Peter Dale Scott defines the deep state as unconstitutional political powers operating via an "overworld" and "underworld" system, citing RECON 84's surveillance of Nicaraguan dissidents and linking JFK, Watergate, and 9/11 to COG planning involving the CIA and figures like John Dean. He critiques media co-option of his research to justify emergency powers while noting the elimination of liabilities like William Harvey, arguing that misrepresenting these covert networks as positive forces threatens democratic integrity unless public awareness counters such distortions. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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America's Ugly Deep State00:15:25
Thank you.
Hello, everyone.
This is Dark Journalist with a very exciting Part 2 episode with Professor Peter Dale Scott.
Professor Scott's work on the deep state and continuity of government, COG, has blazed a trail for others to follow to understand how the deep process of politics, policy, and covert operations really happen.
Today, we'll take on that deep state through a wide angle lens of what Professor Scott calls the overworld and the underworld, where the covert system meets our public reality, sometimes with great force.
In what the professor calls deep events, From 9 11 all the way back to the JFK assassination.
Well, 2020 is looking like a major deep state event, and we're going to ask the professor to deconstruct the forces behind all the chaos that we're witnessing.
Here we go.
Professor Peter Dale Scott, deep state COG rising.
Professor, following on this COG theme, what was REX 84?
REX 84 was an exercise, it was not a plan, it was the implementation of the plan.
And what it was planning for was the roundup of large numbers of dissidents.
Now, officially at that time, the purpose of COG planning is supposed to be an atomic attack.
Do they really think that the Nicaraguans that they were worried about and people from El Salvador, that these people had atomic weapons?
No, they were abusing the power, but they were definitely using it because they.
This was a case where they wanted to be sure that the Contras could have a free hand.
The people who were opposed to the Contras were being, I don't know what, at a minimum, I would say, a certain surveillance of these people.
Oh, that was the number three surveillance, yes.
Yes.
Systematic surveillance.
And I don't want to go into it, but I have been surveilled.
It doesn't bother me.
I want to be surveilled.
Because I don't want them to think that I'm anti-file with a, you know, that I'm going to set fire to a building.
I want them to know it.
So I've never been frightened of surveillance.
But it was much worse in the 1980s because they surveilled the people and then the FBI compiled a list.
And then they would do two things.
First of all, they would deport these people to Honduras or El Salvador, where they came from.
And then they would send a list of the names of the people with the surveillance results to the intelligence forces of those countries, which means I'm sure that at a minimum these people were imprisoned when they arrived and quite possibly tortured and quite possibly killed because that's what those agencies did.
The FBI knew it, the FBI didn't care.
And that is the country that we live in.
We have to remember that so that, you know, there's a tendency of some people they see Trump being.
Persecuted by the FBI.
Oh, the FBI then have to be the good guys.
No, no, no, they're not good guys.
I mean, most of them are.
I dealt a lot with the FBI because if somebody wanted to be a conscientious objector and they were a student, they would give me as a resource to the FBI and I would talk to these people and I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with the people I talk to.
But at the core of our system are ugly features.
Every world power has always had at its core ugly features.
That was true of Rome, it was true of Spain, it was true of Britain, and now it's true of America.
And I'm hoping that we can move to a more polycentric world where America isn't trying to use its dirty powers to control everything, because that would be good for the world and it would certainly be very good for America.
Absolutely.
Finally, do you think that the fact that this year that COG has come up, you know, I've seen it come up in Newsweek.
We've seen those articles from William Arkin, for example, talking about.
COG, talking about it very differently than you do.
He came, he started before this year.
And there was an article, I think it was in Newsweek, which did talk about COG.
And actually, in a sense, it was an article that made sense, but they were using COG in almost exactly the antithetical purpose that I'm using it.
They were saying, we need COG powers to deal with COVID, and the COG powers we have aren't nearly powerful enough.
That's the message that I want.
People to take away from this program.
That's the deep state using COG in the traditional way.
Exactly, but this must be particularly interesting for you to see.
