Is There a "Deep State"?

Professor Michael Glennon on Double Government

In his 2015 book National Security and Double Government, Tufts University law professor Michael Glennon provides a brief but tantalizing examination of "double government": the idea that there is an autonomous network of actors within the government that exercises power over national security and international affairs but is not directly controlled by or accountable to the familiar external institutions of government that are accountable to the public through elections. In recent years, this idea has been known to us in popular discussion as the "deep state" hypothesis. In the Apollonian discourse of the mainstream media and the respectable public, concern about this is dismissed with an appeal to the need for faith in the integrity of government institutions which can be kept in check through normal channels of accountability. But in the Dionysian discourse of the internet and furtive conversations at diners, the idea of the "deep state" fuels conspiracy theories that posit a world of shadowy and malevolent actors pulling the strings behind the world order to the detriment of innocent and powerless subjects.

Glennon's volume serves the valuable function of validating the substance behind the idea and bringing rationality to the proceedings. He treats the deep state phenomenon rationally not through a priori dismissal, nor by a more educated dismissal on account of the rationality of government action, nor by entertaining the occult fantasies of the conspiracists. Rather, he concludes that the phenomenon is likely a result of organizational behavioral dynamics. These dynamics, when they take place at the summit of power politics of the most powerful nation on earth, with top secret information protocols and budgets numbering in the billions, has apparently resulted in a network of elite actors within the national security apparatus of the US government with a vast amount of power and apparently little accountability to the public. Glennon calls this the "Trumanite" network, named after the reorganization of the national security bureaucracy undertaken by President Truman in the 1940s. In contrast, we find the familiar "Madisonian" institutions, which include the democratically elected or at least democratically accountable institutions such as the Presidency, Congress and the court system.

The existence of a powerful Trumanite network is sobering news, to be certain. Yet, ultimately, we must welcome it, for two reasons. First, the acknowledgement of the issue is a first step that is needed towards constructive political action that will be able to enforce appropriate measures of accountability on this hidden recess of power. Second, the rationality of the explanation provides an intellectual sword that can be used to cut through the paranoia of the conspiracy theorists, which, in our social media age, is having a deleterious effect on public discourse.

Glennon frames the discussion around a central question that puzzled many in the years after we elected President Barack Obama on a platform of hope and change: Obama promised to restore accountability to the national security establishment, yet as Glennon documents immediately within the first few pages, his policies were largely the same as Bush's. While he ended torture, he continued the use of covert drone strikes, kept Guantanamo Bay open, and continued NSA data collection policies on US citizens, to name just a few of the dozens of examples Glennon cites. What led to the continuity in policies between Bush and Obama?

Glennon finds the so-called "rational actor" theory, that Obama saw the same terrorist threats as Bush and therefore decided rationally that he would have to undertake the same responses as Bush did, unconvincing. Glennon's focuses on the limits of rationality, arguing that rationality leaves underdetermined the choice between hierarchies of values that would decide either ends or means. Therefore it would not be likely that a rational actor with an entirely different value system such as Obama succeeding Bush would come to the exact same conclusions as to which policies they would pursue if they were completely free to choose. A second method of explanation that we might call "political rationality" includes the exigencies of politics, such as the multiplicity of different personalities, interests, and conflicts that occur in political life, but ends up being too broad and fails to generate concrete theses.

Instead, Glennon argues that the explanation for the double government phenomenon can be found in organizational behavioral dynamics. To understand why something so mundane would produce such sensational results, it helps to reflect on the nature of rationality in human institutions. There is an inherent paradox in the social rationality required for modernity. On the one hand, organized social processes have been necessary for whatever progress rationality has made in understanding the world. When Newton said that he stood on the shoulders of giants, he meant that he was embedded in a web of rational advances without which his own insights would not just fail to stand out; the previous insights and categories developed by his predecessors formed the very precondition that allowed his thoughts to be thought at all. The paradox is that the very social structures that allow for rationality’s social use also include all manner of extra-rational or irrational aspects that produce distortions that range from inconvenient to crippling.

