My name is Daniel Waldron, and I don’t know if I can trust you with the information I’m about to release.
But I’ll try.
I’m 78 years old. I last worked at the United States Department of Defense ten years ago, and was tasked to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency as Deputy Director, GEOINT Enterprise Directorate.
But that wasn’t my real job.
My real job was in what you call the deep state.
Wikipedia says the deep state is an “entity that coordinates efforts by government employees and others to influence state policy without regard for democratically elected leadership.”
That’s like saying a nuclear bomb goes bang.
Some elements of the national media want you to think the deep state is just another conspiracy theory.
It’s not.
It’s real, it’s powerful, our agents are everywhere and Barack Obama is nothing more than our puppet and mouthpiece — certainly not our leader.
I was brought in as the protege of The Servant himself in 1961, fresh out of Yale. I rose to the number two position in the deep state’s guiding triumvirate.
We don’t call it the deep state, of course.
—
I’m coming forward thanks to you and people like you. I was forced out in 2007 when the financial crisis hit. The Servant (don’t ask me his real name, you wouldn’t believe me anyway) tasked me with neutralizing Dr. Michael J. Burry, the man who singlehandedly brought down the subprime mortgage fraud.
I assembled my team — 2 chasers and 2 shooters — and surveilled the man for weeks. There was one time, not unlike many others, when he was alone in his office, Metallica blaring, his eyes closed. I had my best shooter paint a green dot on his occipital bone through a small slit in the back window of our ebony Ford Econoline van.
Dr. Burry was a good man. He showed not just genius and foresight but great courage and forbearance as well. Killing good men is not what I am about. I joined the service to protect America from criminals — not the other way around.
I called in a lifetime of chits that day. I phoned everyone I could. I forced them to spare his life.
My payment was to be drummed out of the service and into a lonely retirement.
That’s when I met Cherry.
—
I was driving down State Street in the Loop in my black Chevy Aveo, listening to Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald talk about calling the whole thing off. I love cars, but I couldn’t break my old habits. Compact, nondescript, black. That was the only kind of vehicle I felt comfortable in.
It was December 23, 2008. I wanted to see the Christmas decorations, feel some Christmas cheer. The service was my life, and I’d lost it, tossed away like an old hammer, still good but replaced by a newer model — one that executed orders without thinking.
I’d never married. Sure, there was that Filipina girl, Sally. And Heather, from my hometown. But the service isn’t like the CIA. You can’t have a person you love tracking when you’re home and when you’re away. You can’t even have a home! They’d have targeted my wife for assassination and passed it off as a suicide or tragic car accident.
I couldn’t do that to someone I loved. I couldn’t even do it to someone I hated. I only killed on orders. And only criminals. Even then, I was a lot more restrained than some of my colleagues, most notably Bill.
Ask me about him later.
—
Cherry stood on the southeast corner of State and Adams in front of a Starbucks, waving her hand like a crazy, high-class bag lady, those long blond locks of hers rolling over her Gucci sunglasses, packages and bags encircling her feet like the base of an old Greek statue of Athena. She was tall, she was well-endowed and that neon pink nail polish just stopped my heart.
This was the start of my transformation, the opening up of everything I’d hidden in my soul, my first step towards blowing the whistle on what you call the deep state.
I pulled over next to her, rolled down the passenger side window and pushed my wayfarers down my nose. “Hop in. I’m old enough to be your grandpa and I’m headed your way.”
—
I lay in bed with Cherry, the icicles crashing from the eaves in the early spring morning, scraping off my wide bedroom window and smashing to bits on the concrete walkway below. Don’t think I’m some Don Juan. Getting into bed with Cherry is no big deal. She’s a call girl.
That’s not to impugn her reputation in any way. That’s just what she is, and I respect her choices even if I don’t understand them. Don’t judge me, either. I was 69 years old at the time, unmarried, childless and utterly alone in the deteriorating South Side Chicago neighborhood where the service had dumped me. I was lucky to have a woman like Cherry look twice at me any day of the week!
“Danny?” Cherry rolled over and faced me, those darling brown eyes looking up at mine.
“Yes, lover.”
“I’m going to teach you about Bitcoin today.”
—
Cherry is a libertarian. I had no idea what that was. In the deep state, as you guys call it, we don’t have politics. We just have the rules. Rule number one: “America is power. America is money. Therefore, the rich and powerful come first.” There are a lot more rules and if you guys care to know them, I will eventually release them all.
Cherry taught me the non-aggression principle. She lectured me about things I knew more about than her, like the Federal Reserve and how hard it is to get a third-party candidate on the ballot. She went nuts for Ron Paul, even became a local campaign chairperson.
She taught me what it feels like to have a woman on top of you, looking down at you, her face flushed with pleasure, her eyes fixed on yours with more intensity than a plasma rifle, her legs grinding, rising and falling.
You guys are young. You’ll meet a girl like Cherry. The point is, Cherry loves me. She doesn’t care that I’m old and wrinkled. She doesn’t care that I’m not rich. (Well, I did get into Bitcoin at $500.)
Cherry took the deep state’s trash and gave it new life. I love Cherry, and I always will.
—
The little red bulb on my rotary phone blinked. I looked up from the latest NSA report on Operation Northwoods II and hit the emergency line button.
“Conference room A-34. Now.” The line clicked dead and I bolted for the elevator. The usual gaggle of gossiping junior analysts blocked my path at the water cooler. I pushed through them.