You brought forward COG and explained the potential abuse of emergency powers, sabotaging the Constitution for decades.
And now here's the government and the media, and all they can seem to talk about this year is continuity of government.
Yes, COG is suddenly relevant again.
But we have a lot of people talking about the substance of them, like Gary Hart about these secret powers, yet he doesn't mention COG.
I think when he was a senator, he probably saw them and his lips are sealed.
Yes, absolutely.
And this other effort, the kind of Arkin articles, are more like spin from the deep state.
Well, they're good.
I use the Arkin articles, but he doesn't go anywhere with them.
No, they've been helpful to me.
In the American deep state, I cite.
Some of his articles.
He shows how it goes way back, as Gary Hart also says, go back to Eisenhower.
But, you know, I've seen what some of those early things are.
They're very sensible and they're very limited.
They're nothing like this idea that you can go after, but they use it in the 80s.
We know how they used it in the 80s.
They used it to surveil and round up peaceful protesters against the Contras.
Anyone who didn't protest the Contras was missing his civic duty, I think.
The Contras was, again, there may have been good Contras.
I don't know.
But the idea that you were helping a group to bomb villages, and you remember there was an American down there who was a victim.
He was showing villages how to get clean water out of their wells, and they killed him.
And these were people that we were supporting to kill.
Americans.
It was an ugly aspect of American policy.
And again, believe me, I know America is not all ugly.
I live here.
I love this country.
I love its constitution.
Although I would like to see some parts of it changed, but that's the American thing.
One of the things I love about Americans is that most of the decent ones are contemplating making America better, who recognize that the American ideals are still ahead.
It's not that we need to save America that was great in the past.
America in the past had slavery, it had all kinds of horrible things.
No, America is a project, and I think James Baldwin said that it's a project still to be realized.
Absolutely.
And well, part of that is for people to understand things like continuity of government and the deep state.
Yes.
And not in the way that they're being presented through the media and these kind of sized down versions of, or, you know, the meme that, like, oh, Trump, you know, the deep state's against Trump, or the deep state might be a good thing.
And we've been seeing this one a lot lately, which is, you know, there is a deep state, but it's a good thing.
So this is a very disturbing trend that's come out of the media.
Now that they've realized the cat is out of the bag, they're like, well, it's good, actually.
The deep state is good.
And left wingers have almost fallen into that trap.
I won't name names, but people I consider personal friends that come very close to that.
And because Putin, I think, is being maligned in the American media.
They start treating Putin as a good guy.
Well, I think he has been maligned, and I don't think he's a good guy.
He's like an American president.
He's got to do because he's the head of a major state, and there are ugly things that he's responsible for, too, like the poisoning of dissidents, for example.
We shouldn't forget that.
Some of my fans, I'm afraid, are not willing to recognize.
Exactly.
It's the kind of bizarre thing where we need a much better.
Understanding of these things that you've spent decades bringing forward.
I feel with the deep state, with continuity of government, there's more research, you know, there's more background to what you've put forward on it versus this kind of flimsy media buzz version of the deep state.
It's sort of been required in the media to dumb down any references to these things.
And yes, we urgently need more research, and particularly on a global level.
Deal with that, we have to deal with the international deep state in which oil companies play such a big part.
And Russia, being a big oil producer, oil and gas producer, plays such a big part.
Much more research into all of that kind of thing.
But research is only a little bit of the task.
And being out there on the streets when necessary is a big part of the task, too.
And so we all have to be ready to do that.
The oil companies kind of get a free ride these days.
There's not a lot of deep stories about them.
They've kind of.
You know, because oil companies take out ads in newspapers.
Newspapers are not going to take up a position where they lose ads from oil companies.
Yes.
Wow, fascinating.
Professor, I recall when your use of the term the deep state was just known among a small group of political people who were interested in deeper research.
And then suddenly it skyrocketed.
It was everywhere, it was flashed across the New York Times.
And this had a lot to do with the ascension of the Trump campaign, et cetera.
Do you remember when this started to balloon out into the kind of catch all phrase that the mainstream media likes to use now?
