treated.'

He said that General Mark Milley, the highest-ranking officer in the US military, 'took care of it' and that he 'does not play games.'

'We went in and we got her out, but that was rough stuff,' he said. 

Trump refused to go into more detail, saying that it was being kept 'somewhat private.'

He said: 'We got her out and she's OK, and she's back with her parents.'

He thanked Milley 'and all the people involved and people who went in to get her.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8141185/President-Trump-says-army-rescued-horribly-treated-woman-trapped-overseas-amid-coronavirus-crisis.html

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

March 22, 2020

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  Just before we begin, I want to mention we’re working very hard — long — on getting a young group of people out of Peru.  We’ve removed some, and the rest are being removed with the cooperation of the Peruvian government.  

And we’re also dealing with Honduras on getting some people out that got caught up.  And we are working on that very well — again, with the Honduran government’s work.  And they’re working with us, so I appreciate that.

We have a couple of other locations that we’ll report to you, and we were able to get a young woman released from a certain area who was being horribly accosted, horribly treated.  And we spoke to General Milley.  General Milley took care of it.  We went in and we got her out.  And we’ll — we’ll report further on that one.  But it’s — that was rough stuff.

I want to thank General Milley.  I want to thank all of the people that were involved and the people that went in to get her.  I want to thank you very much.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-8/

Clinton Fixer John Podesta Lashes Out at President Trump For Attacking Crooked Tony Podesta

By Cristina Laila
February 12, 2020
John Podesta, a longtime Clinton fixer and brother to Tony Podesta, lashed out at President Trump Wednesday morning.

John Podesta is one of the dirtiest people in DC (and that’s saying a lot).

President Trump was on a rampage Tuesday night after Mueller’s prosecutors recommended Roger Stone serve 7-9 years in prison for process crimes.

Shortly after President Trump TORCHED Demon Judge Amy Berman Jackson, he turned his ire toward Tony Podesta.

John Podesta attacked Trump Wednesday morning and defended his crooked brother who was given immunity by Mueller and protected by the Deep State.

Here are the cold, hard facts on Tony Podesta:

In September, federal prosecutors ended their investigation into Tony Podesta for his Ukrainian lobbying efforts and failing to file a FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] form in a timely manner.

Tony Podesta, who was the chairman of the now-defunct Podesta Group, is a well-connected Democrat and brother to John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller also gave Tony Podesta immunity to testify against Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort.

“In other words, for a near identical crime, Bill and Hillary’s friend could escape and emerge completely unscathed while Paul Manafort may rot in jail. Only one of them made the mistake of chairing Donald Trump’s presidential campaign,” Tucker Carlson said in the summer of 2019.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/02/clinton-fixer-john-podesta-lashes-out-at-president-trump-for-attacking-crooked-tony-podesta/




BREAKING: Tony Podesta Creepy Photos Leaked!, uploaded by Black Pilled

March 8, 2017

Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State


Rome lived upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face. Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought out nothing but loads of dung. That was their return cargo. The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (1871)

There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power. [1]

During the last five years, the news media have been flooded with pundits decrying the broken politics of Washington. The conventional wisdom has it that partisan gridlock and dysfunction have become the new normal. That is certainly the case, and I have been among the harshest critics of this development. But it is also imperative to acknowledge the limits of this critique as it applies to the American governmental system. On one level, the critique is self-evident: In the domain that the public can see, Congress is hopelessly deadlocked in the worst manner since the 1850s, the violently rancorous decade preceding the Civil War.

Yes, there is 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…

As I wrote in The Party is Over, the present objective of congressional Republicans is to render the executive branch powerless, at least until a Republican president is elected (a goal that voter suppression laws in GOP-controlled states are clearly intended to accomplish). President Obama cannot enact his domestic policies and budgets: Because of incessant GOP filibustering, not only could he not fill the large number of vacancies in the federal judiciary, he could not even get his most innocuous presidential appointees into office. Democrats controlling the Senate have responded by weakening the filibuster of nominations, but Republicans are sure to react with other parliamentary delaying tactics. This strategy amounts to congressional nullification of executive branch powers by a party that controls a majority in only one house of Congress.

Despite this apparent impotence, President Obama can liquidate American citizens without due processes, detain prisoners indefinitely without charge, conduct dragnet surveillance on the American people without judicial warrant and engage in unprecedented — at least since the McCarthy era — witch hunts against federal employees (the so-called “Insider Threat Program”). Within the United States, this power is characterized by massive displays of intimidating force by militarized federal, state and local law enforcement. Abroad, President Obama can start wars at will and engage in virtually any other activity whatsoever without so much as a by-your-leave from Congress, such as arranging the forced landing of a plane carrying a sovereign head of state over foreign territory. Despite the habitual cant of congressional Republicans about executive overreach by Obama, the would-be dictator, we have until recently heard very little from them about these actions — with the minor exception of comments from gadfly Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Democrats, save a few mavericks such as Ron Wyden of Oregon, are not unduly troubled, either — even to the extent of permitting seemingly perjured congressional testimony under oath by executive branch officials on the subject of illegal surveillance.

