Risen’s book is now on my list. Great interview, thanks.
That said, I take issue with some of Risen’s perceptions about the “Deep State” today. It’s irrelevant whether the “Deep State” is genuinely “woke.” It only matters that it operates under “woke” slogans, and thus that our corporatism (which is part of current US imperialism) is “woke,” even if hypocritically. No new major US military interventions occurred under 4 years of Trump, and I believe the military-industrial complex viewed Trump as a problem to be eliminated.
This is very long but excellent. After the (very long) introductory section, it is divided into 13 chapters, all of which are worth reading if you find the time.
I’ve now read most of this. He makes an excellent point in the introduction: that attacking the media as a partisan/censoring institution (though it is) is to focus on low hanging fruit while missing the larger issue. Our hollowed-out media is a security state hand puppet (not unlike other institutions alarmingly).
The thrust of the piece and its 13 pieces of evidence is — that we find ourselves in a post-democratic surveillance state where ‘our own minds’ and our “lying eyes” cannot be trusted and that we need to be, not governed, but rather ruled by a self-appointed information elite that controls our “sense making” (as others refer to it) — is a thesis aligned with the work of Whitney Webb over at Unlimited Hangout. The goal is a complete takeover.
This would be utter “crazy talk” if we were not witnessing it before our own “lying eyes” and many dissidents “have the receipts” as we say these days.
“So the problem of disinformation is also a problem of democracy itself—specifically, that there’s too much of it. To save liberal democracy, the experts prescribed two critical steps: America must become less free and less democratic. This necessary evolution will mean shutting out the voices of certain rabble-rousers in the online crowd who have forfeited the privilege of speaking freely. It will require following the wisdom of disinformation experts and outgrowing our parochial attachment to the Bill of Rights. This view may be jarring to people who are still attached to the American heritage of liberty and self-government, but it has become the official policy of the country’s ruling party and much of the American intelligentsia.”
When the Soviet Union was collapsing, the head of the institute for the study of the US and Canada, Georgi Arbatov, warned us that the Soviet bloc (by disintegrating) would inflict a mortal blow on the US by depriving us of an enemy. Since no nation-state can define itself in terms of external enemies forever, 35 years after the end of the Cold War the mandarins of our Deep State have turned their guns inward to find enemies within the country. In the guise of saving the country by rooting out “disinformation,”they will shred the First Amendment and destroy the country.
I’ve been aware of this for a couple of years but rarely said anything for fear of being stigmatized. It’s good that we’ve now got a couple of tomes out there in support and it’s good that we’re talking about it.
And I think it’s an appropriate topic for this site because I’m pretty well convinced it has its origins in the assassination. I think the class of people who have dominated America from secret unelected positions for the last 100 years were happily tolerated because let’s face it in a truly free society the oligarchs also are generously empowered by their freedom so have at it. But I think with JFK they crossed a line to where if the public ever found out the truth the ruling class would be stripped of a large measure of their power.
So ever since we have watched them double down and triple down and continually up the ante leading to the Epstein operation and this disinformation hoax and to where we’re now faced with a full blown plot for complete takeover.
May 27, 2023·edited May 27, 2023Liked by Chad Nagle
Yes…now just image one of those “alternative endings” if JFK had been able to chart a different course in the 60s. This was the country that gave the world Tolstoy & Dostoyevsky, that, acknowledge it or not, suffered tremendously to make a victory in WW2 even possible, as JFK would point out. The Chinese, esp after Mao, were the more natural enemy.
But then the Democrats under Clinton got in bed with them. Fast forward and China with its Social Credit System is the model our would-be overloads at WEF would impose on us. And just look at how well that’s working out in Canada, the sad, sad country of my origin.
Yes, a friend in BC told me Trudeau had basically sold the country to Beijing. That is sad and also dangerous. The CCP is not our friend. Tricky Dick Nixon reached out to Mao in the first place.
Look what’s going on here.... There’s no attempt to establish any pretense whatsoever: as part of a creative performance you expressed thoughts about nazi’s.... So now you are being investigated for criminal liability.
What they intend to achieve is total control over what you can or cannot say.... no pretense needed.... The same thing has been going on in Brazil if you follow Glen Greenwald.