I first mentioned the deep state, and this is what got me a mention ultimately in the New York Times as the man who brought the trend to America.
Yes.
Originally, I don't know, I'm not seeing it, but the road to 9 11.
I actually had a little glossary at the back of my arguments, and I gave a definition I wouldn't defend for a moment.
Now, because I've done a lot more thinking.
But that's where in 2007 I introduced the term deep state about America.
I was very ambivalent about it and said so, I think, in the American War Machine, because in some ways it's a bad term because a state is something organized, it's a structure.
The deep state is something not much less organized, it's quite chaotic and it's not a structure.
And that's why I say now in the latest definition I did, I don't know if I can find it in time, but I say that the deep state is best defined negatively as the sum of all those powers that have political clout.
That are not covered and limited by the U.S. Constitution.
Right.
And I have your latest overview on the deep state that you sent over to me.
I'm going to read from this now so we all get your latest thoughts on the definition of the deep state.
Quoting directly from your paper The deep state is best defined negatively as the system and processes of political power not open, recognized, and controlled by law.
In the American deep state, page 13, I identified the deep state with what I had earlier called the Deep political system, which habitually resorts to decision making and enforcement procedures outside as well as inside those publicly sanctioned by law and society.
I noted how top level Treasury officials, CIA officers, and Wall Street bankers and lawyers all think much alike because of the revolving door by which they pass easily from private to public service and back.
The term deep state can be misleading.
States are far more structured than the deep state, which defies clear definitions.
And would in fact be misrepresented by any clear definition.
For example, Tom Hayden's notion of a state within a state is too restricted.
Those with that inner power, such as the higher echelons of the CIA, exercise it not by their seclusion, but by their interactions with an outside overworld.
And like a weather system, the deep state contains conflicting currents within it.
The deep conflict in U.S. society in 2020 mirrors a deep conflict between nationalist and internationalist elements in the deep state as well.
This conflict is not new, but goes back for at least a century.
Today, the deep state is partly institutionalized in non accountable intelligence agencies like the CIA and NSA, but it also extends its reach to private institutions like Booz Allen Hamilton and SAIC, to which 70% of intelligence budgets are outsourced.
To preserve America's traditional constitutional framework, it is important to see how particular cabals, such as the Project for the New American Century, Have repeatedly used invisible powers and networks, such as Continuity of Government or COG, and its so called Doomsday Network to prepare for unpopular wars.
I see the influence of the deep state in deep events, those misreported and covered up disruptions of our politics, such as the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, and 9 11, that have contributed to the erosion of our democracy and the American dream of an open society.
The similarities and overlaps of these recent deep events.
Are in fact the most compelling evidence I know for the existence, influence, and the present corruption of the American deep state.
Kennedy, Watergate, and Phase Three00:11:50
Professor, that's fascinating analysis, your analysis.
Invisible powers.
Including the power to kill, including the power to down an airplane, as Walter Ruther, the head of the American auto workers, was killed after he received a series of death threats.
Those are the kind of.
I say that the deep state involves, along with the NSA and the CIA, the overworld and the underworld.
And the overworld, we know, our historians have told us how the overworld has used the underworld.
Henry Ford wanted to break, he wanted to stop the unionization of his workers by the auto workers.
And so Joe Adonis, who was a leading mob figure, Had control of all the dealerships on the East Coast.
And that meant that Joe Adonis in the underworld was part of the deep state.
And I think whoever killed Kennedy, I don't know where they came from.
They may have come from overseas.
But they were part of the deep state.
Fascinating.
And we covered in the first part of this interview that the forces behind it utilized the White House Emergency Communications Network, the so called Doomsday Network.
Well, it's interesting because you did mention two things there in relation to the deep state.
In relation to that communications network.
And it was Winston Lawson, who was the Secret Service agent during the Kennedy assassination, who had set up the route.
And he was one of the people who used that emergency network.
Yes.
And he also gave false, he gave a false report of what was happening.
And I draw attention to that in the politics of the death of JFK.
Yes.
