Story of the Intel State

maintaining an empire without boots on the ground

Brief Take: The Intelligence State was created in 1948 to manipulate elections all over the world. But not in the US. Still, the FBI started meddling with left-wing activist groups in the 1960s before being shut down by the Church committee. After the Arab Spring in 2011-12 and Ukraine in 2014 the Intelligence State switched to manipulating media and elections in the US, because Brexit and Trump.

This is based on a speech by Mike Benz at Hillsdale College on September 24, 2024 and The Joe Rogan Experience — 2237 Mike Benz on December 3, 2024.

Step One: US intel throws Italian election on April 18, 1948 with $250 million and the CIA and media and churches and criminal gangs and Hollywood. George Kennan pens a memo saying the US needs to make this setup permanent, just in case.

Step Two: NSC 10/2 June 8, 1948 sanctioned US intelligence to carry out covert operations: “propaganda, economic warfare… sabotage… subversion… guerrillas…” NSC 10/2 also authorized official lying and “plausible deniability” because top officials would not know about covert operations. Problem is, Benz argues, that US officials are not just lying to the world, but lying to the American people, creating “an empire of lies.”

Step Three: Because UN had forbiden territorial acquisitoion of other countries by military force — hard power conquest — the US pivoted to a soft-power approach to empire building, using the CIA, democracy promotion programs at the State Departmen and USAID, plus CIA-proprietary media such Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, etc. amounting to one-third of the CIA budget: “Department of Dirty Tricks.”

Step Four: Backtrack: Establishment of American Empire.

• 1823: Monroe Doctrine, domination Central and South America. Banana Republics etc.

• 1898: Remember the Maine. Won Cuba and Phillipines.

• 1908: Creation of FBI. Used to round up anti-war protesters in WWI.

• 1916: Woodrow Wilson: “make the world safe for democracy” using hard or soft power.

Step Five: Soft Power Operations 1948-1983.

• 85 coup operations in foreign countries with 50 in Eisenhower administration.

• 1960s: Actions against anti-war left. CIA involved bribing National Association of Students etc. to purge leftist populist faction in Democratic Party.

• COINTELPRO. FBI investigating and disrupting domestic groups like Communist Party, civil-rights groups, feminists, environmentalists.

• 1970s Church Committee investigation of intelligence state, created intelligence committees for oversight of intelligence community.

• 1976: Jimmy Carter wins after revelations of intelligence state. Cuts 30 percent of CIA personnel, cuts intelligence budget.

• 1983: Reagan reverses Carter reforms, creates new CIA cutouts like National Endowment for Democracy and other institutions creating a “whole of society” intelligence structure including NGOs, universities, media organizations, union groups, cultural groups.

Step Six: 2010s and Ukraine

• Arab Spring 2011-2012 using social media for regime change in Tunisia and Egypt.

• Ukraine 2014. US concerned that Russia has the energy resources that Europe needs. US wants to develop Donbas in eastern Ukraine to provide energy for Europe not controled by Russia. But Donbas is mainly Russian speaking. So revolution in Ukraine, Hunter Biden on Burisma board that is developing Donbas energy, and war in Ukraine in 2022 to keep the energy resources west-adjacent.

• US seems to have a strategy that it can’t allow Russia to dominate Europe, because of its energy resources. Therefore if we could only get energy out of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine…

Step Seven: Turning Intelligence State to be domestic facing

• US intelligence state spent 60 years dong regime change around the world to create and maintain the American empire without direct military invasion.

• June 2016 Brexit.

• July 2016 NATO “added hybrid warfare to its formal charter, basically authorizing the military, the diplomatic sphere, and the Intelligence world to take control over social media.”

• November 2016 Trump Wins, declared a Russian asset and three year Mueller investigation.

• 2016 State Department’s “Global Engagement Center pivoted from being counterterrorism to counterpopulism, arguing that that right wing populist.” There “was going to be not just Brexit, there's going to be Frexit, Spexit, Italegxit, Grexit, Grexit. So the entire EU would come undone, which would mean all of

  NATO would come undone.”

• 2019 after failure of Mueller investigation, we had full-on social media censorship “allowed to go unchallenged for effectively three years, up until Elon announced the acquisition of X, and that same month, the Disinformation Governance Board spilled over, and then Republicans won the House in... November 2022, which then allowed congressional hearings on all this and the elevation of the Twitter files and the public awareness from that.”

Wrapup:

We can see that the Trump 2016 win occurred before the Intelligence State got itself organized for fixing domestic elections. Trump 2020 lost because the Intelligence State could censor media to discredit and silence Trump. Trump 2024 win was possible because Elon / X and burgeoning new media outflanked the Intelligence State censorship and election fixing operation.