Previously published on BillMoyers.com

This week, Mike Lofgren spoke with Bill about what he describes as America's "Deep State," where elected and unelected officials collude to protect and serve powerful, vested interests. In conjunction with the show, Lofgren's essay, "Anatomy of the Deep State," has been published on BillMoyers.com. We asked a number of people, including several previous Moyers & Company guests, to share their reactions to the Deep State.

Everyone knows about the military-industrial complex, which, in his farewell address, President Eisenhower warned had the potential to "endanger our liberties or democratic process" but have you heard of the "Deep State?"

Mike Lofgren, a former GOP congressional staff member with the powerful House and Senate Budget Committees, joins Bill to talk about what he calls the Deep State, a hybrid of corporate America and the national security state, which is "out of control" and "unconstrained." In it, Lofgren says, elected and unelected figures collude to protect and serve powerful vested interests. "It is ... the red thread that runs through the history of the last three decades. It is how we had deregulation, financialization of the economy, the Wall Street bust, the erosion or our civil liberties and perpetual war," Lofgren tells Bill.

Lofgren says the Deep State's heart lies in Washington, DC, but its tentacles reach out to Wall Street, which Lofgren describes as "the ultimate backstop to the whole operation," Silicon Valley and over 400,000 contractors, private citizens who have top-secret security clearances. Like any other bureaucracy, it's groupthink that drives the Deep State.

Moyers & Company airs weekly on public television. Explore more at BillMoyers.com