That is fascinating.
And you wrote a follow up book to that, which was the first deep state action against the White House, Dallas 63.
Yeah.
That's right.
So there's more information on that there.
The last thing I'll say about that, which is interesting, is John Dean, you also picked out of that COG emergency planning basket, and there he was associated with the deep event of Watergate.
Yes, and so was, of course, James McCord, who was the leader of the team of burglars who went into Watergate.
Watergate, for me, doesn't just mean all Nixon's.
Abuses of power, it means a break in.
And it's so interesting to me, we still don't know the truth about that break in, but we do know that the leader of the break in, James McCord, ex CIA, was part of a special army group that was dealing with continuity of government.
Yes.
And there, again, those figures come up just like in 9 11, Cheney and Rumsfeld are right there and they're plugged into that COG history.
Frank Sturgis, one of the burglars, was one of the people arrested in the Watergate, which started off the whole of Watergate.
I had already written about because of his role in connection with the Kennedy assassination.
Right.
And that is fascinating because no one knew that he was going to show up as this figure in the break in.
But there you had the book, and the book was from 1969.
The book I'm talking about was never published The Dallas Conspiracy.
I wrote it in the mid 70s.
Well, I finished it about 72 or so.
I mean, I could tell you a fascinating story about that, but I'm not going to because I think we've dealt with enough.
There's no question.
There's no question.
Although I will say about the Dallas conspiracy, do you feel like that information got out in other parts of your work?
Or is that.
Oh, yes.
I mined it for Deep Pose and the death of JFK.
Okay.
It was a year I was about to get married.
And my wife objected to my spending so much time at my computer, but I did quickly part about the Secret Service agent, the White House committee.
That was taken from the Douglas conspiracy.
Ah, I see.
Thank God that's in there.
That is fascinating, I have to say, and it gives us a better understanding because an example is kind of worth more than an overview in a sense because it gives us an idea.
Okay, here's this guy, he's in the heart of this.
And he's setting up the travel route for the president through Dallas where he gets assassinated.
Okay, I'm going to tell you another personal anecdote, and don't attach too much importance to this.
The Dallas Conspiracy was originally three chapters of the book The War Conspiracy, which came out in 1972.
But the publishers, Bob Smerald, said those chapters should be another book.
Don't put them in this book.
And I accepted that advice and developed them as a separate book.
It only came to my attention later that the legal counsel to, in house legal counsel to Bob's Merrill at that time, was William Harvey,
who had been in the CIA at the time of the Kennedy assassination and was suspected by many people at the time of having been involved in the Kennedy assassination because of his very demonstrable connections to the mafia and his personal connection to John Roselli, who he was seen.
Talking to in Washington in the summer of 1963.
All of that, all I give you that as a bit of background of just how complex and intricate and undefinable the workings of the deep state are.
That is fascinating.
I think that we have to add here that the deep state also knows when its minions have outlived their usefulness.
Harvey, who you mentioned there, ended up testifying to the church committee.
Looking at CIA involvement in the JFK assassination in the 70s.
Immediately afterwards, he dies of a massive heart attack before he can say anything else.
Then they have Johnny Rizzelli, and he's going to testify to the Senate Select Committee.
Again, they're reopening the JFK assassination, and then he's found dismembered in a drum floating in Biscayne Bay in Florida.
This is what these forces do when someone becomes a liability to them.
And in the case of Rizzelli, the committee was very interested in his testimony because a CIA agent named Bob Mayhew.
Had testified that the CIA had him seek out Roselli for the assassination of foreign leaders like Castro.
And Mayhew, of course, had run the Howard Hughes empire for decades.
I have to ask you, Professor, and I didn't even think of this did Howard Hughes ever show up as a major feature in your research?
The organization did.
The man himself, I think, was heavily under drugs.
The organization absolutely is a major figure in the Bobby Kennedy assassination.
Yes.
But it also, on the Watergate aspect, Jack Anderson, well, read what I say in which book is it?
It's Deep Politics and the Death of JFK.
