Its tentacles extend through all of US society. Even if it is not the CIA itself, there are 60 other intelligence agencies working for the federal government. You might think this is an indictment of the federal government, but most folks in state governments work very closely with the Deep State and the entire National Security apparatus.
I also believe that the CIA is very deeply embedded in corporate America and in the nation’s elite, the 1%. If you hang around a lot of very wealthy types, you will suddenly be amazed at how many of them have CIA connections. Go to a dinner party of multimillionaires, and it will seem like every other person has some sort of an Agency connection.
It is also my opinion, though I cannot prove it, that the CIA is deeply embedded in corporate America. It would not surprise me if many high-ranking executives have Agency connections. I have known quite a few MBA types who told me that they wanted to go work for the Agency in some way or another. Furthermore, almost all of the shenanigans that the CIA engages in overseas is for the benefit of US corporations and the US 1%. Since the CIA is basically the roving death squad/revolutionary force of the US ultra-rich individuals and corporations, it would surprise me if US corporations had no links to them. Why would they have no links to their very own personal revolutionary army/death squad/hit team.
So as you can see in the Daily Kos case, the Agency is also deeply embedded in the Democratic Party. The way I see is that the Democratic Party is CIA from top to bottom. They have been forever now. The Republican Party is also CIA, and ideologically they are much closer, but the truth is that on foreign policy, both parties follow the CIA agenda which is called “the bipartisan foreign policy consensus.” This is why the parties show little difference on major foreign policy questions. The Democratic Party wants to implement the CIA agenda in a more sedate and moderate way and the Republicans want to implement it in a much more aggressive, belligerent and militaristic way. Really I am not sure if they Agency cares.
I am told that the Agency doesn’t even really care who is President. Their attitude is that they just do whatever the Hell they want to no matter what the President or Congress wants. Government oversight of the CIA ended in the mid-1970’s with the Church hearings which set up a number of CIA oversight laws which have been violated ever since. In this climate, there is no way we could ever have a re-run of the Church Committee.
The CIA’s attitude is that Presidents come and go, but the Agency and its Deep State pals are the ones who really run the government in connection with corporate and 1% elites (the US oligarchy), so who cares who is President anyway.
It is also true that the CIA does not care who runs the CIA. CIA heads are appointed, and the CIA has no say in who they are. They reportedly did not like Pannetta from the moment he came in, and they thwarted him and ordered him around the whole time he was in. This is because the people who really run the CIA are the career people, not those flunkies that are appointed by this President or that. A new book just came out stating that Pannetta while had of the CIA was terrified of the CIA career people who ordered him around and violated his directives every step of the way. The same book also said that Obama was very afraid of the CIA too for much the same reason.
The problem is that anyone who really takes on the CIA and the Deep State gets “the Kennedy treatment.” Most politicians know this, and they do not want to die so they go along.
Another factor is converging beliefs. The 1% and the US corporations share the same foreign policy agenda as the CIA. Both political parties share the CIA’s foreign policy, and if you do not go along, you will be run out of the party very quickly, especially if you are an underling. At the state level, almost all state politicians share the CIA agenda and furthermore, the CIA has infiltrated all state governments and spies on them constantly. The CIA interrogates all newly elected governors to see if they pass CIA approval. They also terrorize them by telling them that they will be under constant surveillance. See Jesse Ventura’s videos about that.
At the media level, it is now clear that the entire US media is CIA, from the “right” to the “left.” Operation Mockingbird was a CIA program designed to take control of the US media.
The Church Committee hearings showed that almost all of the top US journalists and editors were CIA employees or assets, including some very famous people.
Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee was CIA for decades. In fact, to this day, the scuttlebutt is that not only has the Washington Post been CIA forever, but the WP is still one of the most CIA-controlled papers in the US. Other papers including the Los Angeles Times and New York Times area also CIA connected but not to the same degree that the WP is. The WP is more or less a CIA house organ.
The Church Committee halted Operation Mockingbird but I am told that like COINTELPRO, it was reinstated under new names and continues to this day as intensely as it did in the past.
You wonder how the CIA gets all these editors and writers to toe their line? They pay them. Yes, the CIA pays out vast sums to US editors and other presstitutes to be agency assets and write what the Agency wants them to write.
In addition, the CIA buys off many foreign leaders. We know this because John Paul Roberts once asked a CIA agent how the US gets so many countries to agree with the US. The agent answered, “That’s simple. We pay them.”
If one wonders why so many European leaders reflexively toe the US line, it is because many of them are bought off by the CIA. With cash. After Tony Blair left as Prime Minister of the UK, he very quickly moved into an extremely high paid position in the private sector. That reeks of CIA. See how this works? I would not be surprised if Angela Merkel (head of the US colony called “Germany”) and the rest of the heads of the US colonies in Europe are paid off by the CIA.