Agreed. I felt as if his statements on the existence of a “deep state” comes from a reflexive opposition to what he associates with QAnon, or the more “wacky” conspiratorial types. Aaron Good and Peter Dale Scott use “Deep State” in a different way that almost aligns with parts of what arisen affirmatively stated he believes exist. Risen’s take is just one of him responding to a specific use of “Deep State” that was more a hijacking of the real and original Al use of it. He should be thinking more of the structures described in “The Power Elite” by Mills and various writings by Peter Dale Scott or, most recently, in “American Exception”, by historian Aaron Good.
Jeff, just finished the whole podcast. There is really a ton of very excellent scholarship in the last few years that is pealing back the shroud of secrecy and putting the intelligence community under the microscope again. Few of those excellent historians are willing approach the subject of JFK, at least publicly, because of stigma. Still their work is an incredibly important contribution to the cause and I was very impressed that he used The Ghost as a resource. He really ought to read Scorpion's Dance while he's at it, since he didn't seem to be aware of your recent contribution to that story. Give him a couple signed copies of your books and have a beer with him. He seems pretty open to ideas like the murders around the investigations, Hampton and etc but he needs a little encouragement to take the next couple steps!
If he wants to write about extremists in the military, I'm sure you'd have a lot to tell him about Lemnitzer and LeMay!
I’d heard the theory that Harvey might have personally killed Giancana based on an investigator’s report than “Momo” was whacked by someone he knew. It was reassuring to hear it in the interview.
I recall from the book Double Cross, that Giancana's family (or was it his Godson?) felt that the hit on him could not have been by the Mob because he was old school and would not rat out his crew before the Church Committee. Also, wasn't it Giancana who was quoted as saying that the Agency & the Outfit were two sides of the same coin?
Regardless of what the truth is it’s significant that Risen thinks Harvey might have done that. Risen says he believes Oswald acted alone. If that’s true what in Risen’s mind could possibly motivate Harvey to whack mobsters?
Would Harvey go to those lengths to protect his secrets related to a series of failed attempts to assassinate Castro? Doubtful.
I can only conclude that Risen believes Harvey, Roselli, and Giancana had secrets related to JFK. This would be consistent what Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson concluded.
Yeah, I don’t get Risen’s whole “Oswald did it, and there was no conspiracy” schtick. If Harvey killed Giancana, it strikes me he did it because of something Harvey regretted confiding in him.
Rosen sounds like someone who can’t be bothered to “go there,” which is I think the rationale of a lot of professional writers. It’s just too stigmatizing to be a “conspiracy theorist.” Seems very craven.
Wasn't it Trafficante who confided to his attorney, Frank Ragano, that they should have left "Giovanni" alone (as AG RFK was a more suitable target, although if you chop off the head, the tail stops wagging, as he was heard to have remarked).
In any event, I thought it was Trafficante who also said about JFK, that he's gonna be hit.
So I guess it's possible, like you say, that he silenced Giancana, but again, I still don't think the assassination of JFK was strictly a Mob hit.
May 26, 2023·edited May 27, 2023Liked by Chad Nagle
First off, to be honest, it is hard for me to credit someone who, even now, blithely affirms that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK. Be that as it may...
What I find as troubling is that Risen seems to employ a disingenuous sleight-of-hand response to Jeff's question about the deep state (near the end of the interview). Jeff's question did not associate the deep state with Woke-ism. But Risen inserted the notion to set up a straw man mainly, I think, to evade the real issues regarding Trump's proposed harassment.
That Trump was viewed by these bureaucrats as a "national security risk" to be thwarted had next to nothing to do with woke-ism and everything to do with (ironically) NOT getting us into wars -- unlike corporatist pols -- whose ranks these days are filled with warmongering Democrats: the same Democratic adversaries who also came up with the Russia-gate hoax. Please, one need not be a MAGA fellow-traveler to see that Trump was being railroaded. But partisan folks find him so distasteful they feel justified in refusing to accept facts even when those same facts finally get officially acknowledged. Risen strikes me as this type with his Durham Report 'hand-wave' response.
At the very least one might argue that a Top/Bottom analysis rather than the old Left/Right analysis better explains the strange bedfellows behind our endless foreign military expenditures. If woke-ism is relevant at all, it is because it's cynically employed as a "righteous" distraction by "the Top" as they consolidate their wealth and power. Consider the lavish beach front estates owed by Joe, Nancy, Barak and Bill.
Nevertheless, Risen likely wrote a nice volume on Church and his committee work, but I am dubious that the CIA/US intelligence apparatus has continued to be “under the rule of law."
