National Security State

How We Got a National-Security Police State, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2022

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The biggest mistake America has ever made since the inception of our country was the conversion of the federal government from a limited-government republic to a national-security state. It is the reason that all of us have been born and raised under what can only be called a national-security police ...

The U.S. Government Is Waging Psychological Warfare on the Nation

by John W. Whitehead June 8, 2022

“Have you ever wondered who’s pulling the strings? … Anything we touch is a weapon. We can deceive, persuade, change, influence, inspire. We come in many forms. We are everywhere.”— U.S. Army Psychological Operations recruitment video The U.S. government is waging psychological warfare on the American people. No, this is not a conspiracy theory.

The Power to Assassinate

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2022

The power to assassinate has become so deeply entrenched within the national-security branch of the federal government that hardly anyone gives it a second thought. State-sponsored assassinations now occur on a regular basis, especially in the Middle East. Most everyone, especially the mainstream press, treats them in a nonchalant, ho-hum way. Hardly anyone questions where this extraordinary power to ...

The Surveillance State Has a Naughty List, and You’re On It

by John W. Whitehead December 8, 2021

Santa’s got a new helper. No longer does the all-knowing, all-seeing, jolly Old St. Nick need to rely on antiquated elves on shelves and other seasonal snitches in order to know when you’re sleeping or awake, and if you’ve been naughty or nice. Thanks to the government’s almost limitless powers made possible by a domestic army of techno-tyrants, fusion centers and ...

The Empire of Lies Breaks Down

by John W. Whitehead October 22, 2021

“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”—Albert Einstein America is breaking down. This breakdown—triggered by polarizing circus politics, media-fed mass hysteria, racism, classism, fascism, fear-mongering, political correctness, cultural sanitation, virtue signaling, a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of growing government corruption and ...

The Rise of the Security-Industrial Complex from 9/11 to COVID-19

by John W. Whitehead September 10, 2021

“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”—Osama bin Laden (October 2001), as reported by CNN What a strange and harrowing road we’ve walked since September 11, 2001, littered with ...

The Deep State Defeat of Donald Trump

by James Bovard May 1, 2021

“The Trump–Deep State clash is a showdown between a presidency that is far too powerful versus federal agencies that have become fiefdoms with immunity for almost any and all abuses,” I wrote in an FFF article a year ago. Since then, Donald Trump lost the 2020 election by fewer than 50,000 votes in a handful of swing states that ...

The Lies of the National-Security State

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2021

I recently came across a plaque with the heading “Died in Service to the Nation — Vietnam 1961-1975.” The plaque then listed several members of the U.S. Armed Forces who were killed in the Vietnam War. The plaque demonstrates a central ill afflicting many Americans — an ill that can be described as living the “life of the lie.” Until ...

Tyranny Without a Tyrant

by John W. Whitehead July 15, 2020

In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all ...

The U.S. Government’s Secret History of Grisly Experiments

by John W. Whitehead April 24, 2020

“They were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize them for what they are until it's too late.” — Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children I have never known any government to put the best interests of its people first, and this COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. Now this isn’t intended ...

The Deep State’s Demolition of Democracy

by James Bovard February 1, 2020

“Thank God for the Deep State,” declared former acting CIA chief John McLaughlin while appearing on a panel at the National Press Club last October. In 2018, the New York Times asserted that Trump’s use of the term “Deep State” and similar rhetoric “fanned fears that he is eroding public trust in institutions, undermining the idea of objective truth ...

Rogue Agencies Have Been Abusing Their Powers for Decades

by John W. Whitehead November 22, 2019

“When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper . . . despotic in his ordinary demeanour — known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty — when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to join in the cry of danger to liberty ...