These are not isolated instances of a contradiction; they have been so pervasive that they tend to be disregarded as background noise. During the time in 2011 when political warfare over the debt ceiling was beginning to paralyze the business of governance in Washington, the United States government somehow summoned the resources to overthrow Muammar Ghaddafi’s regime in Libya, and, when the instability created by that coup spilled over into Mali, provide overt and covert assistance to French intervention there. At a time when there was heated debate about continuing meat inspections and civilian air traffic control because of the budget crisis, our government was somehow able to commit $115 million to keeping a civil war going in Syria and to pay at least £100m to the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters to buy influence over and access to that country’s intelligence. Since 2007, two bridges carrying interstate highways have collapsed due to inadequate maintenance of infrastructure, one killing 13 people. During that same period of time, the government spent $1.7 billion constructing a building in Utah that is the size of 17 football fields. This mammoth structure is intended to allow the National Security Agency to store a yottabyte of information, the largest numerical designator computer scientists have coined. A yottabyte is equal to 500 quintillion pages of text. They need that much storage to archive every single trace of your electronic life.

Yes, there is 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. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposĂ© of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.” All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude. [2]

How did I come to write an analysis of the Deep State, and why am I equipped to write it? As a congressional staff member for 28 years specializing in national security and possessing a top secret security clearance, I was at least on the fringes of the world I am describing, if neither totally in it by virtue of full membership nor of it by psychological disposition. But, like virtually every employed person, I became, to some extent, assimilated into the culture of the institution I worked for, and only by slow degrees, starting before the invasion of Iraq, did I begin fundamentally to question the reasons of state that motivate the people who are, to quote George W. Bush, “the deciders.”

Cultural assimilation is partly a matter of what psychologist Irving L. Janis called “groupthink,” the chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers. This syndrome is endemic to Washington: The town is characterized by sudden fads, be it negotiating biennial budgeting, making grand bargains or invading countries. Then, after a while, all the town’s cool kids drop those ideas as if they were radioactive. As in the military, everybody has to get on board with the mission, and questioning it is not a career-enhancing move. The universe of people who will critically examine the goings-on at the institutions they work for is always going to be a small one. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

A more elusive aspect of cultural assimilation is the sheer dead weight of the ordinariness of it all once you have planted yourself in your office chair for the 10,000th time. Government life is typically not some vignette from an Allen Drury novel about intrigue under the Capitol dome. Sitting and staring at the clock on the off-white office wall when it’s 11:00 in the evening and you are vowing never, ever to eat another piece of takeout pizza in your life is not an experience that summons the higher literary instincts of a would-be memoirist. After a while, a functionary of the state begins to hear things that, in another context, would be quite remarkable, or at least noteworthy, and yet that simply bounce off one’s consciousness like pebbles off steel plate: “You mean the number of terrorist groups we are fighting is classified?” No wonder so few people are whistle-blowers, quite apart from the vicious retaliation whistle-blowing often provokes: Unless one is blessed with imagination and a fine sense of irony, growing immune to the curiousness of one’s surroundings is easy. To paraphrase the inimitable Donald Rumsfeld, I didn’t know all that I knew, at least until I had had a couple of years away from the government to reflect upon it.

The Deep State does not consist of the entire government. It 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. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street. All these agencies are coordinated by the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council. Certain key areas of the judiciary belong to the Deep State, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose actions are mysterious even to most members of Congress. Also included are a handful of vital federal trial courts, such as the Eastern District of Virginia and the Southern District of Manhattan, where sensitive proceedings in national security cases are conducted. The final government component (and possibly last in precedence among the formal branches of government established by the Constitution) is a kind of rump Congress consisting of the congressional leadership and some (but not all) of the members of the defense and intelligence committees. The rest of Congress, normally so fractious and partisan, is mostly only intermittently aware of the Deep State and when required usually submits to a few well-chosen words from the State’s emissaries.

I saw this submissiveness on many occasions. One memorable incident was passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act of 2008. This legislation retroactively legalized the Bush administration’s illegal and unconstitutional surveillance first revealed by The New York Times in 2005 and indemnified the telecommunications companies for their cooperation in these acts. The bill passed easily: All that was required was the invocation of the word “terrorism” and most members of Congress responded like iron filings obeying a magnet. One who responded in that fashion was Senator Barack Obama, soon to be coronated as the presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. He had already won the most delegates by campaigning to the left of his main opponent, Hillary Clinton, on the excesses of the global war on terror and the erosion of constitutional liberties.

