Peter Dale Scott - The American Deep State

In Conversation with Sylvia Boorstein

The American Deep State makes a compelling case for a hidden "deep state" that influences and often opposes official U.S. policies. Prominent political analyst Peter Dale Scott begins by tracing America's increasing militarization, restrictions on constitional rights, and income disparity since the Vietnam War. He argues that a significant role in this historic reversal was the intervention of a series of structural deep events, ranging from the assassination of President Kennedy to 9/11. He does not attempt to resolve the controversies surrounding these events, but he shows their significant points in common, ranging from overlapping personnel and modes of operation to shared sources of funding. Behind all of these commonalities is what Scott calls the deep state: a second order of government, behind the public or constitutional state, that has grown considerably stronger since World War II. He marshals convincing evidence that the deep state is partly institutionalized in non-accountable intelligence agencies like the CIA and NSA, but it also includes private corporations like Booz Allen Hamilton and SAIC, to which 70 percent of intelligence budgets are outsourced. Behind these public and private institutions is the traditional influence of Wall Street bankers and lawyers, allied with international oil companies beyond the reach of domestic law. With the importance of Gulf states like Saudi Arabia to oil markets, American defense companies, and Wall Street itself, this essential book shows that there is now a supranational deep state, sometimes demonstrably opposed to both White House policies and the American public interest.

Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is a poet, writer, and researcher. He was born in Montreal in 1929, the only son of the poet F.R. Scott and the painter Marian Dale Scott. He is married to Ronna Kabatznick; and he has three children, Cassie, Mika, and John Scott, by a previous marriage to Maylie Marshall. Before teaching as an English Professor at the University of California, he served for four years as a Canadian diplomat, at UN Assemblies and in Warsaw, Poland.

Sylvia Boorstein is a cofounding teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre and a senior teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. She has a Ph.D. in psychology and teaches and lectures widely. She is the author of It’s Easier Than You Think; Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There; and That’s Funny You Don’t Look Buddhist. She and her husband, Seymour, live in Sonoma County, California.

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