What is "The Shadow Government"

Hello ,

...I came across this and I feel it's interesting background information to understand the bigger picture...

source webpage: http://www.constitution.org/shad4816.htm



The Shadow Government


Copyright 1994 Constitution Society. Permission is hereby
granted to copy for noncommercial use.

Secret Rule


It is becoming increasingly apparent to American citizens that government is
no longer being conducted in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, or, within
states, according to state constitutions. While people have recognized for more
than 150 years that the rich and powerful often corrupt individual officials, or
exert undue influence to get legislation passed that favors their interests,
most Americans still cling to the naive belief that such corruption is
exceptional, and that most of the institutions of society, the courts, the
press, and law enforcement agencies, still largely comply with the Constitution
and the law in important matters. They expect that these corrupting forces are
disunited and in competition with one another, so that they tend to balance one
another.

Mounting evidence makes it clear that the situation is far worse than most
people think, that during the last several decades the U.S. Constitution has
been effectively overthrown, and that it is now observed only as a façade
to deceive and placate the masses. What has replaced it is what many call the
Shadow Government. It still, for the most part, operates in secret,
because its control is not secure. The exposure of this regime and its
operations must now become a primary duty of citizens who still believe in the
Rule of Law and in the freedoms which this country is supposed to represent.<1>

Transition to Oligarchy


It is difficult to identify a single date or event that marks the overthrow,
but we can identify some critical steps.

The first was the Dick Act of 1903, which repealed the Militia Act of 1792
and tried to relegate the Constitutional Militia to the National Guard, under
control of what is now the U.S. Defense Department. The second was the Federal
Reserve Act, which established a central bank only nominally under the control
of the government.

Further erosion of constitutional governance was motivated by several
challenges which the powerful felt required them to put aside their differences
and unite. The first was the Great Depression of 1933-1941. The second was World
War II and the threat from fascism, followed by the Cold War and the threat from
Soviet imperialism and from communism.

The third defies credibility, but cannot be avoided. UFOs and aliens.
Despite the lack of hard evidence accessible to ordinary citizens, there is
enough testimonial evidence to compel a reasonable person to conclude three
things: UFOs exist, they are intelligently directed, and they are not ours.<2>
Even if that were all that the government knew about them, minds already
paranoid from the Cold War could hardly help but perceive such things as a
significant potential threat, one that required secrecy, preparation, and
disregard for provisions of a Constitution that were inconvenient. There are,
however, enough leaks from government officials to indicate that the government
knows a great deal about them that it is concealing from the public.

The fourth is the eco-crisis, which combines both the ecological and
economic crises. Many leaders have recognized for a long time that we are headed
for disaster, not a kind of cyclical downturn like the Great Depression, but an
irreversible decline brought about by a combination of resource depletion,
environmental degradation, and overpopulation, playing out in an anarchic
international system of disparate nation- states, national currencies, national
banks, and multinational corporations, exacerbated by traditional tribal
rivalries, class conflict, and different languages and religions.<3>

Confronted with the political fact that to deal with the problems faced in
the last half of the 20th century, it was difficult enough to pass legislation
thought to be needed, without having to also adopt the amendments to the U.S.
Constitution necessary to make such legislation constitutional, it became too
easy to just adopt more and more legislation without worrying about its
constitutionality, and depend on compliant officials and judges to go along with
it, which for the most part, they have done. This was facilitated by the lack of
sufficiently strong protests from the people, many of whom, ignorant of
constitutional rights and limitations on governmental powers, and focused on the
problems to be solved, supported much of the legislation.<4>

We can also identify several insidious developments which seemed necessary
and harmless at the time, but which led to the present situation. One was the
rise of military and civilian intelligence organs during World War II. The need
to prevent leaks of military secrets brought a censorship apparatus that gained
substantial control over the flow of information through the press, the
broadcast media, telephonic and telegraphic communications, and the mail.
However, instead of dismantling that apparatus when the war was over, we
immediately transitioned to the Cold War, and the information control apparatus
only went underground and became somewhat less obtrusive. This led to the
present situation in which the intelligence apparatus maintains effective
control over the major media, can tap anyone's phone without a court order,
reads people's mail, monitors their finances, and gathers information on
citizens and their activities that threatens their privacy and liberties.