Glennon finds five dimensions of organizational dynamics from leading theorists that he believes may cause the deep state phenomenon. First, membership in bureaucratic organizations is associated with a certain cultural understanding of practices, roles, and duties that may not match up to the needs of the situation or the public. Second, bureaucratic organizations tend to develop standard operating procedures (SOPs), which prevent them from dealing with new situations. Third, organizations tend towards risk-averseness over time. Fourth, organizations tend to seek greater power. Fifth, information flows in organizations condition their effectiveness. He writes, "The process of filtering and reinterpreting data in the intermediate layers from collection to decision subjects the data to abbreviation, modification, and cognitive distortion (such as groupthink)."

Such dynamics will not be mysterious to anyone who has worked in any sort of organization. Indeed, they are a natural outgrowth of human nature itself: its tendency towards inertia, its desire for power, and the subjection of its rationality to limitations and biases. Yet when they take place in the context of a national security situation, they give rise to phenomena that may be at odds with what we expect from a democratically elected government that is sovereign over the national security apparatus. Glennon discusses the example of former Bush officials John Brennan and Robert Gates convincing Obama of the necessity of continuing the policy on drone attacks. Once an institution has a certain way of doing things, with the support of authoritative intermediaries, it can become very difficult to change its course. Glennon entertains the hypothesis of what might happen if Obama were to try to push back on such recommendations. Glennon notes that Obama would have faced extreme pushback from the media and the Trumanites themselves for daring to question preexisting authority and expertise. He notes that ultimately presidents have limited political capital that may not be enough to hold the institutions accountable in every situation.

Glennon examines how difficult it is for the Madisonian institutions of the courts, Congress, and the Presidency to hold the Trumanite network accountable in the course of a key chapter, "The Reality of Madisonian Weakness." With the courts, Glennon argues that there are mechanisms in place that structurally prevent serious challenges to the Trumanite network from being raised. The members of the judiciary must be appointed and confirmed by the other branches of government, so in practice they are selected for their dependability with respect to upholding the Trumanite system. Glennon cites the examples of Justices Rehnquist and Scalia who both worked with the Office of Legal Counsel under Nixon before being appointed as Supreme Court Justices. Individuals who would challenge existing Trumanite policies from basic principles never make it into the judiciary. The judiciary ends up issuing legal rubber stamps based on precedents and established rationalizations. Glennon finds that while there have been a handful of successful judicial challenges to the Trumanite system in 80 odd years, including the Supreme Court allowing the Pentagon Papers to be published, by and large the judiciary is not sufficiently independent to act as an autonomous check on the Trumanite network.

The Congress is similarly unable to serve as a check on the Trumanite network. Trumanite agencies such as the CIA are in principle accountable to Congress. But since Congress is accountable to the people and requires their support to be reelected, there is often little incentive to hold the Trumanite agencies accountable in the face of an electorate that is not concerned about them. Even when members of Congress try to hold the agencies accountable, the agencies can withhold information or generally refuse to cooperate. Glennon quotes Senator Dianne Feinstein: "[the] CIA's detention and interrogation program began operations in 2002, though it was not until September 2006, that Members of the Intelligence Committee, other than the Chairman and Vice Chairman, were briefed." Without a mandate or incentive to create one, Congress is unable to effectively hold the national security agencies accountable.

There is a mythology that the Presidency is a totally sovereign office that could enact transformative change through saying-so with enough gravitas. But Glennon demonstrates why this is not really possible in the context of the current system. As he puts it, "true top-down decisions that order fundamental policy shifts are rare... The reality is that when the President issues an 'order' to the Trumanites, the Trumanites themselves normally formulate the order." This makes perfect sense within the context of the organizational dynamics explanation that Glennon brings up (although that comes in a later chapter in the book). The essential competency of the process that selects the President selects for is synthesizing high level ideas in a way that garners public support in a highly demanding media environment. But the details of legality, meticulous intelligence gathering, and cooperation across a complex network are all embedded deep in the structure of the complex organizational structure of the government. A President is not able to dictate the exact policy of the state any more than a magic word is able to dictate material reality; the President's ideas must work through the structure of the state, which has its own inertia, capabilities, and interests. "Presidential choice is further circumscribed by the Trumanites' ability to frame the set of options from which the President may choose..." Glennon writes. And if the President tries to change the established process they may be faced with fierce resistance. "When Obama considered lowering the military's proposed force levels for Afghanistan, a member of his National Security staff who was an Iraq combat veteran suggested that, if the president did so... [then General Stanley McChrystal, General David Petraeus, Admiral Michael Mullen, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates] all might resign... Like other presidents in similar situations, Obama thus 'had little choice but to accede to the Pentagon's longstanding requests for more troops' in Afghanistan."

