The Invisible Government

by Laura Snedeker

There is a parallel government in the United States that deals in clandestine operations, in assassinations, in coups d’etat, and in terrorism. This government is not held accountable for its actions, which are rarely made known to the American public. Even much of its budget is kept a secret – the “black budget” they call it.

This “invisible government” – a phrase used by Washington journalist David Wise in his 1964 book of the same name – is an unchanging part of the government. The CIA, the NSA (National Security Agency), Special Operations forces, and other clandestine services have outlasted the rise and fall of many a president, from those who opposed its power to those who used it willingly.

The new Democratic leaders in Washington have promised greater transparency and accountability – two things sorely lacking in government. But they have not challenged the workings of this entrenched apparatus, one that has brought misery to great masses of people and has undermined democracy at home.

Americans find it extraordinarily difficult to believe in the existence of black operations that overthrow democratically elected leaders (such as President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 2002), and in assassination attempts. When they do believe, they pass these actions off as part of our “national security” strategy. When the NSA spies on Americans’ e-mail and phone conversations, it’s passed off by many as being harmless.

After all, this is a democracy. If you’re not doing anything wrong, why worry? I worry because it’s unhealthy for a democracy to rely on faith and not on transparency. I’m afraid that America has become a nation where domestic espionage is expected and where people are more suspicious of each other than they are of the government.

The intelligence community has grown enormously over the past few years. The government created the Director of National Intelligence to oversee all agencies. Foreign and domestic intelligence agencies are expected to communicate more, although they were created to be separate for a reason.

Of course, these agencies did not fall from the sky. They were created by politicians and military men to achieve their nefarious ends. Why fight a war with American soldiers when a proxy army of dangerous right-wing fanatics will work just as well? Why try to negotiate with a government when you can assassinate its leaders?

The invisible government creates and destroys enemies. When the US government gave Saddam Hussein chemical weapons to gas the Kurds he was our friend, a fact conveniently forgotten or unknown by much of the American public. Allegations have surfaced about covert US support for the Mujahidin e Khalq, an Iranian opposition group. We’ve been down this road before, and it ends badly. Today’s allies are tomorrow’s enemies (and maybe that’s part of the plan).

There have always been and there probably always will be secrets. But democracy cannot flourish at home or abroad while extra-judicial agencies run about, gathering secret information to be delivered to secret courts for secret arrests, or while more terrorists are created by clandestine foreign actions.

(In the photo, left to right: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte; President George W. Bush; and Vice Admiral Mike McConnell, former director of the NSA and nominated by the president as the new Director of National Intelligence. This is an official White House photo by Paul Morse and is in the public domain.)

politics
CIA
NSA
domestic spying
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