I agree with your analysis of “woke” and would add that, not only is it part of US imperialism, it’s also used in a profoundly “Ugly American” way in certain instances. What does that possibly achieve? [edit: except to signal alignment with globalist values]
Thanks for the link! I will MAKE the time to wade through it.
Great podcast. I've obtained the book. I can't help feeling that Congress has largely lost the skills necessary to run investigations. It is an expertise that they need to revive.
I would recommend to anyone who has not done so to obtain a copy of A SEASON OF INQUIRY - REVISITED - COPY RIGHT 29015THE CHURCH COMMITTEE CONFRONTS AMERICA'S SPY AGENCIES REVISITED. BY LOCK K JOHNSON
He originally wrote and released the book in 1984 and revised this one released it in 2015. Mr Johnson was a special assistant to the Chair of the Senate Select Committee House Subcommittee on Intelligence 1975 to 1976. See his wiki for the basic bio.
This volume sheds light on the dark undercurrents that surrounded the Church and Pike committees and the volune is extremely enlightening.
oh Risen(not) fails in the end ZERO respect sorry gone to us, only. a liar of simpleton could believe in SBT singularity no one at this level could be so ignorant even FIB's Hoover as L'BJ didn't believe nor For s eye sin hour you've been Intercepted ...as Lardner's fat chewing ,ws going to buy book cant now in final analysis. taints all perception in minds well mind swell
Risen’s book is now on my list. Great interview, thanks.
That said, I take issue with some of Risen’s perceptions about the “Deep State” today. It’s irrelevant whether the “Deep State” is genuinely “woke.” It only matters that it operates under “woke” slogans, and thus that our corporatism (which is part of current US imperialism) is “woke,” even if hypocritically. No new major US military interventions occurred under 4 years of Trump, and I believe the military-industrial complex viewed Trump as a problem to be eliminated.
This is very long but excellent. After the (very long) introductory section, it is divided into 13 chapters, all of which are worth reading if you find the time.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/guide-understanding-hoax-century-thirteen-ways-looking-disinformation
I’ve now read most of this. He makes an excellent point in the introduction: that attacking the media as a partisan/censoring institution (though it is) is to focus on low hanging fruit while missing the larger issue. Our hollowed-out media is a security state hand puppet (not unlike other institutions alarmingly).
The thrust of the piece and its 13 pieces of evidence is — that we find ourselves in a post-democratic surveillance state where ‘our own minds’ and our “lying eyes” cannot be trusted and that we need to be, not governed, but rather ruled by a self-appointed information elite that controls our “sense making” (as others refer to it) — is a thesis aligned with the work of Whitney Webb over at Unlimited Hangout. The goal is a complete takeover.
This would be utter “crazy talk” if we were not witnessing it before our own “lying eyes” and many dissidents “have the receipts” as we say these days.
Among the best passages:
“So the problem of disinformation is also a problem of democracy itself—specifically, that there’s too much of it. To save liberal democracy, the experts prescribed two critical steps: America must become less free and less democratic. This necessary evolution will mean shutting out the voices of certain rabble-rousers in the online crowd who have forfeited the privilege of speaking freely. It will require following the wisdom of disinformation experts and outgrowing our parochial attachment to the Bill of Rights. This view may be jarring to people who are still attached to the American heritage of liberty and self-government, but it has become the official policy of the country’s ruling party and much of the American intelligentsia.”
When the Soviet Union was collapsing, the head of the institute for the study of the US and Canada, Georgi Arbatov, warned us that the Soviet bloc (by disintegrating) would inflict a mortal blow on the US by depriving us of an enemy. Since no nation-state can define itself in terms of external enemies forever, 35 years after the end of the Cold War the mandarins of our Deep State have turned their guns inward to find enemies within the country. In the guise of saving the country by rooting out “disinformation,”they will shred the First Amendment and destroy the country.
So let me give my thumbnail sketch in response...
I’ve been aware of this for a couple of years but rarely said anything for fear of being stigmatized. It’s good that we’ve now got a couple of tomes out there in support and it’s good that we’re talking about it.
And I think it’s an appropriate topic for this site because I’m pretty well convinced it has its origins in the assassination. I think the class of people who have dominated America from secret unelected positions for the last 100 years were happily tolerated because let’s face it in a truly free society the oligarchs also are generously empowered by their freedom so have at it. But I think with JFK they crossed a line to where if the public ever found out the truth the ruling class would be stripped of a large measure of their power.