As the indemnification vote showed, the Deep State does not consist only of government agencies. What is euphemistically called “private enterprise” is an integral part of its operations. In a special series in The Washington Post called “Top Secret America,” Dana Priest and William K. Arkin described the scope of the privatized Deep State and the degree to which it has metastasized after the September 11 attacks. There are now 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances — a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government. While they work throughout the country and the world, their heavy concentration in and around the Washington suburbs is unmistakable: Since 9/11, 33 facilities for top-secret intelligence have been built or are under construction. Combined, they occupy the floor space of almost three Pentagons — about 17 million square feet. Seventy percent of the intelligence community’s budget goes to paying contracts. And the membrane between government and industry is highly permeable: The Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, is a former executive of Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the government’s largest intelligence contractors. His predecessor as director, Admiral Mike McConnell, is the current vice chairman of the same company; Booz Allen is 99 percent dependent on government business. These contractors now set the political and social tone of Washington, just as they are increasingly setting the direction of the country, but they are doing it quietly, their doings unrecorded in the Congressional Record or the Federal Register, and are rarely subject to congressional hearings.

Washington is the most important node of the Deep State that has taken over America, but it is not the only one. Invisible threads of money and ambition connect the town to other nodes. One is Wall Street, which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater. Should the politicians forget their lines and threaten the status quo, Wall Street floods the town with cash and lawyers to help the hired hands remember their own best interests. The executives of the financial giants even have de facto criminal immunity. On March 6, 2013, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder stated the following: “I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.” This, from the chief law enforcement officer of a justice system that has practically abolished the constitutional right to trial for poorer defendants charged with certain crimes. It is not too much to say that Wall Street may be the ultimate owner of the Deep State and its strategies, if for no other reason than that it has the money to reward government operatives with a second career that is lucrative beyond the dreams of avarice — certainly beyond the dreams of a salaried government employee. [3]

The corridor between Manhattan and Washington is a well trodden highway for the personalities we have all gotten to know in the period since the massive deregulation of Wall Street: Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner and many others. Not all the traffic involves persons connected with the purely financial operations of the government: In 2013, General David Petraeus joined KKR (formerly Kohlberg Kravis Roberts) of 9 West 57th Street, New York, a private equity firm with $62.3 billion in assets. KKR specializes in management buyouts and leveraged finance. General Petraeus’ expertise in these areas is unclear. His ability to peddle influence, however, is a known and valued commodity. Unlike Cincinnatus, the military commanders of the Deep State do not take up the plow once they lay down the sword. Petraeus also obtained a sinecure as a non-resident senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. The Ivy League is, of course, the preferred bleaching tub and charm school of the American oligarchy. [4]

Petraeus and most of the avatars of the Deep State — the White House advisers who urged Obama not to impose compensation limits on Wall Street CEOs, the contractor-connected think tank experts who besought us to “stay the course” in Iraq, the economic gurus who perpetually demonstrate that globalization and deregulation are a blessing that makes us all better off in the long run — are careful to pretend that they have no ideology. Their preferred pose is that of the politically neutral technocrat offering well considered advice based on profound expertise. That is nonsense. They are deeply dyed in the hue of the official ideology of the governing class, an ideology that is neither specifically Democrat nor Republican. Domestically, whatever they might privately believe about essentially diversionary social issues such as abortion or gay marriage, they almost invariably believe in the “Washington Consensus”: financialization, outsourcing, privatization, deregulation and the commodifying of labor. Internationally, they espouse 21st-century “American Exceptionalism”: the right and duty of the United States to meddle in every region of the world with coercive diplomacy and boots on the ground and to ignore painfully won international norms of civilized behavior. To paraphrase what Sir John Harrington said more than 400 years ago about treason, now that the ideology of the Deep State has prospered, none dare call it ideology. [5] That is why describing torture with the word “torture” on broadcast television is treated less as political heresy than as an inexcusable lapse of Washington etiquette: Like smoking a cigarette on camera, these days it is simply “not done.”

After Edward Snowden’s revelations about the extent and depth of surveillance by the National Security Agency, it has become publicly evident that Silicon Valley is a vital node of the Deep State as well. Unlike military and intelligence contractors, Silicon Valley overwhelmingly sells to the private market, but its business is so important to the government that a strange relationship has emerged. While the government could simply dragoon the high technology companies to do the NSA’s bidding, it would prefer cooperation with so important an engine of the nation’s economy, perhaps with an implied quid pro quo. Perhaps this explains the extraordinary indulgence the government shows the Valley in intellectual property matters. If an American “jailbreaks” his smartphone (i.e., modifies it so that it can use a service provider other than the one dictated by the manufacturer), he could receive a fine of up to $500,000 and several years in prison; so much for a citizen’s vaunted property rights to what he purchases. The libertarian pose of the Silicon Valley moguls, so carefully cultivated in their public relations, has always been a sham. Silicon Valley has long been tracking for commercial purposes the activities of every person who uses an electronic device, so it is hardly surprising that the Deep State should emulate the Valley and do the same for its own purposes. Nor is it surprising that it should conscript the Valley’s assistance.

