Years of agonizing and frustrating reviews and analysis of the Trump administration activity in real-time are reconciling today.  During Senate testimony today before the Armed Services Committee, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, General Mark Milley, clarified some very painful issues to accept.  President Trump was being heavily managed by operatives of the Senior Executive Service (SES), and his inner circle was willfully participating.

What follows is in no way a defense of Milley, quite the contrary, Milley is a brutally political, manipulative, entitled and arrogant member of the United States armed forces.  His delusions of grandiosity represent the worst of our nation and can only be topped by one other, Anthony Fauci.

Earlier today, Milley was attempting to flex his power in the almost identical way we saw former FBI Director James Comey pull the same angle.   You might remember, during congressional testimony in March 2017 when Comey was questioned about why he never informed congressional ‘gang-of-eight’ oversight about the preceding eleven month FBI investigating the incoming President, Donald Trump.  Director Comey pontificated, obfuscated, dodged carefully, and then deflected responsibility by saying he informed the “national security council” under President Obama.

When General Milley attempted to justify his unilateral contacts with Chinese military officials, he made a similar, and remarkably telling, admission and deflection.

For the January 8th phone call with General Lee of China, Milley stated he informed President Trump’s Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.  Keep in mind that Kash Patel has publicly stated General Milley did not inform Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller directly; at least to his knowledge.  So, Milley’s secondary point about notifying Christopher Miller in January 2020 needs to be reconciled carefully.

Listen carefully to how Milley is describing those calls.  Specifically, pay attention to Milley saying the calls were initiated by him in response to “concerning intelligence, which caused us to believe the Chinese were worried about an attack on them by the United States.”   It is important to note what this is NOT.

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Protecting the interests of the Fourth Branch of Government is not a partisan issue.   [♦ TEAM One – The Department of State is aligned with the CIA.  Their media PR firms are CNN, CNNi and the Washington Post. Their ideology is favorable to the United Nations.  Their internal corruption is generally driven by relationship with foreign actors.  References: Hillary Clinton, Clinton Global Initiative, John McCain, Qatar, Muslim Brotherhood, Samantha Powers, Susan Rice, Cass Sunstein, Brookings Institute, Lawfare, China-centric, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Council on Foreign Relations.]

In this example, Democrat Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez targets the Pentagon Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for not appearing to answer questions about Afghanistan.  Showcasing the out of balance power of the Senate, Menendez threatens to block defense department nominations as a consequence to Austin for defying the Fourth Branch of Government.

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Now that we understand the problem [CRITICAL BACKGROUND HERE], we move into the solution discussion.   There is a way to deconstruct the current system of corruption within the U.S. government that follows a path outlined by the framers of our constitution.  In this series of articles we will outline what I believe to be the way forward.  It is a narrow path, and each step is dependent on the American electorate understanding the challenge.

There is a way to stop the Intelligence Branch, but it requires some outside-the-box thinking and reliance on the Constitution as a tool to radically change one element within government. In order to achieve it, we must focus on three tiers needed for success:

• Tier One is “tactical civics” at a local level. Engaged and active citizen participation at the community, city, town and hamlet level of society. This is what might be described as grassroots level. School Board level; City Council level; County Commissioner level.

• Tier Two is “extreme federalism” at a state level. Engaged and active citizen participation through your State House and State Senate representative. This is state level assembly and action demands upon the House, Senate and State Governor.

• Tier Three the challenge of “federal offices” on a national level. This is where a singular action can be taken upstream that allows the first two tiers to retake control over federal offices. This is where we throw the One Ring into the fire of Mordor.  CTH has tested this approach with a multitude of political allies who understand the issue.  All eventually agreed with the solution at a federal level; it won’t be easy, but it will be possible.

I cannot emphasize enough how each tier is dependent on the preceding tier.  Additionally, each voter has to understand the larger objective in order to see how they are all connected.  That is the goal of this outline.

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Why does government seem to control so much of our lives now? What significant changes happened in the past 15 years that created a social shift and allowed government to influence almost every facet of our activity? Why has the previously ordinary become so complex? Why is it more difficult to be comfortably invisible and just live out the creed of pursuing ‘life, liberty and happiness’? What is behind all this?

We were not sleeping, we were wide awake. Perhaps distracted, yes; but we were wide awake when something shifted. A Fourth Branch of Government was quietly created, and technology allowed the tentacles of the system to touch us. That’s the root of it, and if we take the time to understand how the Fourth Branch originated, questions about this perpetual angst start to make sense.

