We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Trump Picks Fan of Illegal Surveillance as Intelligence Czar

Click here to access article from TeleSur.

Although Trump has expressed opposition to CIA and other intelligence agency reports about Russian hacking of US elections, it doesn't seem likely that the Deep State that governs our nation will have any difficulty with Trump's nomination of former Sen. Coats as head of all the spy agencies. Coats' career is so typical of most "revolving door" government officials: between serving the government in official posts, he served as a lobbyist for major corporations. 
As director of national intelligence, Coats – who served as an Indiana senator for a total of 17 years, with stints as U.S. Ambassador to Germany and corporate lobbyist for Google and General Electric in between terms – would head the umbrella agency in charge of all 16 U.S. intelligence organizations, including the CIA and the National Security Agency.

While a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Coats was an outspoken supporter of the NSA’s illegal domestic spying programs revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, writing in an op-ed that the programs were “legal, constitutional and used only under strict oversight,” claims which were all proven false by multiple federal judges. After the programs were declared illegal by several federal courts, he voted against legislation to rein in domestic surveillance operations.
In any case from my observations of the CIA since 1960, the CIA and NSA are prime agencies of the Deep State and nothing that Coats could possibly do would be permitted in any way to interfere with their operations. Even when the former director James Clapper lied to a Senate committee, which theoretically has oversight responsibilities for the spy agencies, no discipline was imposed on Clapper. 

You might also be interested in how the Deep State's newspaper, The Washington Post (legally owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos), report on Coats' nomination in an article entitled "Trump is expected to nominate ex-senator Dan Coats for director of national intelligence".