Still, despite the essential roles of lower Manhattan and Silicon Valley, the center of gravity of the Deep State is firmly situated in and around the Beltway. The Deep State’s physical expansion and consolidation around the Beltway would seem to make a mockery of the frequent pronouncement that governance in Washington is dysfunctional and broken. That the secret and unaccountable Deep State floats freely above the gridlock between both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is the paradox of American government in the 21st century: drone strikes, data mining, secret prisons and Panopticon-like control on the one hand; and on the other, the ordinary, visible parliamentary institutions of self-government declining to the status of a banana republic amid the gradual collapse of public infrastructure.

The results of this contradiction are not abstract, as a tour of the rotting, decaying, bankrupt cities of the American Midwest will attest. It is not even confined to those parts of the country left behind by a Washington Consensus that decreed the financialization and deindustrialization of the economy in the interests of efficiency and shareholder value. This paradox is evident even within the Beltway itself, the richest metropolitan area in the nation. Although demographers and urban researchers invariably count Washington as a “world city,” that is not always evident to those who live there. Virtually every time there is a severe summer thunderstorm, tens — or even hundreds — of thousands of residents lose power, often for many days. There are occasional water restrictions over wide areas because water mains, poorly constructed and inadequately maintained, have burst. [6] The Washington metropolitan area considers it a Herculean task just to build a rail link to its international airport — with luck it may be completed by 2018.

It is as if Hadrian’s Wall was still fully manned and the fortifications along the border with Germania were never stronger, even as the city of Rome disintegrates from within and the life-sustaining aqueducts leading down from the hills begin to crumble. The governing classes of the Deep State may continue to deceive themselves with their dreams of Zeus-like omnipotence, but others do not. A 2013 Pew Poll that interviewed 38,000 people around the world found that in 23 of 39 countries surveyed, a plurality of respondents said they believed China already had or would in the future replace the United States as the world’s top economic power.

The Deep State is the big story of our time. It is the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism, the financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of a plutocratic social structure and political dysfunction. Washington is the headquarters of the Deep State, and its time in the sun as a rival to Rome, Constantinople or London may be term-limited by its overweening sense of self-importance and its habit, as Winwood Reade said of Rome, to “live upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face.” “Living upon its principal,” in this case, means that the Deep State has been extracting value from the American people in vampire-like fashion.

We are faced with two disagreeable implications. First, that the Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change. Second, that just as in so many previous empires, the Deep State is populated with those whose instinctive reaction to the failure of their policies is to double down on those very policies in the future. Iraq was a failure briefly camouflaged by the wholly propagandistic success of the so-called surge; this legerdemain allowed for the surge in Afghanistan, which equally came to naught. Undeterred by that failure, the functionaries of the Deep State plunged into Libya; the smoking rubble of the Benghazi consulate, rather than discouraging further misadventure, seemed merely to incite the itch to bomb Syria. Will the Deep State ride on the back of the American people from failure to failure until the country itself, despite its huge reserves of human and material capital, is slowly exhausted? The dusty road of empire is strewn with the bones of former great powers that exhausted themselves in like manner.

But, there are signs of resistance to the Deep State and its demands. In the aftermath of the Snowden revelations, the House narrowly failed to pass an amendment that would have defunded the NSA’s warrantless collection of data from US persons. Shortly thereafter, the president, advocating yet another military intervention in the Middle East, this time in Syria, met with such overwhelming congressional skepticism that he changed the subject by grasping at a diplomatic lifeline thrown to him by Vladimir Putin. [7]

Has the visible, constitutional state, the one envisaged by Madison and the other Founders, finally begun to reassert itself against the claims and usurpations of the Deep State? To some extent, perhaps. The unfolding revelations of the scope of the NSA’s warrantless surveillance have become so egregious that even institutional apologists such as Senator Dianne Feinstein have begun to backpedal — if only rhetorically — from their knee-jerk defense of the agency. As more people begin to waken from the fearful and suggestible state that 9/11 created in their minds, it is possible that the Deep State’s decade-old tactic of crying “terrorism!” every time it faces resistance is no longer eliciting the same Pavlovian response of meek obedience. And the American people, possibly even their legislators, are growing tired of endless quagmires in the Middle East.

But there is another more structural reason the Deep State may have peaked in the extent of its dominance. While it seems to float above the constitutional state, its essentially parasitic, extractive nature means that it is still tethered to the formal proceedings of governance. The Deep State thrives when there is tolerable functionality in the day-to-day operations of the federal government. As long as appropriations bills get passed on time, promotion lists get confirmed, black (i.e., secret) budgets get rubber-stamped, special tax subsidies for certain corporations are approved without controversy, as long as too many awkward questions are not asked, the gears of the hybrid state will mesh noiselessly. But when one house of Congress is taken over by tea party Wahhabites, life for the ruling class becomes more trying.