1947 was a critical year. It was the year in which UFOs became a matter of
public concern, and in which it appears we recovered at least one crashed
vehicle and perhaps at least one of its occupants. It is also the year that the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was established, ostensibly to bring together
the disparate intelligence agencies that had often been operating at
cross-purposes. It was also the beginning of the use of "black budgets"
for government programs, the existence of which was kept secret from both the
public and most if not all members of Congress. This led later to the
establishment of more agencies, such as the National Security Agency, whose
entire budget was black, thus preventing effective oversight.

The situation had evolved to the extent that, at the end of President
Eisenhower's second term, he warned in a speech of the potential danger to our
freedoms from a "military-industrial complex". In fact, by that time,
it had become a "intelligence-
military-industrial-financial-political-media- criminal" complex, which
reached into almost every institution in this country, and into many around the
world.

What had developed was beginning to look more and more like the system of
political control that prevailed in the Soviet Union, in which real decisions of
government were made not by the official organs of government, but by the
parallel structure of the Communist Party, backed by the KGB. In competing with
the Soviets, we had taken on their methods and attributes of political control.

But this apparatus did not seem to function as an effective Shadow
Government, able to make and enforce decisions apart from the official
government, until it came together to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.
That was the watershed event. After that, too many people had too much to hide
to allow the situation to return to governance as usual.

Since then, the Shadow Government has grown and tried to strengthen its grip
on every sector of the society, motivated in part by honest concern about the
very real threats we have faced, and in part by venality and greed, which
brought increasing corruption and the effective incorporation of organized crime
into the mainstream of government.

It appears that 1963 is also the year in which the Establishment Media
sector of the Shadow Government was given effective control over computerized
voting in the United States, through its National Election Service, as part of a
deal in which they went along with the coverup of the Kennedy Assassination
through the Warren Commission. While campaign money continued to buy influence
over elected officials, if it was not sufficient, the Shadow Government had
other options. It put officials in compromising situations, then used its
evidence to blackmail them into compliance. Failing that, it could easily select
the winner of any election, and suppress the support which third-party
candidates might attain.

Structure and Decisionmaking


A key question about the Shadow Government is how does it make decisions and
carry them out. Where is the center? Some think it lies in a few major financial
institutions. Others that it lies in the intelligence apparatus. Still others
that it has no permanent center, but operates by consensus, with shifting
factions that confer through various mechanisms. Some think that those
mechanisms are reflected in public associations such as the Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR), the Tri- lateral Commission, the Bilderbergers, the Federal
Reserve, the World Bank, or the International Monetary Fund.<5>

That the key personalities in every major institution should associate and
confer through various associations is not in itself a matter of concern, if all
that was involved was the development of a consensus. But there is evidence that
a centralized decisionmaking process exists, because too much is done that could
not otherwise occur, and that the process is contemptuous of the Constitution
and increasingly willing to violate it. That suggests a permanent apparatus, a
bureaucracy, and that points to the intelligence and financial bureaucracies.
Therefore, the real decisions may be made not by public figures, but by faceless
persons operating in secret.

Most available evidence indicates that the center is in the intelligence
apparatus, and that it largely controls all the other components of the system,
including the financial. However, it also appears that the control is imperfect,
subject to resistance if it tries to go too far.

It also appears that there are some distinct factions involved, the two
major contenders being those more highly motivated persons concerned about
meeting the challenges we face, the other being the more corrupt ones trying to
expand their power and wealth. The alliance between these factions appears to be
increasingly strained as growing corruption begins to impair the effectiveness
of the institutions of society to meet the perceived challenges.

An analogy might be to a sinking ship, in which some want to build and equip
lifeboats and others who want to make sure they are the ones who get to go in
them. Each needs the other, for the time being, but the latter are beginning to
threaten the production and seaworthiness of the lifeboats.

What we have is in many ways a classic oligarchy, with multiple components
in an uneasy alliance with one another. No one individual is paramount, and
anyone can be replaced if he gets too far out of line, by some combination of
the others, each of whom derives his power from the institutions and assets
under his influence.

Of course, the ones who get trampled under this regime are the ordinary
people, who receive just enough under the deal to keep them quiet. The Powers
That Be fear above all that the people might rise up and overthrow them,
something that the people could still do if they could ever act in concert.
Social control therefore becomes a matter of keeping them placated, divided, and
misinformed.

Unfortunately for their scheme, they face the same problem the Roman Empire
did. To keep the people placated, they are forced to pay them off, and meet
increasing demands for such payoffs, while growth of the productive sector
falters, or even shrinks relative to the population. Economic growth and the
solutions to our social problems are being impaired by the depredations of the
corrupt elements of the Shadow Government, who are concentrating assets in a way
and at a rate that threaten the viability of the economy. The Romans solved the
problem of keeping their citizens supplied with bread and circuses by predation
of outlying provinces. Modern capitalist nations tried the same thing, but that
imperial order is breaking down, and the only thing left is economic growth. If
that growth falters, the welfare state fails, and with it the social stability
on which the Established Order depends.

Shadow Finance


Some of the best indications that the Shadow Government is not centered in
the financial sector are the things it has to do to finance itself. Shadow
Government is expensive. We can identify the main sources of its revenue:

<blockquote>(1) Black budgets. This is the core of its operations,
but is not enough to secure its control over the country and the world.

(2) Drug trade. It has seized control of the major part of the
illegal traffic in addictive substances, in part by using the organs of law
enforcement to eliminate competition, and by gaining control of the money and
the ways it gets re-introduced into the economy.

(3) Raiding financial institutions. This is what was done with the S&Ls,
and is being done, more slowly, with the banks. It involves several aspects:
diversion of the funds, seizure of smaller institutions by a few large ones
under Shadow Government control, with the seizure financed by the taxpayers, and
acquisition under distressed prices of the assets of those institutions, many of
which are well-positioned business enterprises that give the Shadow Government
both control of the key enterprises in most business sectors and sources of
revenue. The Savings & Loan raid was used to finance a major expansion of
the Shadow Government. However, it is not a method that can be repeated.

(4) Public authorities. These are quasi- governmental enterprises
that control substantial assets, often taxpayer-subsidized, without effective
accountability. They include housing, port, energy, water, transportation, and
educational authorities.<6> To this might also be added various utilities,
and both public and publicly-regulated private monopolies, like local telephone
and cable companies. They are also a major source of government contracts.

(5) Government contracts. Major source of diverted funds, but must
often be shared with others involved.

(6) Arms trade. Another major source of funds, both direct and
diverted. But requires payoffs to local officials.
</blockquote>
Shadow Control


The problem with secret government is that to remain secret, it cannot
involve too many people who are aware of the situation. The more that become
involved, the greater the chance that some of them who retain some sense of
honor might defect. An occasional defector can be disabled, killed or
discredited, but a flood of them could be disastrous. That is what brought down
the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union.

Shadow control therefore consists largely of the placement of shadow agents
in key positions in all of the institutions that are to be controlled. Since
they cannot reveal their true role, they are also somewhat constrained in the
actions they can take. What they do has to fit their jobs and not conflict in an
obvious way with the mission of the organization, even if they head it. Some of
the main targeted institutions are the following:

<blockquote>(1) Top and key lower positions in the executive, legislative,
and judicial branches. Key judges, especially presiding judges who assign cases.

(2) Staff positions under the top positions, such as the congressional staff
members who really run Congress.

(3) Intelligence agencies. The CIA<7>, NSA and various military
intelligence divisions. Among their functions are death squads that eliminate
troublesome persons, although they usually avoid doing that to more prominent
ones. They also have developed mind control techniques that can be used to mess
up the minds of people they want to discredit or disable.<8> Actually,
almost every department of government has an intelligence function, and that
function is the Shadow Government's main point of control of the department.

(4) Military organizations, law enforcement, and taxing agencies, especially
the IRS. Not only federal, but also state and local, at least in the major
cities. The IRS and other agencies are used to harass persons considered
troublesome, and sometimes to prosecute them on trumped up charges, in which
evidence is planted or manufactured and government witnesses perjure themselves.

