Jefferson Morley: James Angleton and the Birth of the American Deep State
Geopolitics & Empire
Geopolitics & Empire
4.2 • 570 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2018
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Washington author and veteran journalist Jefferson Morley discusses his latest book on CIA Director James Angleton who was one of the founders of what is known as the American “Deep State”.
Show Notes
5 of the Most Important JFK Files the CIA Is Still Hiding https://www.alternet.org/top-5-jfk-files-cia-still-hiding-coverup-secrecy
Sure, #ReleaseTheMemo—Along With All of the Underlying Documentation https://www.alternet.org/all-means-releasethememo-and-all-underlying-documentation
The New JFK Files Reveal How the CIA Tracked Oswald https://www.alternet.org/new-jfk-files-illuminate-cia-surveillance-oswald
Websites
https://twitter.com/jeffersonmorley
Books
https://www.amazon.com/Jefferson-Morley/e/B001ILHJ9K/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1517637068&sr=8-2-ent
About Jefferson Morley
Jefferson Morley is a Washington author and veteran journalist whose novelistic non-fiction books explore untold chapters in the history of the American nation. A skilled investigative reporter, Morley combines granular detail with storytelling verve to capture unknown realities of subjects as disparate as the Central Intelligence Agency and America’s legacy of racial violence.
Morley’s newest book, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton, tells the story of a paranoid genius who was perhaps the most powerful unelected official in the U.S. government. At the height of the Cold War, Angleton’s secret influence extended from Moscow to London to Jerusalem to the Vatican, to the White House. If there is a “Deep State” in American life as some contend, Angleton was one of its Founding Fathers.
The Ghost is a companion and sequel to Morley’s first book Our Man in Mexico, a biography of an improbable American spy. Winston Scott was an Alabama math teacher turned FBI agent who joined the CIA at its founding, became close friends with Angleton and became the chief of the agency’s Mexico City station in the 1960s. “Every decade or so a talented writer provides a genuinely new glimpse of the Central Intelligence Agency,” said historian Thomas Powers of the book.
Morley’s second book, Snow-Storm in August, was described by best-selling author David Mariniss as “History so fresh it feels alive.” A vivid account of a white riot that swept the nation’s capital 25 years before the Civil War, Snow-Storm’s “plunge beneath the surface of history exposes realities more true to daily experience than executive proclamations or speeches in Congress,” said the Washington Post. The Minneapolis Star Tribune called it “elegant and readable.”
Morley is one of the world’s most credible authorities on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He is editor of the blog, JFK Facts. He sued the CIA for certain records related to the Kennedy assassination in 2003. Fourteen years later, his lawsuit, Morley v. CIA is still active in federal court.
Morley is married and lives in Washington D.C.
*Podcast intro music is from the song “The Queens Jig” by “Musicke & Mirth” from their album “Music for Two Lyra Viols”: http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Jefferson Morley is a veteran journalist and author. |
| 0:11.0 | We're here to discuss his latest book, The Ghost, The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James |
| 0:16.4 | Jesus Angleton. |
| 0:17.9 | In our last interview, we discussed your previous book on the Mexico CIA station |
| 0:22.8 | chief, Winston Scott, who was also a friend of CIA director James Angleton. Why don't we start |
| 0:28.5 | the broadcast with guns blazing and ask you about the deep state? Does it exist? What is your |
| 0:34.5 | definition of the deep state? And did it begin with the CIA and James |
| 0:39.3 | Angleton? Because you describe a long list of dirty laundry ranging from cover-ups to unconstitutional |
| 0:44.8 | surveillance and illegal weapons transfers sanctioned by Angleton in The Ghost. |
| 0:51.8 | Yeah. Well, you know, the language of the deep state, I mean, it's politicized and sometimes it's used to impugn any civil servant in Washington who's trying to do their job and criticizes the president. |
| 1:09.4 | So I'm not crazy about the language of the deep state |
| 1:12.7 | because I think it can be misinterpreted. But we do have a secret sector of the U.S. government, |
| 1:18.8 | which is intelligence agencies whose workings are classified information and whose budgets are |
| 1:25.3 | classified. So if you go to your congressman and you ask about |
| 1:28.9 | the NSA or the National Reconnaissance Office or the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency or the CIA, |
| 1:36.0 | you cannot, as a citizen, you cannot get any information about what's being done with your taxpayer |
| 1:41.4 | dollars. So these are secret agencies, and this is a big |
| 1:44.9 | sector of the U.S. government. That's probably about, if you take NSA, CIA, all the other |
| 1:50.2 | intelligence agencies, probably $60, $70 billion a year budgets. So this is a big secret sector |
| 1:57.3 | of the U.S. government. The deep state is one way to refer to that sector. The secret state, |
| 2:03.6 | the national security state. I think all of these are getting at the same real phenomenon, which is agencies that operate entirely in secret. |
| 2:13.9 | And so when people talk about the deep state, that's what they're talking about. Now, when did it start? |
... |
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