Thread by @ggreenwald

For those who still think "the Deep State" is a deranged conspiracy theory invented in 2017 by Sean Hannity:

YouTube has been re-circulating a 2015 speech I gave at the Univ. of Utah at the height of the Snowden reporting. Here's what I said about secrecy and the security state:

The whole speech was about how the key point of the Snowden docs wasn't so privacy as much as the unaccountable power of the Deep State, which operates outside democratic structures. I described one document I viewed as most important: a secret interview with a top NSA official:

I'm not sure why YouTube suddenly re-surfaced and viralized this speech -- Google's algorithm-gerbils work in mysterious ways -- but it shows how the left fully affirmed that the Deep State/CIA was supremely pernicious. Russiagate changed all of that:

One of the most damaging aspects of Russiagate and the ongoing liberal union with CIA/neocons was it took a fundamental fact about US political life -- the dominance and supreme danger of the Deep State -- and turned it into a conspiracy theory no decent person should believe.🇺🇸

Even before our NSA reporting, the undemocratic threat of the Deep State was becoming mainstream. In 2010, the WashPost's 3-part series "Top Secret America" documented how massive it was yet nobody could control it. Russiagate converted them into heroes:

washingtonpost.com/investigations…

In 2014, LBJ Press Secretary and long-time left-wing media hero Bill Moyers aired a program on his PBS show titled: "The Deep State Hiding in Plain Sight."

It's stunning how the neocon/Dem/CIA union used Russiagate to convince liberals this is a fraud:

Here's the start of Bill Moyer's *2014* PBS program warning of the US Deep State and the unique dangers it poses.

Such an amazing feat of propaganda that neocons/CIA/Dems used Russiagate to erase it all and train liberals to think this is a fraud from Hannity in 2017. Watch: