"Deep Politics" - Prof. Peter Dale Scott's typology of the American political system

Peter Dale Scott: Deep politics and the death of JFK

The opening scene of Coppola’s film shows a client petitioning The Godfather. Their relationship is feudal: a vassal seeking a favor from his Lord. The scene begins, however, with the client's affirmation of his belief in American democracy. Thus, a theme of the film is what Peter Dale Scott calls "deep politics," that is, the unseen, unacknowledged, yet essential forces that operate out of sight, as distinct from the open, public, and official structures of democratic power.

Among these forces is organized crime. Scott's thesis is that criminal organizations are not external to our political system but an integral part of it. They are essential, and not accidental. Scott identifies three overlapping layers of political organization in the United States: official, parapolitical, and deep-political. These levels are not entirely distinct, but tend to shade into one another, like colors in the spectrum. The typology:

·         OFFICIAL LEVEL — activities of institutions and officials authorized by Constitution and statute at all levels of government.

·         PARAPOLITICAL LEVEL — activities of legally-constituted institutions and bureaucracies that go on largely outside public view, even though they may be "overseen" to some extent by constitutional authorities and be theoretically open to the probing of investigative journalists  and others. This category includes most governmental bureaucracies. The degree of secrecy and the effectiveness of constitutional oversight determines how closely a given activity approaches the next level. It also includes politically-significant activity of private individuals and organizations that are not secret (for example, what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex, with the revolving door to and from public office – Dick Cheney/Halliburton; George Schultz/Bechtel)

·         DEEP-POLITICAL LEVEL — activities with a significant impact on the body politic, sometimes illegal, that occur in secret, without oversight, and beyond the control — or with the connivance — of lawful authorities.

Scott compares this political typology to the human psyche, as pictured by modern psychology. The official level is analogous to the Ego, which imagines itself to be in control. The parapolitical level corresponds to the subconscious or semi-conscious activities of the brain and body. The deep-political level is like the "shadow" theorized by C. G. Jung: unknown to and unacknowledged by the conscious ego (official level) Investigating the realities of deep politics is like psychotherapy: getting in touch with one's shadow.

As with the human patient, there is resistance to this kind of political therapy. It is frightening, and it may be considered dangerous to encounter the depths. The first mechanism of resistance is blank denial (ignoring the shadow, or pretending that it doesn't exist.) Scott finds this mechanism at work in what he calls "Establishment" historiography and journalism. For example, in the case of the Kennedy assassination, the dogged insistence that "Oswald acted alone," as the Warren Commission announced, even after meticulous and extensive investigation, including those of the official level itself (such as the 1978 House Committee on Assassinations), indicated otherwise.

Another example is the reaction of establishment institutions (New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post) to the recent film Kill the Messenger and (earlier) to the book on which it was based (Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance). Webb’s investigation delved too deeply into the shadow of our national political system, and had to be discredited. 

The attempt revealed a certain desperation, because the Establishment critics attacked not so much what the journalist wrote but the conclusions others (chiefly the African American community of Los Angeles) drew from it: that the CIA deliberately set out to cause the crack epidemic of the 1980s. Although that was never Webb’s contention, it was the central objection of the critics. [Webb was later found dead with two bullets in his head. His death was ruled a suicide. As The New Yorker observed, even Webb's fiercest critics must admire the determination of someone who could shoot himself in the head twice.]

These examples illustrate what Scott calls "deep politics." Every so often, deep-political matters surface briefly, quickly to be covered up again and — as the Establishment hopes — forgotten. In other words, such matters are repressed. (e.g.: last year's astonishing public fight between Dianne Feinstein and James Clapper over the summary of the torture report, echoed in late 2015, when the White house had to claim that it had bot read the full report, sent by Feinstein. It turns out that had the Executive Branch read the report, it would be subject to FOIA requests, while it is not subject to them as long as it remains a congressional document. See also the New Yorker article on a revealing example of Congressional "oversight" of the deep-political intelligence apparatus.)

Official malfeasance and criminality is only part of the deep political system, however. Drawing on systems- and chaos-theory, Scott hypothesizes networks of persons and organizations operating independently and randomly, which nevertheless interact to produce political results and events such as the Kennedy assassination, without any single, controlling mastermind. This is the difference between deep political theory and conspiracy theory.

Scott supports his typology by acknowledged historical patterns, such as the widespread corruption of large municipal governments a century ago. For example New York’s Tammany Hall became a byword for one kind of deep-political model. Various ethnic neighborhood gangs (Irish, Jewish, Italian, &c.): coöperated with the elected political authorities. The gangs helped to get them elected. In return, the authorities ignored their illegal activities, within limits. Part of the arrangement involved criminals themselves acting as informers for the police, and financial kickbacks from illegal operations to the police and other officials. 

This pragmatic approach to government is an example of Lincoln's strategy of keeping his “friends close but enemies closer.” As long as tacit limits were respected, a certain amount of criminal activity was tolerable, because it was preferable to more vicious, uncontrolled thuggery. It was also preferable to radical reform. One way the neighborhood gangs were useful to Tammany Hall was making life difficult for leftist political organizers.

It is Scott's hypothesis that this pattern of symbiosis became an essential feature of the American political system and extended to the national level. The best example is the relationship between covert military and “intelligence” operations and organized crime, particularly drug traffic. Operation Underworld secured the release of “Lucky” Luciano and others, who were then deported to Sicily, where they waged a covert war on Communists and other leftists after World War II. (One CIA veteran has written that Italy would have gone Communist, but for the mafia.) The deportees also reëstablished the Sicilian mafia, which troubles Italian society to this day. This criminal network formed an alliance with the Corsican underworld, which had access to Indochinese, and later to Turkish opium. Heroin exported through Marseilles (the notorious “French Connection”) flooded into the United States, where it was distributed by racketeers connected to the Sicilians.  

This result was probably not intended by the military or intelligence authorities, but the criminals enjoyed a certain immunity because of their national security contributions.  One drug-enforcement official said for the record that in his thirty years of service, most of the international drug-traffickers he pursued “turned out to be working for the CIA.”

Scott’s analysis identifies this kind of “deep-political” alliance as essential to our system. In other words, operations such as Underworld are not unusual, they are typical.  (See The Departed for a fictionalized account of the pattern, based on the true story of Boston criminal/FBI-informer, Whitey Bolger).Organized crime is not the only milieu operating on the deep level, which also comprises activities of business, ideological, financial and religious networks. Scott's main point is that these sub-cultures are not external to our political system, but intrinsic to it. The question is, how extensive in it is the rule of law.