If there is anything the Deep State requires it is silent, uninterrupted cash flow and the confidence that things will go on as they have in the past. It is even willing to tolerate a degree of gridlock: Partisan mud wrestling over cultural issues may be a useful distraction from its agenda. But recent congressional antics involving sequestration, the government shutdown and the threat of default over the debt ceiling extension have been disrupting that equilibrium. And an extreme gridlock dynamic has developed between the two parties such that continuing some level of sequestration is politically the least bad option for both parties, albeit for different reasons. As much as many Republicans might want to give budget relief to the organs of national security, they cannot fully reverse sequestration without the Democrats demanding revenue increases. And Democrats wanting to spend more on domestic discretionary programs cannot void sequestration on either domestic or defense programs without Republicans insisting on entitlement cuts.

So, for the foreseeable future, the Deep State must restrain its appetite for taxpayer dollars. Limited deals may soften sequestration, but agency requests will not likely be fully funded anytime soon. Even Wall Street’s rentier operations have been affected: After helping finance the tea party to advance its own plutocratic ambitions, America’s Big Money is now regretting the Frankenstein’s monster it has created. Like children playing with dynamite, the tea party and its compulsion to drive the nation into credit default has alarmed the grown-ups commanding the heights of capital; the latter are now telling the politicians they thought they had hired to knock it off.

The House vote to defund the NSA’s illegal surveillance programs was equally illustrative of the disruptive nature of the tea party insurgency. Civil liberties Democrats alone would never have come so close to victory; tea party stalwart Justin Amash (R-MI), who has also upset the business community for his debt-limit fundamentalism, was the lead Republican sponsor of the NSA amendment, and most of the Republicans who voted with him were aligned with the tea party.

The final factor is Silicon Valley. Owing to secrecy and obfuscation, it is hard to know how much of the NSA’s relationship with the Valley is based on voluntary cooperation, how much is legal compulsion through FISA warrants and how much is a matter of the NSA surreptitiously breaking into technology companies’ systems. Given the Valley’s public relations requirement to mollify its customers who have privacy concerns, it is difficult to take the tech firms’ libertarian protestations about government compromise of their systems at face value, especially since they engage in similar activity against their own customers for commercial purposes. That said, evidence is accumulating that Silicon Valley is losing billions in overseas business from companies, individuals and governments that want to maintain privacy. For high tech entrepreneurs, the cash nexus is ultimately more compelling than the Deep State’s demand for patriotic cooperation. Even legal compulsion can be combatted: Unlike the individual citizen, tech firms have deep pockets and batteries of lawyers with which to fight government diktat.

This pushback has gone so far that on January 17, President Obama announced revisions to the NSA’s data collection programs, including withdrawing the agency’s custody of a domestic telephone record database, expanding requirements for judicial warrants and ceasing to spy on (undefined) “friendly foreign leaders.” Critics have denounced the changes as a cosmetic public relations move, but they are still significant in that the clamor has gotten so loud that the president feels the political need to address it.

When the contradictions within a ruling ideology are pushed too far, factionalism appears and that ideology begins slowly to crumble. Corporate oligarchs such as the Koch brothers are no longer entirely happy with the faux-populist political front group they helped fund and groom. Silicon Valley, for all the Ayn Rand-like tendencies of its major players, its offshoring strategies and its further exacerbation of income inequality, is now lobbying Congress to restrain the NSA, a core component of the Deep State. Some tech firms are moving to encrypt their data. High tech corporations and governments alike seek dominance over people though collection of personal data, but the corporations are jumping ship now that adverse public reaction to the NSA scandals threatens their profits.

The outcome of all these developments is uncertain. The Deep State, based on the twin pillars of national security imperative and corporate hegemony, has until recently seemed unshakable and the latest events may only be a temporary perturbation in its trajectory. But history has a way of toppling the altars of the mighty. While the two great materialist and determinist ideologies of the twentieth century, Marxism and the Washington Consensus, successively decreed that the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the market were inevitable, the future is actually indeterminate. It may be that deep economic and social currents create the framework of history, but those currents can be channeled, eddied, or even reversed by circumstance, chance and human agency. We have only to reflect upon defunct glacial despotisms such as the USSR or East Germany to realize that nothing is forever.

Throughout history, state systems with outsized pretensions to power have reacted to their environments in two ways. The first strategy, reflecting the ossification of its ruling elites, consists of repeating that nothing is wrong, that the status quo reflects the nation’s unique good fortune in being favored by God and that those calling for change are merely subversive troublemakers. As the French ancien rĂ©gime, the Romanov dynasty and the Habsburg emperors discovered, the strategy works splendidly for a while, particularly if one has a talent for dismissing unpleasant facts. The final results, however, are likely to be thoroughly disappointing. The second strategy is one embraced to varying degrees and with differing goals, by figures of such contrasting personalities as Mustafa Kemal AtatĂ¼rk, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle and Deng Xiaoping. They were certainly not revolutionaries by temperament; if anything, their natures were conservative. But they understood that the political cultures in which they lived were fossilized and incapable of adapting to the times. In their drive to reform and modernize the political systems they inherited, their first obstacles to overcome were the outworn myths that encrusted the thinking of the elites of their time.