So ever since we have watched them double down and triple down and continually up the ante leading to the Epstein operation and this disinformation hoax and to where we’re now faced with a full blown plot for complete takeover.
So yes that’s what I think is going on.
Yes…now just image one of those “alternative endings” if JFK had been able to chart a different course in the 60s. This was the country that gave the world Tolstoy & Dostoyevsky, that, acknowledge it or not, suffered tremendously to make a victory in WW2 even possible, as JFK would point out. The Chinese, esp after Mao, were the more natural enemy.
But then the Democrats under Clinton got in bed with them. Fast forward and China with its Social Credit System is the model our would-be overloads at WEF would impose on us. And just look at how well that’s working out in Canada, the sad, sad country of my origin.
Yes, a friend in BC told me Trudeau had basically sold the country to Beijing. That is sad and also dangerous. The CCP is not our friend. Tricky Dick Nixon reached out to Mao in the first place.
So I’ve now read Siegel’s piece.
I wouldn’t quibble with a word of it. I take it as critically important that someone collect this information and make it available.
I’m worried they’ll get an AI censorship algorithm protected by the “sources and methods” secrecy edict.
Look what’s going on here.... There’s no attempt to establish any pretense whatsoever: as part of a creative performance you expressed thoughts about nazi’s.... So now you are being investigated for criminal liability.
What they intend to achieve is total control over what you can or cannot say.... no pretense needed.... The same thing has been going on in Brazil if you follow Glen Greenwald.
https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/berlin-police-investigate-pink-floyd-rocker-roger-waters-nazi-style-co-rcna86552
Agreed. I felt as if his statements on the existence of a “deep state” comes from a reflexive opposition to what he associates with QAnon, or the more “wacky” conspiratorial types. Aaron Good and Peter Dale Scott use “Deep State” in a different way that almost aligns with parts of what arisen affirmatively stated he believes exist. Risen’s take is just one of him responding to a specific use of “Deep State” that was more a hijacking of the real and original Al use of it. He should be thinking more of the structures described in “The Power Elite” by Mills and various writings by Peter Dale Scott or, most recently, in “American Exception”, by historian Aaron Good.
Jeff, just finished the whole podcast. There is really a ton of very excellent scholarship in the last few years that is pealing back the shroud of secrecy and putting the intelligence community under the microscope again. Few of those excellent historians are willing approach the subject of JFK, at least publicly, because of stigma. Still their work is an incredibly important contribution to the cause and I was very impressed that he used The Ghost as a resource. He really ought to read Scorpion's Dance while he's at it, since he didn't seem to be aware of your recent contribution to that story. Give him a couple signed copies of your books and have a beer with him. He seems pretty open to ideas like the murders around the investigations, Hampton and etc but he needs a little encouragement to take the next couple steps!
If he wants to write about extremists in the military, I'm sure you'd have a lot to tell him about Lemnitzer and LeMay!
Just purchased on Audible
Fascinating interview.
So much of what gets discussed at JFK Facts is extremely important.
As Risen points out a new round of reforms is needed — the Church Committee remains a work in progress.
So interesting the suggestion that Giancana may have been killed on orders from Harvey or even by Harvey directly.
The Mob runs on the Code of Omertà which forbids cooperation with authorities — the penalty is swift, certain, and brutal death.
Rosselli I would guess was executed by the Mob.
On Rosselli, or by the same people who silenced Giancana.
Right... the presumption has always been the Mob whacked two of their own.
Risen’s suggestion that Harvey may have whacked at least one of them is new to me.
I’d heard the theory that Harvey might have personally killed Giancana based on an investigator’s report than “Momo” was whacked by someone he knew. It was reassuring to hear it in the interview.
I recall from the book Double Cross, that Giancana's family (or was it his Godson?) felt that the hit on him could not have been by the Mob because he was old school and would not rat out his crew before the Church Committee. Also, wasn't it Giancana who was quoted as saying that the Agency & the Outfit were two sides of the same coin?
It’s possible Trafficante ordered Giancana killed. It certainly seems credible he had Johnny Roselli whacked.
Regardless of what the truth is it’s significant that Risen thinks Harvey might have done that. Risen says he believes Oswald acted alone. If that’s true what in Risen’s mind could possibly motivate Harvey to whack mobsters?
Would Harvey go to those lengths to protect his secrets related to a series of failed attempts to assassinate Castro? Doubtful.
I can only conclude that Risen believes Harvey, Roselli, and Giancana had secrets related to JFK. This would be consistent what Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson concluded.
