Wall Street, Big Oil and the Attack on U.S. Democracy
Professor Peter Dale Scott is a Canadian-born former diplomat, and retired Professor of Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of many books and articles on state terrorism, surveillance, drug-dealing by the CIA, and political assassinations.
His most recent book, The American Deep State, October 2014 by Rowman & Littlefield, makes a compelling case for a hidden “deep state” that influences and often opposes official U.S. policies. The deep state is a second order of government, behind the public or constitutional state, that has grown considerably stronger since World War II. Peter Dale Scott cites convincing evidence that the deep state is partly institutionalized in non-accountable intelligence agencies like the CIA and NSA, but it also includes private corporations like Booz Allen Hamilton and SAIC, to which 70 percent of intelligence budgets are outsourced. Behind these public and private institutions is the traditional influence of Wall Street bankers and lawyers, allied with international oil companies beyond the reach of domestic law.
Peter Dale Scott gives the outline of this argument in Part ONE of this program – followed by the recording of a lively Q/A session. I recorded this talk on November 9, 2014, in the poetry room upstairs at City Lights bookstore and publishing house in San Francisco. Peter Maravelis, the events coordinator for City Lights, gave the introduction to Party ONE.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)
