Blank Spots on the Map Read online

  Contemporary trends to outsource the war on terror also mean jobs. Among the streets of Northern Virginia, the designer boutiques and inflated housing prices speak to the amount of money going to intelligence community contractors. A May 2007 report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence estimated that “the average annual cost of a United States Government civilian employee is $126,500, while the average annual cost of a ‘fully loaded’ (including overhead) core contractor is $250,000. . . . Given this cost disparity,” said the committee, “the committee believes that the Intelligence Community should strive in the long-term to reduce its dependence upon contractors.” But this hasn’t happened.

  It’s no secret that since the Second World War, military spending has primed the American economy, a phenomenon some economists call “military Keynesianism.” Ben Rich, the former chief of Lockheed’s secret airplane factory, the Skunk Works, once said that it was an “open secret in our business . . . that the government practiced a very obvious form of paternalistic socialism to make certain that its principal weapons suppliers stayed solvent and maintained a skilled workforce.”

  Dwight Eisenhower spoke to the costs of it all when he came to office in the early 1950s:

  Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

  ... We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.

  Upon his retirement eight years later, Eisenhower famously spoke of a rising “military-industrial complex.” But he did not speak about the power of a black world complex. The secret world would grow more slowly, incrementally. Its scale would be hidden, its programs unaccounted for, its legitimacy rarely questioned.

  Finally, the rise of state secrecy has transformed our national history into another blank spot. In my conversations with satellite observer Ted Molczan, I was struck by the way that he, in the tradition of astronomers going back to Brahe, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, was able to look up into the night sky with a pair of binoculars and deduce hidden knowledge from observable phenomena. Although Molczan’s observations are a powerful symbol of insisting on empirical truths in the face of power, much knowledge, especially when it comes to human affairs, doesn’t work that way.

  Human affairs don’t follow Newton’s laws of motion or Einstein’s accounts of relativity. Unlike our colleagues in the “hard” sciences, those of us who traffic in the social sciences (“social studies” is probably a more accurate description), whether we’re geographers, sociologists, policy makers, pundits, or interested members of the public, encounter a world where people can be fickle, inconsistent, unpredictable, and wont to ignore or chronically disprove whatever “rules” and predictions social scientists concoct. In order to understand the “big questions”—who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going—those of us who study human affairs have to rely on historical interpretation, political and economic analysis, and cultural studies. In contrast to our colleagues in the physical sciences, social scientists have to rely on stories, libraries, archives, and vaults of records. To understand ourselves, in other words, we need access to our own histories.

  Now recall that study by Harvard’s Peter Galison mentioned in chapter 1. In terms of numbers of pages, more of our own recent history is classified than is not. Again, he concluded that the “classified universe . . . is certainly not smaller, and very probably much larger than the unclassified one.” The dark world is already growing at a rate of 250 million classified pages in secret archives a year. Our own history, in large part, has become a state secret.

  History and geography, it seems to me, cannot be easily separated from one another. The environments we live and work in, from our secret prisons to our universities, are in a very real sense the present past. We live in and among the institutions and spaces that have been bequeathed to us by what came before. But geography is more than the sedimented spaces produced in the recent and distant past. Geography also sculpts the future. The spaces we create place possibilities and constraints on that which is yet to come, because the world of the future must, quite literally, be built upon the spaces we create in the present. To change the future, then, means changing the material space of the present.

  I must confess that when I began this project, I was seduced by blank spots on maps, by the promise of hidden knowledge that they seemed to contain. It was easy to imagine that if I could just find one more code name, if I only knew what the HAVE PAN-THER project was (someone said it was a “dirty cat to clean up after”), if I knew the location of the next-generation CIA black sites, or if I could learn about the “really fast” thing they had out at Groom Lake during the 1980s, somehow the world itself would change for the better. Something, undoubtedly, would happen if these secrets came out into the open. History shows that revelation and change can often work in tandem, but revelation, in and of itself, accomplishes little.

  Some of the black world’s deepest secrets have indeed come to light over the last few years. The CIA has been operating, and continues to operate, a network of secret extralegal prisons at unknown places around the world. It has destroyed videotapes documenting the torture of terror suspects in American custody. Off-the-books military teams secretly fund Sunni jihadist groups descended from those that perpetrated the attacks on the World Trade Center. The NSA has been flouting the law to surveil countless numbers of Americans. No doubt, these are all stunning revelations.

  It’s easy to imagine that the antidote to state secrecy is more openness, more transparency in state affairs. That is, no doubt, a crucial part of a democratic project. But transparency, it seems to me, is a democratic society’s precondition; transparency alone is insufficient to guarantee democracy.

  Just as the secret state has grown by creating facts on the ground, then sculpting the world around them in an attempt to contain the ensuing contradictions, the secret state only recedes when other facts on the ground block its path, when people actively sculpt the geographies around them. Over the course of researching and writing this book, I’ve met numerous people both within and outside of the secret state who are trying to do just that. In figures like Judith Palya Loether, who tried to reverse the Reynolds precedent when she learned that it was based on a lie, Lee Tien, whose measured arguments assert that judges should “get to see the secret sauce 99 percent of the time,” and Ted Molczan, who meticulously documents the other night sky, and the military lawyers at Guantánamo Bay who’re actively resisting what they see as unjust military courts, I see people actively working to prevent the secret state from spreading even further. In their efforts, I see people practicing democracy.