(5) Major banks, insurance companies, pension funds, holding companies,
utilities, public authorities, contractors, manufacturers, distributors,
transport firms, security services, credit reporting services. Forbidden by law
from maintaining dossiers on citizens not the subject of criminal investigation,
the agencies get around the restriction by using contractors to maintain the
data for them, and have amazingly detailed data on almost everyone. When you
hire one of the major security services, you are turning over the keys to your
premises to the shadow government.

(6) Major media. Newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations.
Together, they control the National Election Service, which in turn controls the
outcome of computerized elections.<9> They suppress coverage of certain
subjects, and are the channel for the Shadow Government's propaganda and
disinformation campaigns. A major part of the budget of the CIA is for film and
video production. They aren't making training films.

(7) Communications networks. Telephone, telegraph, cable and satellite. The
Shadow Government can bug any communication they wish, without bothering with a
court order, and they regularly monitor dissidents and other key figures. Major
holes in their control here are the Internet and public-key encryption, which
the Shadow Government is trying to suppress. Although the Internet can be
monitored, it cannot be effectively controlled, and it is emerging as a major
threat to Shadow control.

(8) Organized crime. Despite occasional convictions, they are now mostly
treated as a profit center and as the executors of the dirty jobs. They are also
the providers of vices for the corrupt members of government, which vices are
also used to blackmail and control people.

(9) Education. Universities and public education. Universities are the least
effectively controlled components, but still important, largely for recruitment.
Main aim here is to divert student activists into unproductive channels, or to
get students so involved in careerism that they ignore the important issues.

(10) Civic, political, and labor organizations. The two major political
parties. Political action committees. League of Women Voters. Trade and
professional associations, such as the American Bar Association and the American
Medical Association. Labor unions.

(11) International organizations. The United Nations, NATO, the IMF.
Multinational corporations.

(12) Governmental and nongovernmental institutions of other countries. We
are doing many of the same things there that are being done in the United
States, especially in the more advanced countries.
</blockquote>
Concentration of Power


A major aim of Shadow Government control has been to bring most of the
assets and revenues of the economy under the control of fewer and fewer people.
Part of this is causing the failure of smaller organizations and the absorption
of them by a few large chains. This is being done with banks and other financial
institutions, newspapers and magazines, television and radio stations,
agriculture and mining producers, distributors and retailers, computer
manufacturers, energy and chemical companies, medical providers, and
pharmaceutical companies. Anti-trust enforcement has been weak, used only in a
few sectors, and then only after major concentrations of economic power has
already been achieved.

The process goes beyond normal tendencies toward monopoly or restraint of
trade, or the economies of scale that support the old adage that "the rich
get richer". It is an attempt to consolidate political control. The result
has been for a smaller and smaller proportion of the population to control a
larger and larger proportion of the assets and revenues of the economy, while
the middle class shrinks. We are moving away from the original model of the
universal middle class, and toward a third-world model of a small upper class
and a large poor class, with a small middle class that mainly serve as minions
of the rich.

The Shadow Plan


The Shadow Government appears to be operating according to some plan. Many
commentators have dubbed this plan the "New World Order", suggested by
the use of that phrase in a speech by George Bush, referring to the state of
affairs following the end of the Cold War. Actually, that phrase goes back to
the beginning of the Republic, and appears on the Great Seal of the United
States as the motto, Novus Ordo Seclorum. What the Shadow Government
itself calls the plan is uncertain, however, some of its elements are now
emerging.

One element is the disarming of the people.<10> There are serious
plans and preparations for a general warrantless sweep of every location in the
country to confiscate weapons. Information about these plans comes from military
and intelligence personnel who are involved in preparing to carry them out. Such
an action would mean seizing more than 300 million firearms from more than 70
million citizens. Obviously, after such a sweep there would be so much public
outrage that there could not be another election. Therefore, it would also be
the formal overthrow of the Constitution.