As the United States confronts its future after experiencing two failed wars, a precarious economy and $17 trillion in accumulated debt, the national punditry has split into two camps. The first, the declinists, sees a broken, dysfunctional political system incapable of reform and an economy soon to be overtaken by China. The second, the reformers, offers a profusion of nostrums to turn the nation around: public financing of elections to sever the artery of money between the corporate components of the Deep State and financially dependent elected officials, government “insourcing” to reverse the tide of outsourcing of government functions and the conflicts of interest that it creates, a tax policy that values human labor over financial manipulation and a trade policy that favors exporting manufactured goods over exporting investment capital.
Mike Lofgren on the Deep State Hiding in Plain Sight

All of that is necessary, but not sufficient. The Snowden revelations (the impact of which have been surprisingly strong), the derailed drive for military intervention in Syria and a fractious Congress, whose dysfunction has begun to be a serious inconvenience to the Deep State, show that there is now a deep but as yet inchoate hunger for change. What America lacks is a figure with the serene self-confidence to tell us that the twin idols of national security and corporate power are outworn dogmas that have nothing more to offer us. Thus disenthralled, the people themselves will unravel the Deep State with surprising speed.


[1] The term “Deep State” was coined in Turkey and is said to be a system composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services, military, security, judiciary and organized crime. In British author John le CarrĂ©’s latest novel, A Delicate Truth, a character describes the Deep State as “… the ever-expanding circle of non-governmental insiders from banking, industry and commerce who were cleared for highly classified information denied to large swathes of Whitehall and Westminster.”  I use the term to mean a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.

[2] Twenty-five years ago, the sociologist Robert Nisbet described this phenomenon as “the attribute of No Fault…. Presidents, secretaries and generals and admirals in America seemingly subscribe to the doctrine that no fault ever attaches to policy and operations. This No Fault conviction prevents them from taking too seriously such notorious foul-ups as Desert One, Grenada, Lebanon and now the Persian Gulf.” To his list we might add 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

[3] The attitude of many members of Congress towards Wall Street was memorably expressed by Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), the incoming chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, in 2010: “In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.”

[4] Beginning in 1988, every US president has been a graduate of Harvard or Yale. Beginning in 2000, every losing presidential candidate has been a Harvard or Yale graduate, with the exception of John McCain in 2008.

[5] In recent months, the American public has seen a vivid example of a Deep State operative marketing his ideology under the banner of pragmatism. Former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates — a one-time career CIA officer and deeply political Bush family retainer — has camouflaged his retrospective defense of military escalations that have brought us nothing but casualties and fiscal grief as the straight-from-the-shoulder memoir from a plain-spoken son of Kansas who disdains Washington and its politicians.

[6] Meanwhile, the US government took the lead in restoring Baghdad’s sewer system at a cost of $7 billion.

[7] Obama’s abrupt about-face suggests he may have been skeptical of military intervention in Syria all along, but only dropped that policy once Congress and Putin gave him the running room to do so. In 2009, he went ahead with the Afghanistan “surge” partly because General Petraeus’ public relations campaign and back-channel lobbying on the Hill for implementation of his pet military strategy pre-empted other options. These incidents raise the disturbing question of how much the democratically elected president — or any president — sets the policy of the national security state and how much the policy is set for him by the professional operatives of that state who engineer faits accomplis that force his hand.
***

Mike Lofgren is a former congressional staff member who served on both the House and Senate budget committees. His book about Congress, The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted, appeared in paperback on August 27, 2013.

Comments from BillMoyers.com

everhope • 2 years ago

I had no real a-ha moment reading this well written piece. Nothing jumped out at me as something foreign or unknown. Instead, I had the sense of deja vu, the kind of deja vu I'd rather not have. All these things have been known if the consumer of this good piece has been paying attention to the not-mainline press. What is so exciting about this is the writer put all the information in one place and drew out the connections that weren't always so obvious. Though Mr. Lofgren paints a somewhat plausible picture of how this State may rather suddenly crumble, I'm a bit dubious. What seems missing are the global links among many of these actors especially the oligarchs reach and connection to many things terrorism. What I'm saying is that I'm not terribly optimistic that a leader will come along who is sufficiently outside the tentacles of the state and who can remain un-co-opted and call this state for what it is thus raising our fellow Americans sustained interest and desire to see through the mess it will take to overthrow this Deep State. In any case, thanks so much for such a thoughtful and creepy picture.

John Schoneboom • 2 years ago

Two flaws jump out at me from this otherwise rather good and useful article. The first is that Mr. Lofgren implies that the Deep State is mainly a Republican thing. In the picture he paints, it's the Republicans who want to pay the national security state, while the poor hapless Democrats just want to increase social spending. Similarly, he makes excuses for Obama in footnote 7. (Presidents are surely mostly puppets, but Obama's 2008 FISA vote as Senator betrays his own predilections well enough.) At best, this is the farcical veneer of Deep State Theatre. I suspect Mr. Lofgren knows better and didn't mean to imply otherwise.

