[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "And we have a shadow government? How long do you suppose this has been going on?"

DL, you should study up on the 1975 Church Committee reforms of the US intelligence agencies:

"a US Senate select committee in 1975 that investigated abuses by the
1. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
2. National Security Agency (NSA),
3. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and
4. the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church (D-ID), the committee was part of a series of investigations into intelligence abuses in 1975, dubbed the "Year of Intelligence", including its House counterpart, the Pike Committee, and the presidential Rockefeller Commission.
The committee's efforts led to the establishment of the permanent US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence."

"The most shocking revelations of the committee include
1. Operation MKULTRA involving the drugging and torture of unwitting US citizens as part of human experimentation on mind control;[1][2]

2. COINTELPRO involving the surveillance and infiltration of American political and civil-rights organizations;[3]

3. Family Jewels, a CIA program to covertly assassinate foreign leaders;[4][5][6][7]

4. Operation Mockingbird as a systematic propaganda campaign with domestic and foreign journalists operating as CIA assets and dozens of US news organizations providing cover for CIA activity.[8]

5. It also unearthed Project SHAMROCK in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA (while officially confirming the existence of this signals intelligence agency to the public for the first time)."

Seems like maybe not every abuse discovered in 1975 was 100% eradicated.

[DiogenesLamp]

Seems like maybe not every abuse discovered in 1975 was 100% eradicated.

Nor has it's history been adequately mapped. Even Abraham Lincoln said this: (According to Jack London.)

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

According to this source, it comes from a letter to Col. William F. Elkins Nov. 21, 1864. That's very interesting. I had previously tried to find the origin of this statement, and I could only trace it back to Jack London's "Iron Heel".

So Lincoln was suggesting Eisenhower's "Military Industrial Complex" speech 90 years before Eisenhower. I am relieved to have discovered this statement from Lincoln actually has a good pedigree.

So this "shadow government" thing has been going on a long time, and even Lincoln confirms it.