The number one question on this website, and amid everyone I talk to is: “What can be done? How do we fix this mess?”  There is actually something that can be done at a federal level, but it won’t be easy, and it will take a very strong and deliberate action against one specific chamber of congress to change the dynamic permanently.

The Senate is at the root of the issue.

Without the U.S. Senate being complicit and thoroughly corrupted, none of the events that face us daily would be happening.

The Senate didn’t amass this power overnight, it took decades.  If you look at the root problem of the daily issues we face from wasteful spending, to out of control federal agencies, to just about every institution that has become corrupted -including the DOJ and FBI- what you will note is the continued re-emergence of the Senate as a complicit and enabling body.

There is a way, a constitutional outline, for the Senate to be completely reset; and a process where We The People take back control.  I call that solution the “one ring” approach, because it crushes the corrupt political system in the same way that Frodo throwing the ring into the fire of Mount Doom destroyed the evil emanating from the Eye of Sauron. [Lord of The Rings metaphor]

However, before walking through that process, it is critical to remind ourselves of the specific issues that have been created.  As you read or re-read this lengthy outline, keep the issues of the Senate in the back of your mind, and notice them when they appear.

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Why does government seem to control so much of our lives now?  What significant changes happened in the past 15 years that created a social shift and allowed government to influence almost every facet of our activity?  Why has the previously ordinary become so complex?  Why is it more difficult to be comfortably invisible and just live out the creed of pursuing ‘life, liberty and happiness’?  What is behind all this?….

We were not sleeping, we were wide awake.  Perhaps distracted, yes; but we were wide awake when something shifted. A Fourth Branch of Government was quietly created, and technology allowed the tentacles of the system to touch us.   That’s the root of it, and if we take the time to understand how the Fourth Branch originated questions about this perpetual angst start to make sense.

It is not my intent to outline the entire history of how we got to this place where the intelligence community now acts as the superseding fourth branch of government.  Such an effort would be exhausting and likely take our discussion away from understanding the current dynamic.

History provided enough warnings from Dwight D Eisenhower (military), to John F Kennedy (CIA), to Richard Nixon (FBI), to all modern versions of warnings and frustrations from HPSCI Devin Nunes and ODNI Ric Grenell.  None of those prior reference points are invalid and all documented outlines of historic reference are likely true and accurate.  However, a generational review is not useful, the reference impacting us ‘right now‘ gets lost.

Instead we pick up the expansive and weaponized intelligence system as it manifests after 9/11/01, and my goal is to highlight how the modern version of the total intelligence apparatus has now metastasized into a fourth branch of government.  It is this superseding branch that now touches and influences every facet of our life.

If we take the modern construct, originating at the speed of technological change, we can also see how the oversight or “check/balance” in our system of government became functionally obsolescent.

After many years of granular research about the intelligence apparatus inside our government, in the summer of 2020 I visited Washington DC to ask specific questions.  My goal was to go where the influence agents within government actually operate, and to discover the people deep inside the institutions no-one elected and few people pay attention to.

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This is a rather bold public admission.  They are saying the quiet part out loud and absolutely confirming what we have been writing about in our Fourth Branch of Government series.   Remember, the Fourth Branch is only possible because of a Public-Private partnership with the intelligence apparatus.

Today, the biggest names in Big Tech announce they have partnered with the Five Eyes intelligence network, ultimately controlled by the NSA, to: (1) monitor all activity in their platforms; (2) identify extremist content; (3) look for expressions of Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE); and then, (4) put the content details into a database where the Five Eyes intelligence agencies (U.K., U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand) can access it.

Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft are all partnering with the intelligence apparatus.  I can’t believe they admit this sentence in the release (emphasis mine):

[…] “The Group will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.”

Think about that sentence structure very carefully.  They are “adding to” the pre-existing list…. admitting the group (aka Big Tech) already have access to the the intelligence-sharing database… and also admitting there is a pre-existing list created by the Five Eyes consortium.

Obviously, who and what is defined as “extremist content” will be determined by the Big Tech insiders themselves.  This provides a gateway, another plausible deniability aspect, to cover the Intelligence Branch from any oversight.

When the Intelligence Branch within government wants to conduct surveillance and monitor American citizens, they run up against problems due to the Constitution of the United States.   They get around those legal limitations by sub-contracting the intelligence gathering, the actual data-mining, and allowing outside parties (contractors) to have access to the central database.