Secondly, government shutdowns and budgetary problems may be an inconvenience to the Deep State, but no accounting of the Deep State is complete without figuring in off-the-books revenue from the global drug trade. International partnerships and oil interests also help diversify the income stream nicely. There are many billions feeding this thing that have nothing to do with the US budget.

It's also somewhat criminal not to name-check Peter Dale Scott in this subject area. But I'm nitpicking. I'll not bother criticizing the piece for not addressing Deep State ties with terrorism, that kettle of fish deserves its own barrel. Like I said, nice piece, useful, well done, thank you.

Reuben the Red • 3 years ago

Excellent discussion of the intersection of money, power, and early 21st century technology in the US today. Food for thought, especially paired with Moyer's recent documentary about ALEC.

One caveat: Paragraph 21 starts out saying, "the Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change," but in paragraph 22, "there are signs of resistance to the Deep State and its demands." Paragraph 21 has already made the case that resistance is irrelevant and impotent in the face of the Deep State apparatus, power/wealth reserves, and democracy-subverting methodology. And that's probably true. There may be no way to actually extricate the Deep State from The Superficial State.

jeffries • 3 years ago

The "deep state," like a parasite, will continue until its host is dead. My guess is they are in a state of panic-their host is on life support. The party is over- the rest of the world has had enough of the U.S. The petro dollar has been broken. The dollar will be dethroned as the world reserve currency and the torch will be passed to China no later than 2018. The players of the "deep state" will not be able to infiltrate and latch onto this new host and so they will fight to the death, more accurately our sons and daughters death, to keep the U.S. in its position. Resist war is all we can do and not buy into the steady stream of propaganda that will be bombarding us at every turn.

johnnyomaha • 3 years ago

Privatization of the US constitution to serve the elite.....

bluerider133 • 3 years ago

I think the term "Deep State" was first introduced by Peter Dale Scott, whose excellent books would ravish many of the fellow readers I read myself here. I especially recommend "The Road to 911", and "American War Machine".

Adam Evenson • 3 years ago

Whew, this writer knows everything I know and more. I'd bet a million dollars, if I had it, that he never believed, for an instant, that 19 Arab Muslims armed with razor blades set up and created all the chaos of 9-11, including the crashing of a 757 jetliner full of passengers into the Pentagon, causing the airliner to disappear totally, without a trace, or even a dead body of a passenger, pilot, or a single "Arab Muslim hijacker armed with razor blades." There do remain elements of a docile public (discussed in the article above) that believe every word of it, however. But I'm sure this writer's not one of those. Of course, it does put the burden on said writer of being at least one government official that obviously knew that the entirely of 9-11 was a government op.

Charles Shaver Reuben the Red • 3 years ago

It would be a very different election every time, and nation, if the majority would simply quit believing in the now defunct two-party system, corporate owned media and an extremist capitalist system that values the gains of the uber wealthy over the lives and limbs of workers and the poor. It's okay to question the status quo, ignore corporate media, do independent research, vote totally independent of family tradition and elect questionable strangers (as opposed to proved bipartisan failures) to defund the Deep State. Need a little more direction? Review the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. It pretty well sums it all up in rather clear, plain and simple English, if you keep in mind that not just millionaires, billionaires and multi-national corporations (allegedly) are 'people.'

ColoradoPublicBanks • 3 years ago

The author misses the point: the so-called U.S. government has not been sovereign since the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, which unconstitutionally gave away the power to create money to five families, thus making the U.S. a public sector organization wholly owned and operated by the banks and their corporations (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354-500-revealed-the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world/).... So, the correct term to describe our form of government is fascist (corporate control over the state).

All the rest is a charade:

Both the Republicans and the Democrats are owned by the central bankers. That the Democrats use "equality" (which is a good thing) as their "loss leader" does not make them any less culpable. Equality only makes us equal debt slaves of the bankers; equality is not freedom.

“We must go forward cautiously and consolidate each acquired position, because already the inferior social stratum of society is giving unceasing signs of agitation. Let us make use of the courts… When, through the law’s intervention, the common people shall have lost their homes, they will be more easy to control and more easy to govern, and they shall not be able to resist the strong hand of the Government acting in accordance with… the control of the leaders of finance.

“We must keep the people busy with political antagonisms. We’ll therefore speed up the question of (fill in the blank) within the Democratic Party; and we’ll put the spotlight on (fill in the blank) [for] the Republican Party. By dividing the electorate in this way, we’ll be able to have them spend their energies at struggling amongst themselves on questions that, for us, have no importance whatsoever.” – US Bankers magazine, 1892 (Sarah E. Van De Vort Emery, Imperialism in America: Its Rise and Progress, Emery & Emery, 1893, pgs 71-72, as quoted in the Chicago Daily Press)

rgrisham • 3 years ago

This is not a revelation. Noam Chomsky has been pointing this out clearly for the past 40 years... There a couple public documents that might help explain to the educated class exactly what has been going in the U.S. for the past 40 years... The Powell Memo written by Lewis Powell in 71 and the Crisis of Democracy a document publicly published by the Trilateral Commission in the mid 70's. These are both damning omissions by powerful groups that control both the business world and governments at all levels of governance. These two documents that we know about are internal look at the dogma of the ruling class.. Neo Liberalism is the term they used but it sure aint new and it sure aint liberal. It just another way for the ruling class to re-institute Feudalism.