There are indications that after things settled down, the Shadow Government
would allow the establishment of a parliamentary system that would provide a façade
of democracy, just as it does in other countries that have such a system,
without effective limits on the powers of government, where "rights"
endure only as long as there is a sufficiently strong constituency that defends
them. Such a system is not a republican form of government, based on the Rule of
Law, or a representative democracy, but merely a tool for control by an
oligarchy.

There is also suspicious circumstantial evidence that part of the plan is
the release of diseases, of which HIV/AIDS is one, to reduce the world
population, selectively.

A key part of the plan seems to involve the development and use of mind
control techno logies, both electronic and chemical, which allow the elite to
disable or discredit dissidents and keep the people compliant and productive.
The experimentation that has been done on this is one of the great coverups and
abuses of human rights of our time, far exceeding that of the radiation
experiments that are now coming to light.<11>

Restoring Constitutional Governance


The restoration of constitutional governance need not require a violent
revolution, and we should avoid violence if possible. It can be brought about in
much the way it happened in the Soviet Union. This involves several elements:

<blockquote>(1) Exposure ("glasnost"). The Shadow
Government, even more than the old Soviet regime, depends on secrecy. Uncover it
and it loses most of its power. We need to end black budgets, require the
declassification of most classified documents, especially those pertaining to
UFOs and aliens, and adopt and enforce sunshine laws to require full disclosure
of not just meetings and agreements among officials, but also among major
organizations of all kinds which may exercise an undue influence on political
decisions. We must also require independent audits of all such organizations.

(2) Restructuring ("perestroika"). We need to
enforce strengthened anti-trust laws to break up large enterprises into many
competing firms, not just two or three, and forbid interlocking directorates,
beginning with the broadcast media and the press. Intelligence and law
enforcement agencies need to be broken up into several competing ones, which can
serve as effective checks on abuses by one another.

(2) Infiltration and defection. We need to get patriots inside key
organizations and encourage insiders to become patriots. The most important are
military and law enforcement organizations, whose members must be conditioned to
come over to the side of the people if there is a confrontation. We must also
provide effective protection for whistleblowers.

(3) Harassment. Lawsuits. Liens. Freedom of Information Act
requests. Surveillance of principals. Local prosecution of federal agents.

(4) Local organization and publicity. Revive the constitutional
Militia on the Swiss model<12>, set up independent investigation teams,
alternative newspapers, talk radio, alert networks. We need to inform the public
on what is happening, and to reach those who now are all too willing to trust
the government to protect them.

(5) Civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance. Protest
demonstrations. Tax protests. Defiance of unconstitutional laws. Refusal of
juries to convict.<13>

(6) Armed resistance. This must involve non- provocative, but firm,
defense of persons from illegal abuses, and exclusion of illegal governmental
actions from local areas, county by county, state by state, with insistence on
constitutional compliance.

(7) Transition plan. The oligarchy cannot be expected to come up
with a plan for an orderly return to constitutional governance. The process must
be conducted carefully, to avoid a disastrous collapse.<14> We will need
some constitutional amendments, to make legal some of the things the national
government can do best. The government needs to end budget deficits and acquire
the stock of the Federal Reserve.<15>
</blockquote>
Conclusion


The myth is that World War II ended with the defeat of fascism, but what
really happened is that fascism got a grip on those fighting it, and is becoming
increasingly pervasive and powerful. As it grows, it will induce a reaction, the
outcome of which will be a final confrontation. We can all hope that the
confrontation will not be a bloody one, and that it will be resolved while we
still have time to solve our other pressing problems.

<1> See Reed & Cummings, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the
CIA, 1994, Shapolsky Publishers Inc, 136 W 22nd St, New York, NY 10011,
212/633-2022. Also see Bartlett & Steele, America: What Went Wrong?,
1992, Andrews & McMeel, 4900 Main St, Kansas City, MO 64112; and Walter
Karp, Liberty Under Siege, New York: Franklin Square, 1993.

<2> See Timothy Good, Above Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Cover-up,
New York: W. Morrow, 1988; Alien Contact: Top-Secret UFO Files Revealed,
New York: W. Morrow, 1993.