If the examination of previous examples of the difficulties of the Madisonian institutions holding the Trumanite network to account was one of the strongest parts of the book, one of the weaker parts, at least relative to the natural expectations one would have going into the book, was the lack of details of current operations of the Trumanite network. We don't have an idea of exactly who these people are or what they are able to do. This is, of course, due to the inherent difficulty of reporting on the subject matter. A book like this depends on the reporting that is able to be done by the media. But the media is not a sovereign entity. Media depends on access to sources, and the Trumanite network is able to prevent access to its inner workings just as effectively to the media as to any branch of the government or member of the public that wants information. Even if we are disappointed, we can certainly empathize with the reasons why Glennon is not able to provide a system map of the Trumanite network detailing members and functions. He is perhaps in the condition of a doctor before modern diagnostics who must rely on external signs of the pulse and heartbeat to diagnose an illness that lies in the cells that is invisible to the technology available at the time.

Is the illness of the deep state so bad, or is it rather something that we can live with? Does it really matter if these agencies have unaccountable power if ordinary Americans are able to live their lives without thinking about the details of arcane legal proceedings at detention sites? Glennon notes that it's entirely possible for things to go on with the public accepting the current tradeoff between liberty and security. He warns of another possibility that could happen after something like a terrorist attack, though could also occur as a result of other developments such as the censorship environment becoming more and more restrictive, or other sorts of societal or governmental tension more generally. And that is that persistent tensions may develop between a public that regards the state as illegitimate and authoritarian, while the state regards the public as unqualified to make that judgment and treats them as hostile.

But what is to be done with Glennon's diagnosis to avoid such dire outcomes? One option might be to work within the Madisonian institutions to enforce accountability on the Trumanite network. However, as he notes, "That however, is exactly what many thought they were doing in electing Barack Obama as President." A second option might be installing new accountability mechanisms within the government. The problem he identifies is that intra-government accountability structures can be co-opted, just as the judiciary which was intended to provide accountability has been co-opted. Glennon discusses the example of Obama setting up an "'independent' panel to ensure that civil liberties were being respected and to restore public confidence" after the Edward Snowden disclosures of NSA surveillance. The panel ended up being made up of national security insiders who avoided the question of whether the NSA's actions were legal and didn't offer concrete proof to the public that any changes were being implemented.

Glennon ultimately finds that it is "civic virtue" that is needed to hold the system accountable. He defines civic virtue as "the capacity to participate intelligently in self-government and to elect officials who are themselves virtuous." Unfortunately, this definition is too vague and abstract to be operationalized. What actions would a person with civic virtue take? Does it mean keeping up with the news? Of course, the news is wholly dependent on access to government sources which can be shut off at any time, and must ideally be as critically interrogated as the government itself. Does it mean voting in a system where one's choices are just as curtailed as the options that the deep state presents to the president? Does it mean following the advice of one's betters in the national security state as to who the currently reliable political party is? Does it mean questioning everything, becoming someone who "does their own research" and doesn't listen to government accounts? One can see Glennon's concern for the body politic as well as his desire to believe in constructive action when he uses the term "civic virtue," but unfortunately it is too vague to serve as a concrete suggestion. To his credit, he notes the problems that crop up from one potential solution to this in creating a top-down government program to cultivate civic virtue; a certain liberal strain present in our society could only view that as propagandization no matter what its content.

I think that with some imagination, this book does point to some practical means and ends. With the creation of a scholarly volume on the best publicly available information on this topic, what was once vague suspicion can now be articulated rationally within mainstream public discourse, which is the first step towards reform. This doesn't mean that we will immediately have access to the levers to pull on to make accountability possible. A rational critique of power, by itself, has no power. Marx's critique printed on mere paper did not have the power to bring about communism by itself. But ideas can serve as inspiration for publics to change their thinking as to what is legitimate, and for new political actors to use that support to drive change. Right now the idea of democracy is the basis for legitimacy, but the idea of democracy has not been updated to include the idea of organizational dynamics. What would a theory of democratic legitimacy that does include organizational dynamics of the state apparatus look like? The question of how to translate such questions into language that the public can understand in the social media age is also critical and difficult. But the thinking and examples provided in this volume do a great service towards advancing this conversation.