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When we understand how the Fourth Branch works [See all Previous Outlines], questions about our dysfunctional U.S. modern government are answered. Additionally, the motives and intentions of people inside the institutions start to reconcile. However, before completing the final outline, there is a structural understanding needed about the global intelligence apparatus.

On a global scale – the modern intelligence gathering networks are now dependent on data collection to execute their intelligence missions.  In the digital age nations have been executing various methods to gather that data.   Digital surveillance has replaced other methods of interception.  Those surveillance efforts have resulted in a coalescing of regional data networks based on historic multi-national relationships.

We  have a recent frame of reference for the “U.S. data collection network” within the NSA.  Through the allied process the Five Eyes nations all rely on the NSA surveillance database (U.K, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and U.S.)   The NSA database provides the digital baseline for intelligence operations in defense of our allies.  The portals into the NSA database are essentially an assembly of allies in like-minded ideological connection to the United States.

Unfortunately, there have been some revelations about the NSA database being used to monitor our allies, like in the example of Germany and surveillance on Angela Merkel’s phone.  As long as “the good guys” are operating honorably, allies of the United States can feel confident about having protection from the NSA surveillance of global digital data.  We warn our friends if we detect something dangerous etc.

The U.S. has nodes on communication pipelines to intercept and extract data.  We have also launched hundreds, perhaps thousands, of satellites to conduct surveillance and gather up data.  All of this data is fed into the NSA database where it is monitored (presumably) as a national security mechanism, and in defense of our allies.

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As our understanding of The Fourth Branch expands, it is important to pause and reflect upon a specific ‘check and balance‘ within the system before finishing with the final two chapters.

The modern system to ‘check’ the executive branch was the creation of the legislative “Gang of Eight,” a legislative oversight mechanism intended to provide a bridge of oversight between the authority of the intelligence community within the executive branch.

The Go8 construct was designed to allow the President authority to carry out intelligence operations and provide the most sensitive notifications to a select group within Congress.

The Go8 oversight is directed to the position, not the person, and consists of: (1) The Speaker of the House; (2) The Minority Leader of the House; (3) The Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, HPSCI; (4) The Ranking Member (minority) of the HPSCI; (5) The Leader of the Senate; (6) The Minority Leader of the Senate; (7) The Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, SSCI; and finally (8) the Vice-Chair of the SSCI.

Example: When the Chief Executive (the President) initiates an intelligence operation on behalf of the United States, the President triggers a “finding memo.” In essence the instruction to the intel agency or agencies to authorize a covert operation.   When that process takes place, the Go8 are the first people notified.  Depending on the sensitivity of the operation, sometimes the G08 are notified immediately after the operation is conducted.  The notification can be a phone call or an in-person briefing.

Because of the sensitivity of their intelligence information, the Gang of Eight hold security clearances that permit them to receive and review all intelligence operations.  The intelligence community are also responsible for briefing the Go8 with the same information they use to brief the President.

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Political cartoonist Ben Garrison has hit the nail on the head with this one:

Visit Ben Garrison Explanation Here

CTH ongoing series about The Fourth Branch HERE:  “When we understand how the Fourth Branch works, questions about our dysfunctional U.S. modern government are answered. Additionally, the motives and intentions of people inside the institutions start to reconcile.” ~SD

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People want examples of work the Intelligence Branch conducts, specifically how it protects itself.  Here is an example before going further tomorrow.

Mark Steyn and Glenn Greenwald discuss the surveillance state weaponized by Barack Obama, and why Julian Assange had to be taken down.

Yes, the history of the U.S. national security apparatus goes back decades; however, the weaponization of that apparatus, the creation of an apex branch of government, the Intelligence Branch, originated under President Barack Obama.

Obama took the foundational tools created by Bill Clinton and George Bush and used the intelligence system architecture to create a weapon for use in his fundamental transformation. An alliance of ideologues within government (intel community) and the private sector (big tech and finance) was assembled, and the largest government weapon was created.  Think about this every time you take your shoes off at an airport.

After the weapon was assembled and tested (Arab Spring), the legislative branch was enjoined under the auspices of a common enemy, Donald J Trump, an outsider who was a risk to every entity in the institutional construct of Washington DC.

Trillions were at stake, and years of affluence and influence were at risk as the unholy alliance was put together.   Again, Steyn and Greenwald discuss the result, but overlook the critical cornerstone that Obama set. WATCH:

To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to U.S. Intelligence Branch interests, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the FBI/CIA were in 2016.

It is within the network of foreign and domestic intel operations where Intelligence Branch political tool, FBI Agent Peter Strzok, was working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI counterintelligence operations.

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