Jack Anderson said, in 1967, he did a column that was published in full in the San Francisco Chronicle and not published in full in the Post, where he raised the question that the CIA plots against Castro might have backfired.
And this is what Bobby Kennedy was worried about that they might be responsible for his brother's murder.
That story did not, that part of his story, it's the third section of his story, didn't run in the Washington Post.
And I believe that the man who killed it was Bobby Kennedy.
Wow.
This is what I've always called a phase three story about the Kennedy assassination.
Phase one story is Russia did it, Cuba did it, and they had evidence for this, which they later had to suppress.
And many people worked very busily to suppress it.
Because they didn't want war with Russia, they didn't want war with Cuba, which, by the way, didn't have anything to do with the assassination.
And then the phase two story was Lee Harvey Oswald was a disgruntled loner who wanted fame.
But he didn't want fame very much because when they kept saying, Are you accused of the county?
He said, No, sir, I have not been accused of that.
I mean, right.
We said, search for fame.
And then phase three was, This is a very embarrassing story because Bobby Kennedy's own operations are involved, which I don't rule out because the CIA penetrated his operations.
He did have operations, and they were penetrated immediately by the CIA.
And I believe that when John McCone went out to Hickory Hill, Bobby's home, on the afternoon of November 22nd, and talked to Bobby for an hour, But I don't think it was ever taped, and we don't know what no one was ever asked about it.
We don't know what was said.
I think that Bobby Kennedy was given the phase three story, as I've defined it, because shortly after that, he talked to a man who was in charge of his operations, and according to a journalist who was there, said, One of your boys did it.
Wow.
And he could only have known that if he had heard it from McCone.
And McCone would only know what the CIA had told him.
And I would not count on the CIA to tell them the truth if they were in their own way involved.
But that's the phase three story.
Now I'm bringing this up because in 1967, when all kinds of things were about to happen, Bobby Kennedy is about to come out against the war, and suddenly Jack Anderson runs a column which raises this phase three possibility.
And then in 1970, In the early years of the, I'm not going to date them, but the early years of the Nixon administration, Jack Anderson comes back to this theme.
And I know that, I know enough about Watergate to know that the Jack Anderson columns were responded to very vigorously in the Nixon White House.
And one man said, don't go too far there because who knows what skeletons in the closet might come out.
But it's all part of the story of setting up the plumbers and the break into Ellsworth's psychiatrists.
The continuity of all these different deep events, let everyone remember, when you have an event that's of major importance and the media cannot talk about it honestly, it may be important enough to produce a commission of investigation, but you can count on the fact that the commission will not investigate it properly.
Setting the Record Straight00:08:20
The 9 11 commission actually said.
The only people who were allowed to look at the COG aspects were the president and the chairman and the vice chairman and the director, Philip Zelico.
The commission was not allowed to see the CIA documentation, and it was obviously relevant.
That's why I never got to fill out, I didn't complete my story, but on 9 11, because of COG regulations, Cheney told Ashcroft, You cannot go back to the Justice Department, and he went instead to the FBI.
That meant that Cheney and his legal assistant, Addington, were dealing with da da da da.
A Berkeley law professor who had just joined the department and was in charge of the relevant division, a man called John Yu, Y O O, whom I've met, but who has very extreme ideas about presidential powers being unfairly limited by certain of the acts that have been passed since.
And John Yu was a big figure in the follow up to 9 11.
And then John Mu, I think he hoped to be maybe Jeb Bush's attorney general.
Jeb Bush didn't win the nomination.
And John Mu stayed out of Washington politics until last summer.
And he's suddenly active again, offering advice.
This man who knows everything about emergency powers, he's written a book on emergency powers.
Oh, isn't that interesting?
He is advising Trump today.
You look up John Yu on the internet.
Yes.
John Yu rides again.
His mother was a poet.
Her mother was not a bad poet, by the way.
He's a charming man to talk to.
He charmed the pants off me when I met him.
But he's a politician.
And I think he, and in his book, he distorts the facts.
In fact, there are errors of fact which I drew to his attention.
