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Blank Spots On The Map: The Dark Geography Of The Pentagon's Secret World (2009)

by Trevor Paglen(Favorite Author)

3.51 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0525951016 (ISBN13: 9780525951018)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Dutton Adult

review 1: I found a few decent bits of information in this book and genuinely loved the early parts involving surveillance satellites and the mysterious "Janet" planes taking off for Area 51. To me, it goes off the rails a bit in delving so deeply into the CIA's handling of Guantanamo and the Salt Pits and all the other top secret extraordinary rendition sites. It was just, I don't know, not quite as dashing and crazy as I was hoping it would be. I think he wrapped it up incredibly though (so this is sort of spoiler I guess?) with the realization of how staggeringly normal the people are whose lives pass through these blank spots -- describing the tourist-looking Americans lining up at the airport gate on their way to secret assignments in Kabul, the regular looking guys in khakis... more deboarding from visits to Area 51 in fanny packs (okay, he mentions that they're wearing fanny packs perhaps a few too many times). The secret world is right there in front of us, both physically and (thanks to some Bush/Congressional legislative acrobatics) legally.
review 2: Meh.Poorly written, the book meanders about looking for a central theme, which is never realized.As for new information the authors promises, there isn't any - - he covers the same old material, to which previous researchers laid claim. So, the same question pops up: How did this second-rate book get published? The niche he's carved out for himself is one that's destined to scare up dissatisfaction from both sides of this particular fence. The conspiracy theorists are going to hate Paglen's methods of research (which involve, you know, actual research rather than sitting around wearing tinfoil hats), while the skeptics are going to hate the subjects Paglen digs into, which are a conspiracy theorist's wet dream. In short, the guy's pretty much screwed. This book espouses the viewpoint that the large amount of money expended on "black" programs and activities, because it is not detailed in the budget, undermines the foundations of American democracy. That viewpoint is worth considering, whether one agrees with it or not, and Mr. Paglen offers much information to support his case. However, he overstates his case in various ways, distorts the interpretation of certain facts, and pastes together a collection of unrelated information and anecdotes. This leaves the book less convincing to a knowledgeable reader than it should be. None the less, it's worth reading.As an example of the problems of the book I'll touch on the work at Groom Lake (Area 51), on the Nevada Test Range, operated as part of Nellis Air Force Base. Mr. Paglen asserts that the work at Groom Lake is so secret that not even the name "Groom Lake" can be used in public. That may have been true many years ago, but isn't now. Indeed, a large amount of information about what goes on at the Area 51 test site is available on the Web, some of it thoughtfully provided by the United States Air Force. I spent a couple of hours browsing this material, and finally I got bored, having learned as much as I cared to know from text, photos, maps, etc. And I note one minor misrepresentation of fact in Mr. Paglen's material on Groom Lake. In two places he asserts that the Soviet aircraft used in Red Flag exercises were "stolen" from the Russians, but that's not how they were acquired. The US gov't got those from countries which had acquired them from the Soviet Union and then decided to use US equipment instead, and happily let us have their unwanted Soviet-built fighter aircraft.Indeed, there is one truly "black" area at the Nevada Test Range: "Area 19". What goes on there (if anything) is not clear, although there is a lot of mythology about Area 19 on the Web. My personal guess is that Area 19 was intended and prepared for use in projects that never took place, and that the reason nothing can be seen there now is that there's nothing to see. But, of course, I may be wrong about that.Now, having criticized Mr. Paglen's book, I'll soften my discussion by pointing out that in choosing his examples of "black" programs he faced a nearly insuperable obstacle. There are indeed some programs and activities of the US government that are truly "black", but you won't find references to those in the public domain, and no writer will get the time of day from the government in seeking to find out about them. Those might furnish better material for Mr. Paglen's thesis, but he can't learn about them. The thing all the ones I'm aware of had in common is that they weren't secret to keep Congress or other appropriate people in the US from knowing about them; they were secret to conceal them from foreign military adversaries. None of them and none of their budgets, posed the slightest threat to American democracy. Indeed, most were so small they wouldn't have rated a line in the budget even if they had been unclassified; if something is big and sprawling, it's exceedingly difficult to keep its existence and reason for being from becoming known. In one case, we successfully concealed the existence of a good-sized overseas military installation for several years, to keep the Soviet Union from learning enough about it to attack it successfully, but even in that case the word got out after a while, and we were visited by a Congressional delegation; by now it's ancient history, long since abandoned and demolished, and one can learn a bit about it on the Web (although not much). There may be analogous "black" programs that could pose a threat to US democracy; I have never heard even a rumor of any such, but then I wouldn't have.Blank Spots On The Map is a confusing and seemingly random series of chapters that outlines America's multi-billion dollar black budget, and attempts to look at some of the programmes funded by this hidden pot of money. It also looks at the historical origins and influences that led to it.Reading the introduction, my interest was peaked when the author told me that "not much serious literature about black sites" was available, and that it was time to put this right (in Paglen's lexicon, a "site" is the metaphorical footprint of a black programme = it does not refer exclusively to a physical entity). Since the truth is that *a lot* has been written about the black world and its many "sites", some of it by very talented and serious writers and researchers, I decided to give Paglen the benefit of the doubt and assumed that this book was going to cover a great deal of new territory that would put everyone else to shame.I can only say that what followed was hugely disappointing, and this remained true to the end of the book.One of the first chapters is about Paglen sitting in a hotel room in Las Vegas, monitoring Janet flights headed to Groom Lake. I was quite excited to see what new information the author would divulge, but as it turned out he added *nothing* to this very well-known aspect of the black world. The chapter soon became an exercise in tedium as he regurgitated the same prose that has been written about Janet flights by a dozen other people before him. I don't know if his publisher paid for his trip to Vegas, but on the strength of what he wrote, I'd be asking for my money back. Similarly familiar chapters follow, and while there was one illuminating chapter on America's secret satellites and a man who toils to track them, the Vegas chapter acts as a warning: there is not much in this book that you won't find anywhere else. Not much, of course, except numerous tedious geography-based metaphors about black money and black programmes, none of which add anything to your understanding of the black world. Thankfully, even Paglen seems to have given up on metaphor and figurative speech by the second half of the book, and your normal reading experience can resume.Curiously, Paglen goes to great lengths to decry a political system that allows the black world to exist. Yet not once does he really come out and denounce it; nor does he extol the benefits of some of the black programmes that made America a safer place to be during the Cold War and beyond. It is in this respect a book that is unashamedly one-sided to the point that you have to question why.Yet the most maddening thing about this book is actually that the author appears to have deluded himself. The text totally undermines his assertion that there is little serious literature about the black world - Thos book would not exist were it not for other serious literature on the subject! If proof were needed, you'd need only flip to the back of the book and peruse the 281 endnotes, the vast majority of which point to all the other works that Paglen was reliant upon to create his own book. And you have to laugh at the irony of it all when you realise that a book about deception references its own endnotes, but only in a manner that is so obscure that it is unlikely that you'd ever bother to read them (the endnotes are numbered at the back, but not within the text). Indeed, if you are not familiar with the other authors who have written about black programmes, you'll be forgiven for reading the entire book thinking that Paglen has done a pretty good job of getting some serious, original research done. I would say he does a good job of re-telling some stories and adding detail to others, but he falls far short of writing the exposé that was promised.In my mind, there is also an unanswered question over the quality and depth of Paglen's research. In one chapter alone, he makes key omissions when discussing how black programmes can be hidden from view. In one example, he names a black programme (F-117) but completely fails to mention or acknowledge that key elements of it (basing it at Tonopah, as an example) were hidden from view by using another black programme (CONSTANT PEG), and that there is precedent for the military to use one black programme to hide another. Later in the same chapter, he talks about the declassification of HAVE BLUE, the predecessor to the F-117, as being unusual; it is clear that he has no idea that HAVE BLUE was declassified only because pictures of the aircraft were released into the public domain by accident, and this is a pretty basic omission for a self-proclaimed writer of serious copy. Similarly, beyond mentioning front companies, he makes no effort to really examine the actual mechanics of paying for the maintenance and logistical support required to run black programmes that have 'gone operational' - a very tangible and interesting facet of the story that is key to hiding such programmes - yet there is information out there on the subject had he looked hard enough for it.Paglen goes on to speak about using Air Force biographies as a source of information on black programmes as though this idea is not only new (to the reader, at least), but also of his own devising. In reality, researchers have been using biographical data to provide insight into black programmes and operations for a long, long time. Combined with the 'serious' claim at the very beginning and the partially-obscured endnotes at the very end of the book, this claim really made me believe that Blank Spots On The Map lacks even a modicum of intellectual honesty. The realisation that Paglen appeared to be misrepresenting himself left me labouring to get to the end of the book.In summary: if you have not read anything about the black world, then this book would be a good starting point since its greatest achievement is to pull together research from many different texts. If, on the other hand, you have read Emerson, Peebles, Wilcox, Sweetman or any other authors who have written with authority and (as time has shown) accuracy about such programmes, then this book will add very little to your library.Finally, a message to his editor, if this book had one: you do not use a capital letter after a colon! less

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