Yeah, I don’t get Risen’s whole “Oswald did it, and there was no conspiracy” schtick. If Harvey killed Giancana, it strikes me he did it because of something Harvey regretted confiding in him.
Rosen sounds like someone who can’t be bothered to “go there,” which is I think the rationale of a lot of professional writers. It’s just too stigmatizing to be a “conspiracy theorist.” Seems very craven.
Wasn't it Trafficante who confided to his attorney, Frank Ragano, that they should have left "Giovanni" alone (as AG RFK was a more suitable target, although if you chop off the head, the tail stops wagging, as he was heard to have remarked).
In any event, I thought it was Trafficante who also said about JFK, that he's gonna be hit.
So I guess it's possible, like you say, that he silenced Giancana, but again, I still don't think the assassination of JFK was strictly a Mob hit.
First off, to be honest, it is hard for me to credit someone who, even now, blithely affirms that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK. Be that as it may...
What I find as troubling is that Risen seems to employ a disingenuous sleight-of-hand response to Jeff's question about the deep state (near the end of the interview). Jeff's question did not associate the deep state with Woke-ism. But Risen inserted the notion to set up a straw man mainly, I think, to evade the real issues regarding Trump's proposed harassment.
That Trump was viewed by these bureaucrats as a "national security risk" to be thwarted had next to nothing to do with woke-ism and everything to do with (ironically) NOT getting us into wars -- unlike corporatist pols -- whose ranks these days are filled with warmongering Democrats: the same Democratic adversaries who also came up with the Russia-gate hoax. Please, one need not be a MAGA fellow-traveler to see that Trump was being railroaded. But partisan folks find him so distasteful they feel justified in refusing to accept facts even when those same facts finally get officially acknowledged. Risen strikes me as this type with his Durham Report 'hand-wave' response.
At the very least one might argue that a Top/Bottom analysis rather than the old Left/Right analysis better explains the strange bedfellows behind our endless foreign military expenditures. If woke-ism is relevant at all, it is because it's cynically employed as a "righteous" distraction by "the Top" as they consolidate their wealth and power. Consider the lavish beach front estates owed by Joe, Nancy, Barak and Bill.
Nevertheless, Risen likely wrote a nice volume on Church and his committee work, but I am dubious that the CIA/US intelligence apparatus has continued to be “under the rule of law."
Thanks, Jeff — This is an absolutely fascinating interview with Jim Risen! I ordered the ‘The Last Honest Man’ — while listening to the interview…
Will add The Last Honest Man to my collection. Will listen to your interview too.
I agree with your analysis of “woke” and would add that, not only is it part of US imperialism, it’s also used in a profoundly “Ugly American” way in certain instances. What does that possibly achieve? [edit: except to signal alignment with globalist values]
Thanks for the link! I will MAKE the time to wade through it.
Great podcast. I've obtained the book. I can't help feeling that Congress has largely lost the skills necessary to run investigations. It is an expertise that they need to revive.
I would recommend to anyone who has not done so to obtain a copy of A SEASON OF INQUIRY - REVISITED - COPY RIGHT 29015THE CHURCH COMMITTEE CONFRONTS AMERICA'S SPY AGENCIES REVISITED. BY LOCK K JOHNSON
He originally wrote and released the book in 1984 and revised this one released it in 2015. Mr Johnson was a special assistant to the Chair of the Senate Select Committee House Subcommittee on Intelligence 1975 to 1976. See his wiki for the basic bio.
This volume sheds light on the dark undercurrents that surrounded the Church and Pike committees and the volune is extremely enlightening.
Read it or you miss out!
Thanks Jefferson.
as hey Zeus de Jesus he is not Risin
oh Risen(not) fails in the end ZERO respect sorry gone to us, only. a liar of simpleton could believe in SBT singularity no one at this level could be so ignorant even FIB's Hoover as L'BJ didn't believe nor For s eye sin hour you've been Intercepted ...as Lardner's fat chewing ,ws going to buy book cant now in final analysis. taints all perception in minds well mind swell
"Military Medical Industrial Intell Congressional Complex Error Education Repressed Religion', no wonder elephants afraid
great interview thanks sharing with al who claim to wish to remain willfully ignorant, Cheney no church man but fully of WAReligiosity prophet4profit
mirrors not mansions but yes alas "man-shuns" man huns
Sully vans trip to Cheneys hunting ground