And he didn't answer my letter drawing them to his attention.
Well, a scholar would be interested in something that's an error in his thing, a politician would not be interested.
And it's at that point that I decided that John Yu isn't primarily a law professor, he's primarily a politician.
And we'll see, there may be more about John Yu in the days to come, and there may not be.
I hope there isn't, but if there is.
Then it adds to the urgency of everything we've been talking about in this program.
Oh, what a fascinating loop there that you are back.
I didn't know that he's out there and doing these things now.
That's fantastic.
That's just the last two or three months.
Well, I think you just launched a new investigation, Professor.
I hope so.
I'll tell you this the political situation seems to keep calling you out of retirement about talking about these deep state issues, and I'm glad you were able to do that and clarify it because.
I've been familiar with your work for many years, and when I see a lot of the terms that you gave background to and really got the research going on, and to see them kind of minimized and turned into these strange things, I'm glad you kind of set the record straight on what it is that you're talking about.
Well, this is the first time where I've actually got mentioned in the New York Times and the Washington Post as relevant because I introduced the term deep state, which is.
The way it's got defined by Trump, it's not something I'm proud of at all.
And it's why I was nervous almost about bringing it up.
But that's a whole other story.
Well, the media did a great job of ignoring your research for many years, but suddenly there you were.
Well, they're still ignoring my real research, I think.
Absolutely.
Well, many people are not, and I'm sure the people who are watching this today are very happy that you came out with this today.
Well, I'm glad I had this opportunity to bring a lot of things.
They've been on my mind separately.
And you suddenly, just either was it yesterday or the day before, you offered me this opportunity to talk about all of them at once.
The Proud Boys and John Yu and Congressman Brooks asking Oliver North, Is it true that you're planning to suppress the Constitution and the New York Times thinking that's not worthy of a news story?
All of that needs to be dealt with at once.
And thank you, Dan.
I've really enjoyed this.
It's tremendous insight.
And that's exactly what we need, especially with all the noise that's going on.
I really feel like it's so refreshing to have you talk about these things.
I've been hearing people.
Really, you know, especially this year, just taking that deep state idea and turning it into a totally different thing.
So we'll get it back on the record.
Good guys, good guys are turning it into a bad thing.
I won't name names, but I know some of the really good guys are doing it.
And it's because everything is so polarized politically.
And we really haven't seen it like this before.
And you mentioned earlier about the right group, the Proud Boys waiting on some presidential signal.
And also, the debate moderator, Chris Wallace, he was the one who actually brought that up, not Trump.
But the media has this going on right and left, of course, with Antifa and other extremist groups.
It's almost as if there's someone back there hoping for a civil war and whipping up these tensions so they can come in and pick up the pieces at a deep state profit.
And even with all that in mind, I know that you take a positive view on things ultimately working out.
Then, in the long run, although it's a very bumpy road, truth will.
Be heard and justice will be served.
Fantastic.
Wow.
Professor, it's been great to have you today.
Fantastic information.
I still refer everyone to American Deep State, which is, I think, your greatest book, but there's so many leading up to it.
That's the one.
Here we go.
You know your stuff, so I enjoy talking with you.
I appreciate that.
I've always learned so much from your work.
And I have to say, I feel like your work.
Has been used but uncredited in a lot of alternative research that I've seen.
I'll go back to it and say, oh, that comes straight out of Professor Scott's book, but there's no citation.
So I think you've had that influence, even if they haven't cited you at times.
Well, a lot of very decent people who are friendly to me don't want to cite me because they don't want to have the tar be tarred as a conspiracy theorist.
And that's one CIA operation that's worked very well in the media.
Which is a conspiracy theorist.
Even if your conspiracy is that 19 Arabs blew up the buildings of the Twin Towers and damaged the Pentagon, they're not conspiracy theorists.
I don't know why they're not, but those of us who say it's bigger than that, we're conspiracy theorists.
So it's great to see you.
Thank you.
Have a great afternoon.
Same to you.
Bye bye.
Thank you, everyone, for joining us.
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