I can believe there are shadow organizations that lack oversight. In fact, it seems likely.
But that these shadow organizations are maintaining power by surveiling and blackmailing congress people is a whole other ballgame and seems highly unlikely to me.
For one, it's likely that not every Congressperson has some deep dark secret that makes them blackmail-able. And pissing off the only group of people that could cut your funding and expose your shadow organization as well as bring oversight is not the group that you want to be pissing off.
I think game theory would indicate that your only chance of maintaining a shadow organization in the US gov for any length of time is going to be secrecy and maybe some heavily funded lobbying.
> For one, it's likely that not every Congressperson has some deep dark secret that makes them blackmail-able.
I'd be more than willing to bet that they do. "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." and that only covers "honest" men who wouldn't have illegal coordination with PACs, bribes with lobbyists, personal communications filled with racism, or evidence of sexual activities that might upset their base. When "6 lines" becomes a record of everything you've ever done online, all of your communications, your GPS coordinates and the data of anyone around you it's going to get easier to find a noose around your neck.
Even if there managed to exist a single person in congress who wasn't screwing over the American people somehow for personal gain, or didn't have some skeleton in their closet they didn't want exposed to voters/campaign contributors when a group is capable of compromising your system and inserting whatever offensive material they want to use against you it's incentive enough to back off.
> But that these shadow organizations are maintaining power by surveiling and blackmailing congress people is a whole other ballgame and seems highly unlikely to me.
Why is it so hard to believe that a few powerful indivisuals at the top, with common interests and agendas, are banded together?
There's no official organization but a few indivisuals that streer things their way because they can.
I think there are enough hornery (and incidentally patriotic) congresspeople that they'd be okay exposing the CIA for blackmail even at the expense of exposing the secret.
The funny thing is that the worst of it is already exposed, and no-one seems to care. money-in-politics, the most serious problem of our time, is a "meh" issue to most folks, even though money poisons discourse on literally every other issues! And we know the precise mechanism and how to stop it (a law overturning Citizens United), and yet we do nothing.
how would you cut the budget of the CIA for example, an organization that doesn't really answer to anyone but itself ? an organization that can self fund when it wants.
Eisenhower, a general called out the so called military industrial complex in a way that befits a prophet
> But that these shadow organizations are maintaining power by surveiling and blackmailing congress people is a whole other ballgame and seems highly unlikely to me.
There's a long history of illegal domestic surveillance since at least the 1940s - why would it have stopped?
> For one, it's likely that not every Congressperson has some deep dark secret that makes them blackmail-able. And pissing off the only group of people that could cut your funding and expose your shadow organization as well as bring oversight is not the group that you want to be pissing off.
Secret blackmail files worked for J. Edgar Hoover[0].
Politics is a funny business. I have spent alot of time dealing with political people ranging from staffers to actual officials.
Many are very well meaning public servants, others careerists, some are… insane on various scales. Politics is a business with uncertain outcomes where “friends” are important and personal stakes are high.
From a blackmail perspective, you have people like the bartender turned member of congress who got their GED to run who are obvious puppets with a wheelbarrow of odious behavior behind them. But even the most boring congressman has a legal escrow account with irregularities, a kid with emotional problems that caused trouble, a campaign finance violation, etc.
I don’t think there is a shadow cabal, but some executive branch entities wield tremendous power.
> From a blackmail perspective, you have people like the bartender turned member of congress who got their GED to run who are obvious puppets with a wheelbarrow of odious behavior behind them.
I'd like to visit the Museum of Counterproductivity in the area of your brain that downgraded Bobert from business owner to bartender.
it's likely that not every Congressperson has some deep dark secret that makes them blackmail-able
You don't need to control every congresscritter directly, just to control them by proxy is enough. The nomination committees have a lot of power on who stays and who goes, for example, and so do subcommittee chairs.
But that these shadow organizations are maintaining power by surveiling and blackmailing congress people is a whole other ballgame and seems highly unlikely to me.
For one, it's likely that not every Congressperson has some deep dark secret that makes them blackmail-able. And pissing off the only group of people that could cut your funding and expose your shadow organization as well as bring oversight is not the group that you want to be pissing off.
I think game theory would indicate that your only chance of maintaining a shadow organization in the US gov for any length of time is going to be secrecy and maybe some heavily funded lobbying.