I’m interrupting the current series to bring you one dedicated to our friend Ray of Ray’s X, who has (rightfully) been kicking me in the tail to comment on this issue.
When you see something in Latin, you're smart to bet that it's a very old concept. Translated freely, imperium in inperio simply means rule within rule. More precisely, it describes a situation where there is a government within a government. The first government is quite open, elected, and accountable to the public. The second is hidden, intrusive, and accountable to nothing else but its own powerlust.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, an ancient Roman Senator and former Consul, coined the phrase to decry the usurpation of Senate authority by a cabal of three self-declared chiefs of state: Marcus Licinius Crassus, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, and Gaius Julius Caesar. Although elected by only by land-owning citzens (i.e. the upper classes), the Roman Senate at least had some sort of public mandate to act on behalf of the people of Rome, with some expectation that they also represented those who could not vote.* Taking over what became known as the First Triumvirate, Caesar garnered the political will and support to plunge Rome into a series of conquests that completely transformed the republic into an empire bent on global dominion.
You don’t have to go far to find comparisons between the Roman Empire and the United States of America. They’re everywhere, and have been around a long time. So it should come to us as little surprise that this idea of imperium in imperio became part of this discussion, especially when cited as a factor in the ancient empire’s demise.
Americans don’t refer to this concept as imperium in imperio, of course. We speak English and Spanish here, not Latin. Even so, we have referred to this phenomenon by a variety of names.
For example, the concept serves as the basis for the 1964 book The Invisible Government by Thomas Ross and David Wise. Examining the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the ill-fated Hungarian coup attempt egged on by Radio Free Europe (a CIA-funded organization), and other stories, Wise and Ross presented a surprisingly balanced argument. On the one hand, the authors acknowledged the need for covert security in order to protect the nation and foster peace. Yet on the other hand they noted that methods used for achieving this purpose had a detrimental effect on civil rights and liberties.
In the Bay of Pigs, for instance, we see a cabal of intelligence insiders, led by the likes of DCI Allen Dulles and Deputy Director of Plans Richard Bissell, plotting the violent overthrow of Cuba. The conspiracy to mask a US invasion as an indigenous uprising was challenging in and of itself.** And should the ruse fail as both mission and secret, the consequences could be enormous, enough to start World War III. Yet Dulles and CIA insiders misrepresented the scope and viability of the operation to not one, but two US Presidents: Dwight Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy.
It’s in this sense where we see a power behind the power. By getting a distorted story from a group inside the US that had its own agenda, Eisenhower and JFK, as leaders of the free and open government, were undermined by a faction that had its own agenda contrary to the needs of both the People and Senate of the US. In brief summary, a number of business interests hinged on the overthrow of the Castro government, and his replacement by a puppet controllable by the West.
It’s this nexus of common concerns that begins to, at least for a while, subvert the rule of treaty law by effectively taking control of government actions away from the elected authority. But after learning he’d been duped, President Kennedy thwarted the plan by calling off tactical support, publicly acknowledging the conspiracy, firing Dulles, Bissell and others, and engaging in secret diplomacy with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban Premier Fidel Castro. In these actions, Kennedy reasserted the rule of open, democratically elected government.
And two years later, he died. Go figure.
As you probably know, Eisenhower himself warned the American public of this phenomenon in his Farewell address. He didn’t call it imperium in imperio, or for that matter the invisible government. Instead, he referred to it as the military-industrial complex. As a five-star general, and popular President, we would have to take as sober and rational his belief that such a scenario might play out a future date. While he saw compelling reasons to create a structure of this type, he nevertheless fretted that this nexus of business, Intel and military could muscle its way into determining national policy without any input or consent of the electorate.
We recognized the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society. In the counsels of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals. [emphasis added]
Figure 1. Excerpt of Eisenhower’s farewell address.***
In their 1974 book, former CIA official Victor Marchetti and former State Department intelligence officer John Marks referred to this phenomenon as the cult of intelligence.**** When Congress passed the National Security Act of 1947, they set up the NSC to oversee the Agency on behalf of the President. Congress insisted on an oversight council in order to allay fears that the CIA would devolve into a “secret police force” (their words). The CIA would thus take its marching orders from the NSC, which in turn serves under the direction of the President, a public official whom voters can re-elect or throw out of office. In short, Congress wanted the NSC for purposes of public accountability. But Marchetti and Marx provided examples of unelected, unaccountable power elites bogarting control of the CIA away from the National Security Council. One group specifically called out by Marchetti and Marks, the Council on Foreign Relations, consists of powerful industrialists, with a few politicians, academics, press and celebrities thrown into the mix.*****
Considering the clout of its membership, it’s perhaps not too surprising that the CFR has often found itself the subject of both leftist and right-wing parapolitical discourse. But if Marchetti and Marks are correct, then they represent some unelected faction who attempted to (or perhaps succeeded in) taking control of an institution of the open, freely elected government. If so, one doesn’t have to speculate all that hard to surmise that the industrial power behind this organization might receive the lion’s share of benefits from whatever covert action it orders (e.g., shutting down hostile governments, hostile press, international rivals, etc.). And since we’re already off the deep end in this paragraph, we can just as easily conjecture that the role of politicians, press and celebrities is to sell whatever action to the American public.