CitizenX911 • 3 years ago

What rings clear is we now have a non-elected government operating outside our constitutional government and is purposely gridlocked. Our government and judicial system have been hijacked and steps must be taken to remove Big Hidden money that is controlling our constitutional government.

Eric_Saunders • 3 years ago

How in the world does this author write such a long essay about the "Deep State" without mentioning Peter Dale Scott, the man most responsible for introducing the concept and the term to English speaking audiences? This is an inexplicable omission.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article169316.html

Eric_Saunders Bob_Robert • 3 years ago

Both parties serve organized wealth. They have moved far to the "right." Some sort of leftward move would be to seek to strengthen public programs that enhance the economic security of individuals - things like better old age pensions, free health care, free tuition, debt write-downs for individuals and municipalities, etc. etc.

A good example of how far to the RIght we lurched can be gleaned by looking at FDR's Second Bill of Rights:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Obama's neoliberal administration would not ever work to articulate such a vision.

We have two right wing parties. Both want to privatize public functions. Both support "free trade," endless imperial wars, a massive surveillance state to monitor and suppress any threat to the ruling class. Obama wants to privatize public schools. Reagan would not have tried what Obama has done in this area. Such is the nature of America's two party system, with both parties serving the Right, aka organized wealth.

Thomas Milligan • 3 years ago

Mr. Lofgren does a pretty good job of detailing the forces that have perpetrated the sad parody of self-government into which our nation has devolved, but he left out a couple. I've come to calling the whole thing "The Money." It includes the actors Lofgren details, plus billionaire types like Scaife and the Koch brothers, plus the mainstream media (even much of PBS, unfortunately), which has become the Ministry of Propaganda for The Money and the so-called "Washington Consensus." Where once we had journalists, now we have (with the almost-sole exception of Bill Moyers) pretty people who look good in suits and like to be on TV, reading the scripts they're given.

Thomas Milligan fenway67 • 3 years ago

Oh, I know about those guys and I love what they do. The trouble is, somehow *their* work doesn't, as a rule, get picked up, amplified and developed in the mass media the way, say "Watergate" was back when we had real journalists. Meanwhile every load of BS that comes out of the Heritage Foundation, Cato et. al. somehow becomes received wisdom. I'm also a bit concerned that by going off on their own they're setting themselves up to be marginalized and ignored. Trees may fall, but very few people will hear them.

 Synergy • 3 years ago

I have come to the conclusion that our (Federal) government is not legitimate. Any 11 year old can read the 4th amendment and understand that the warrantless spying by the NSA on Americans violates the Constitution. Before being elected, Obama vowed to end this spying, but once elected he dramatically increased it. Obama promised not to scramble jets to get Snowden, then he asked France, Portugal, Spain, and Italy to down the jet of the Bolivian president on the off chance that Snowden might be on it, a violation of the Vienna Convention. Soon afterwards, Panama found a former CIA agent who had been convicted of kidnap, torture, and murder in Italy but who had fled to Panama - the State Department snapped its fingers and this state-sponsored criminal thug flew to freedom in America rather than to prison in Italy. So much for thanking Italy for its treacherous act towards Bolivia. Our government has gone rogue.

I can arrive at the same conclusion - that our government is illegitimate - from a different tact. NSA whistleblower Russ Tice revealed that the NSA wiretapped Senator Obama and Supreme Court Justice Alito. Let that sink in. It means that Congress was compromised and the President and the Supreme Court currently are compromised. It doesn't matter if they are not being explicitly blackmailed. A lesson from history: J Edgar Hoover gained his power simply by having dirt on everyone; no one dared cross him. So, all three branches of our government have been compromised by the NSA.

Even the fourth estate - the press - has been compromised. Over 100 AP and Fox journalists were wiretapped, intimidating the last vesitages of free press in America. AP called it an "unconstitutional act".

There are no laws.

Anonymous • 3 years ago

What indivicual employed by the corporations and organizations that impinge on our Constitutionally mandated freedoms (and his/her family members/friends/neighbors) are likely to speak out against the status quo? What alternatives do they have for comparable non-government funded "good" jobs? They consider themselves lucky to be among the employed (at taxpayer expense). The quote at the top of the article succinctly describes the likely outcome:

"Rome lived upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face. Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was not industry in Rome..."

Silence, as well as not wanting to be informed about who and what policies are shaping our government and it's elected officials is, in effect, acquiescence.
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