Perspective: How paranoia about the 'deep state' brought down a president
President Richard Nixon, left, pictured in 1973, let paranoia about the"deep state" fuel the decisions that led to his resignation. President Trump is pictured in the Oval Office on Jan. 31. By Zachary Jonathan Jacobson Zachary Jonathan Jacobson is a Cold War historian. He received his PhD from Northwestern University.
When news of the leak was published, attention almost immediately settled on a 40-year-old defense analyst and senior research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology named Daniel Ellsberg. He had been one of a few dozen researchers who helped compile the secret defense report. And the FBI was convinced that he had leaked the papers.
After generations of Democratic rule in the executive branch, the president calculated that 96 percent of Washington bureaucrats were “against us.” “Down in the government are a bunch of sons of bitches,” Nixon barked to his Cabinet. “Many who sit in the meetings and debriefings … are out to get us.”
Colson, like Nixon, wanted to use Ellsberg to rescue the administration from criticism. Nixon’s theory of a deep-state conspiracy provided much needed justification for his own misdeeds and failed policies. Instead of presidential failure in Vietnam, Nixon pushed a theory going around in hawkish circles that Congress had connived to tie his hands militarily and that the federal government had lost its nerve.
By exposing such a dastardly conspiracy as the “counter-government,” Nixon could emerge a conquering hero to rescue the country from “the subversion of the unsavory characters.”
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