In 1988, Bill Moyers hosted a two-part mini-series titled The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis. The title and the content of the series are pretty much self-explanatory. But as you can see, Moyers discusses Iran-Contra and Col. Oliver North, the point man of a scheme to violate the Boland Amendment, a law restricting US aid to the Nicaraguan Contras.
Figure 2. The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis
And who could forget where they were in August of 2013 when the CIA finally admitted the obvious and claimed responsibility for the conspiracy to overthrow the Mosaddegh government of Iran in 1953, only to replace him with a brutal (but telegenic) monarch whose internal security, the SAVAK, killed an estimated 100,000 Irani citizens. Worse, the action served to benefit a single corporation, British Petroleum, who wanted to stop Moseddegh before he could nationalize Iranian oil production. So here, the US subverted its doctrines on offensive war to benefit a foreign company.
Since 2013, we’ve come across a newer term for imperium in imperio: the Deep State.
Interesting. For decades, people who have written about this power nexus of military, intelligence, industrial/finance capital players and government, no matter what it's called, have been taken seriously by many institutional actors. In fact, many within the press, academia and government are more than happy to affirm the existence of such an apparatus in other countries, as they do with the kleptocracy now dominating post-Soviet Russia. Yet, the term “Deep State” has drawn considerable derision, fear, condemnation and loathing, linked as it is to nebulous and dangerously inaccurate “conspiracy theories.”
Believe it or not, those pundits, academics and politicos railing against the notion of a “Deep State” have legitimate cause to call the this term and what it has come to signify into question. Moreover, they have legitimate reason to decry the possibility that wild inaccuracies put forth in public discourse as fact can threaten the public interest.
For the most part, I don’t regard the people described in the previous paragraph as evil, stupid or (horrors) in on the conspiracy. I think any parapolitical researcher worth her salt needs to listen to these voices, and find out what is helpful and valid within them.
Conversely, those who derisively tar any and all dissident commentary with the same perjorative “conspiracy theory” brush need to listen as well. The institutional actor can gain insight by divorcince himself from the comfortable stereotypes associated with that mode of thought, and those participating in it. The abject belief that “it can never happen here,” is a necessary precursor for it happening, and here. And while the mainstream bemoans the prevalence of conspiracism run amok, its failure to address squarely legitimate hegemonic issues and conspiracy evidence has actually played a critical role in the potentially catastrophic excesses of conspiracy thought.
Oh, who the hell am I kidding? Getting two self-righteous sides to listen to what they conceive of as their mortal enemies? Could that really happen? Especially in this age of divided discourse?
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*Indeed, the Romans inscribed all official documents, engravings, buildings with the acronym SPQR, which stood for Senatus PopulusQue Romanus (On behalf of the Senate and the Roman people).
**Wise and Ross chronicled the difficulty in maintaining the facade. One of the problems they faced was exposure by the US press, with both The Nation and the New York Times discovering US military personnel training expatriated Cubans in Guatemala, the staging ground for the operation. Both sources had published articles on this Central American buildup prior to the actual invasion. Consequently the Soviet Union was all too aware of who sponsored the hostilities.
***Click here to see the speech in full. You can also click here to find brief commentary on the speech courtesy of the National Archives. In the latter, you’ll find that this warning was a long time in the making, beginning in May 1959 in consultation with Eisenhower, his brother Milton, and his chief speech writer, Malcolm Moos.
****The book’s full title is The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence.
*****Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Chevron, Citizgroup, American Express, Mastercard, Met Life, Shell Oil, AT&T, Facebook, Estee Lauder, Boeing and Morgan Stanley are but a few of the corporations listed as members. The CFR boasts as current and former members such business titans as Roger Ailes (Fox News), David Rubinstein (CEO, Carlyle Group), Blair Effron (Centerview Partners), Donna Hrinak (Boeing), and Edgar Bronfman (Seagrams and such related businesses as Comcast, Universal Music Group, etc.). Notable academics have included Peter Beinhart (Journalism, City University of New York), Michael Crow (President, Arizona State), Fouad Ajami (Middle Eastern Studies, Stanford), and Steven Weinberg (Physics, Texas). Katie Couric, Tom Brokaw, Paula Zahn and Leslie Stahl have all been members, as have Angelina Jolie, Warren Beatty, George Clooney, Priscilla Presley, Shirley Temple Black and Ron Silver. Politicians are equally divided among that narrow band comprising the conservative/liberal spectrum with such folks as Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, US Rep. Dan Burton, Hillary Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Madeline Albright.
Note: I severely truncated this list. To see a fuller one, click here.`