“Hey!” Liquid hit the floor and a whiny kid too young to be here was mad about it.
“That’s the boss, young man.” Margaret is why I advanced so quickly in the ranks of the deep state. Just five years short of retirement then, she had the heart of a lamb and the typing skills of an M60.
I turned the corner, the elevator doors closing. I slipped my hand between them and pushed into the overcrowded box. I can handle short elevators, even thought they’re not my thing. But crowded ones activate my claustrophobia. The doors closed again and my chest went tight. All those mouths breathing, and there were two guys in the back smoking.
I hit the button for level A, black spots swimming in my eyes. My stomach clenched up and a sour, rotten taste filled my mouth. I breathed deep, just like the shrink told me to.
It didn’t help.
The elevator jerked to a stop and bounced up and down. The doors rolled open, slower than a piece of paper crossing a bureaucrat’s desk. I pushed through them. Sharp, early-morning sunlight streamed through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows of the lobby of the Harry S Truman Building. I covered my eyes, turned left and jogged down the corridor to conference room 34.
It was October 11, 1972. Nixon’s burglars were indicted a few days ago. His former attorney general was in hot water and the FBI finally found their rear ends and figured out what Tricky Dick has been up to this whole time.
In other words, shit was hitting the fan, at least in the show world.
Three men sat around a small round conference table, dressed for extravel. A fourth, empty, suit sat on my chair. The wide, white screen at the front of the room was blank.
“Close the door, for Chrissakes.” Art slouched in his chair, a fresh cigar in his mouth. Let’s just say that Art was a pain in the ass but he knew how to kill. The other two were new to me, one tall and balding, the other short and mustached.
I pulled the door shut and deadbolted it, the metal clang echoing in the oversized conference room. The screen flickered on and the metal window shades rolled down with a light click-clack, like the sound of a commuter train pulling into my station.
The Servant appeared on screen. He never showed his face, just the shadow of it. He ran his voice through a modulator and had the weirdest intonation, pausing in spots you’d never expect. I’d never met the guy in person, I’d only seen him on screen once before. That was the time — well, let’s just it was an unusual case, which meant this one was, too.
“Gentlemen, I have called you here on short notice because President Nixon has initiated a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.”
“Son of a bitch, not again,” Art said.
The other two exchanged a look.
An icy chill ran up my legs, and I jammed my hands into my armpits. I knew some things in 1972, but I was still in deep state preschool then. Hell, I thought I was working for the CIA until 1975.
“Within the next sixty seconds, you will travel to Taurus Base, gentlemen. From there, you will use the Tesla Apparatus to plan your course of corrective action. You will then return at the appropriate time selected by the team leader and gently apply a remodeling to President Nixon.”
Art stood up, his helmet under his arm, and pointed at me. “This kid here is too green. I don’t want him on my team.”
“You are not the team leader, Agent Kaczynski. Do your part and nothing more.”
“Well, who is?” He pulled his cigar from his mouth and raised an eyebrow at me.
“Forty-five seconds, gentlemen.”
“To what!” Art yelled.
The screen flickered and a map of the world appeared. Tiny red lights trailed by solid black lines and led by dotted gray lines traversed the space between North America and Eurasia. The screen zoomed in on one that was headed for Washington, D.C. The number 33 flashed onto the screen. It changed to 32, 31, 30.
“Oh, shit.” Art snapped his helmet on, a flexible fishbowl thing. His eyes bulged at me. “Best get dressed, kid!”
A whirling circle of purple and yellow light opened to my right, between us and the window, as wide as three men and as tall as the ceiling. It was a crazy tie-dye pattern but with the intensity of the noon sun and a dazzling darkness behind it.
The two other guys pushed my suit at me. They snapped on their helmets, sprinted and dove into the circle. They disappeared.
Art grabbed my suit and unzipped it. Space suit orange and with a zipper that ran diagonally from the upper right thigh to my left shoulder, the jumpsuit was soft and warm, like a winter coat. I stepped into it and zipped it up on autopilot, my eyes focused on that circle.
The countdown enlarged: 27, 26. It held at 26. Art snapped on my helmet and patted me on the back.
“You’re on your own now, kid.” He sauntered to the circle, looked back at me and grinned, the cigar stuck in the side of his mouth. He large-stepped through and was gone.
The counter moved again: 24, 23, 22. The door to the room burst open and a girl in a long, gray skirt and round, oversized glasses stood in the doorway, her hand over her mouth. Janet from accounting. I’d wanted to ask her on a date for months now.
“Now, Daniel,” The Servant yelled.
I sprinted for the circle, stopped at the edge and poked a finger into it. It was cold. I didn’t like cold things. I closed my eyes and threw myself into it.
—
Like I said before, I don’t know if you Steem folks are the right people to share this information with. What I can tell you is bigger than Wikileaks or his pal Chelsea. Snowden, I can’t help but like the guy. But he doesn’t know a goddamned thing. The NSA was my pet rabbit. And these other leaks are just SOP.
There are so many levels to this thing. I sat above them. I orchestrated those levels and told each one that they were the top level. But they weren’t. The changing of the president is like changing the actor who plays Ronald McDonald, all that changes is the face under the mask. Politics as you know it is a show.
But I assume you guys already understand at least that much? God, I hope so. Otherwise I am wasting my time and putting my life — and Cherry’s — at risk for nothing.
The deep state is not what you think it is. Prove to me you’re ready to hear the truth, and I’ll give it to you.