<3> For a fairly comprehensive treatment of such views, see Albert
Gore, Jr., Earth in the Balance, New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1992. Also
see Paul Ehrlich, Population/ Resources/ Environment, San Francisco:
Freeman, 1972.

<4> For one treatment of American history that goes into this, see
Clarence B. Carson, Basic American Government, 1993, American Textbook
Committee, Route 1, Box 13, Wadley, AL 36276.

<5> There is abundant literature on this theme, most of it lacking
hard evidence. An example is Gary H. Kah, Enroute to Global Occupation,
1992, Huntington House Publishers, POB 53788, Lafayette, LA 70505.

<6> One author has identified such public authorities as the
Shadow Government, but it seems more likely that they are just a part of it. See
Donald Axelrod, Shadow Government: the hidden world of public authorities
and how they control $1 trillion dollars of your money, New York: Wiley,
1992.

<7> For a couple of sanitized depictions of this agency, see Loch K.
Johnson, America's Secret Power: the CIA in a democratic society, New
York: Oxford, 1989; Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy,
New Haven: Yale, 1989.

<8> This is discussed in a paper by Martin Cannon, The
Controllers: A New Hypothesis of Alien Abductions, 1990, 8211 Owensmouth Av
#206, Canoga Park, CA 91304. $6.00.

<9> This is documented in Collier & Collier, Votescam: the
Stealing of America, 1992, Victoria House Press, 67 Wall St #2411, New York,
NY 10005. $10.00.

<10> One discussion of this is William R. Tonso, The Gun Culture
and its Enemies, 1990, Second Amendment Foundation, James Madison Building,
12500 N.E. Tenth Place, Bellevue, WA 98005.

<11> This is documented in a paper by Julianne McKinney, Microwave
Harassment & Mind- Control Experimentation, Electronic Surveillance
Project, Association of National Security Alumni, PO Box 13625, Silver Spring,
MD 20911-3625, 301/608-0143. $5.00.

<12> For a general discussion of this, see Morgan Norval, The
Militia in 20th Century America: A Symposium, 1985, Gun Owners Foundation,
5881 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22041. Also see Stephen P. Halbrook, That
Every Man Be Armed, 1984, Independent Institute, 134 98th Av, Oakland, CA
94603.

<13> For a comprehensive treatment of constitutional history and law,
see Bernard Schwartz, The Roots of the Bill of Rights, New York: Chelsea
House, 1980.

<14> The ways this might occur are discussed in Joseph A. Taintes,
The Collapse of Complex Societies, New York: Cambridge, 1988.

<15> For some views on needed reforms, see Martin Gross, A Call
for Revolution, New York: Ballantine, 1993.

Youmatterrightnow... If you look around you with an open mind, ( not saying you do not) you will begin to see the US has not been operating in accordance with the Constitution for quite some time. Example: Not a fan of O but even if I was look at the health care act...74% of the US population was against this and the government, (not just the President but the house and senate) rammed this down our throats. Should be enough to start the juices flowing, Of course I mean about looking...rick152

Though this seems as though this can be heralded as a a manifesto for the ultimate conspiracy theory, wether it can be proven or not, and yet, we (some) are aware of "The White Knights."
Without cause to being naive, one can also assume that there are other entities and sects that can easily manipulate governments for either the betterment or destruction of...in order to...sustain a world view and/or goal that benefits all involved (directly or indirectly).
I am more inclined to believe that there is such an organization(s) and that it is more evident now as we are witnessing the meltdown and re-set of world economics...though you won't necessarily see me standing on a soap box, there some things that are best if we just keep an open mind and observe the things that are transpiring before our eyes. And when the time is right...

Go to www.freedomusa.com for some insight into what has happened to the US...Keep an open mind

You can see more on this at www.infowars.com
Check out the "demolition of Bldg 7 of world trade bldg and what the experts are saying. This had been a plan that our gov has been involved in over a month to prepare for this collapse.
http://www.infowars.com/architects-and-engineers-challenge-official-story-of-wtc-7-collapse/
video is available on this too.

Someone has been reading too many science fiction books....next you will say you believe in man made global warming.