By Thomas Lifson | American Thinker
John
McLaughlin (YouTube screen grab)
The arrogance and lack of self-awareness among the
mandarins that inhabit the top levels of our government bureaucracies has led
to a smoking gun-level confession. Rather than respecting the will of the
voters who elect a president, they proudly substitute their own policy
preferences and think nothing of conspiring to drive from office the person who
holds legitimate authority to make policy and conduct the affairs of
government.
A confession from a man who formerly ran the CIA came
Wednesday at an event sponsored by a friendly organization, the Michael V.
Hayden Center and Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason
University. Former CIA Acting Director John McLaughlin was among friends who
share the same seditious outlook, speaking on a panel discussion, with CIA
Director John Brennan, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and former CIA
Deputy Director Michael Morell. With everyone sharing the same assumptions,
McLaughlin apparently let down his guard and committed a “Kinsley gaffe” – accidentally
telling the incriminating truth.
Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller describes
what I call his confession, responding to a question from the moderator:
“There is something unique you have to agree that now the
impeachment inquiry is underway, sparked by a complaint from someone within the
intelligence community, it feeds the president’s concern, an often used term
about a ‘deep state’ being there to take him out,” Margaret Brennan, the
moderator for the event, asked McLaughlin.
“Thank God for the ‘deep state,'” replied the former
spook, who served as acting director at the CIA in 2004.
Laughter and applause greeted this endorsement of
“tak[ing] out” an elected president.
McLaghin kept on digging when the applause died down:
“Everyone here has seen this progression of diplomats and
intelligence officers and White House people trooping up to Capitol Hill right
now and saying these are doing their duty and responding to a higher call,”
said McLaughlin, who has also served as CIA deputy director.
“With all of the people who knew what was going on here,
it took an intelligence officer to step forward and say something about it,
which was the trigger that then unleashed everything else,” he said.
Consider for a moment the implications of his term
“higher call.” Rather than obey the Constitution’s grant of power over the
executive branch to the president, a subordinate official claims the right to
subvert lawfully ordered policies because he disagrees with them, and to
conspire to engineer his ouster from office. In essence, he is claiming that
his former agency, the CIA, has the right to make and carry out policy
regardless of what the elected officials chosen by voters want. This is not the
constitutional republic, but rather a dictatorship of unaccountable
bureaucrats.
This is precisely the attitude taken by McLaughlin’s
counterparts in the FBI, Comey, McCabe, and Strzok among others. It is
sedition.
McLaughlin puts the lie to the claims of many progressive
politicians and journalists that the notion of a deep state is a “nutty
conspiracy theory.”
Watch and fear for the future of our republic, unless
deep state conspirators are prosecuted for their crimes.