  NOTES

  Prologue

  1: “We need to find an old man” See Trevor A. C. Paglen and Thompson, Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights (Hoboken: Melville House, 2006).

  4: “Every year, the United States” This number is a relatively conservative estimate based on a $30 billion “black budget” and an acknowledged low-end intelligence budget of approximately $40 billion.

  4: “Approximately four million” Peter Galison, “Removing Knowledge,” Critical Inquiry 31 (Autumn 2004); available at http://criticalinquiry.uchicago. edu/features/artsstatements/arts.galison.htm (accessed 12/20/2007).

  4: “1.8 million civilians in the ‘white’ world” U.S. Department of Labor statistics. At http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs041.htm (accessed 12/19/ 2007).

  4: “A 2004 study” Galison, “Removing Knowledge.”

  Chapter 1

  9: “California had embarked” For the California prison system, see Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).

  9: “At Pelican Bay” “Former Inmate at Pelican Bay Wins Judgment Against State,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 1, 1994, A18; Madrid v. Gomez , 889 F.
Supp 1146, 1167, 1283 (N.D. Cal. 1995).

  9: “At Corcoran State Prison” See Tim Cornwell, “Staged fights, betting guards, gunfire and death for the gladiators,” Independent, August 22, 1996, international edition.

  12: “As it turns out” Information in this paragraph from Laurence Bergreen, Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 53-54; and Miles Harvey, The Islands of Lost Maps (New York: Random House, 2000).

  12: “The Portuguese controlled” Harvey, Islands, xiv.

  14: “In an October 12, 2001, memo” See Government Accounting Office, “Freedom of Information Act: Agency Views on Changes Resulting from New Administration Policy,” September 2003, GAO-03-981; and Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, “the Ashcroft Memo,” available at http://www.cjog.net/background_the_ashcroft_memo.html (accessed 02/05/2008).

  14: “A few months later” See John Mintz, “Interrogating Abu Zubaida: Fact? Fantasy? Manipulation? Al Qaeda Figure’s Tips Have Led to Two Alerts,” Washington Post, April 27, 2002, sec. A.

  14: “By 2003, classified” Dan Morgan, “Classified Spending on the Rise; Report: Defense to Get $23.2 Billion,” Washington Post, August 27, 2003, sec. A.

  14: “Vice President Dick Cheney’s” Elisabeth Bumiller, “White House Letter; Shrinking from View but Still Looming Large,” New York Times, November 26, 2001, sec. B.

  15: “These oft-quoted” Max Weber, Economy and Society (1922), in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. and trans., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 233-34.

  15: “it is about how the United States” This formulation echoes the ideas of political theorist Carl Schmitt and numerous others. See Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

  16: “ ‘Geography,’ my friend” These were some of Allan Pred’s signature lines, culled from his research statement on the geography department’s Web site.

  Chapter 2

  21: “Known as ‘Big Sky Ranch’ ” For Big Sky Ranch, see Dwayne Day, “Vandenberg Air Force Base,” U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission. Available at http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/SPACEFLIGHT/VAFB/SP47.htm (accessed 05/01/2008).

  23: “The NRO is one of those” For the National Reconnaissance Office, see Philip Taubman, Secret Empire (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003). See also Jeffrey Richelson, The Wizards of Langley (Cambridge: Westview Press, 2001).

  23: “On the afternoon” For USA 193 and FIA, see Noah Shachtman, “Rogue Satellite’s Rotten $10 Billion Legacy,” Wired Danger Room blog, February 20, 2008. http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/02/that-satellite. html.

  23: “A month after the launch” See Andrea Shalal-Esa, “Expensive New U.S. Spy Satellite Not Working: Souces,” Reuters, January 11, 2007.

  24: “After its initial launch” Data from amateur observers.

  24: “The shoot-down was necessary” “DoD Succeeds in Intercepting Non-Functioning Satellite,” DoD Press Release no. 1039-09, February 20, 2008.

  24: “The official explanation” See John Barry, “A Flash in the Night Sky,” Newsweek online, February 20, 2008.

  24: “ ‘The claim there was a danger’ ” Pike quoted in James Oberg, “Sense, nonsense, and pretense about the destruction of USA 193,” Space Review, March 3, 2008.

  24: “On February 21” “Success of Satellite Hit Confirmed,” Washington Times, Feb. 26, 2008.

  26: “On January 21, 1959” Taubman, Secret Empire, 287

  27: “Another story” “KH-1,” Encyclopedia Astronautica. Available at http://www.astronautix.com/craft/kh1.htm (accessed 05/01/2008).

  27: “Eleven subsequent Discoverer” William Burrows, Deep Black (New York: Random House, 1986), 109-10.

  27: “Discoverer 13” Ibid.

  27: “When the CORONA” “The Origin and Evolution of the Corona System,” in Duane Day, ed., Eye in the Sky (Washington: Smithsonian, 1998), 192.

  28: “The 3,600 feet of film” Taubman, Secret Empire, 322.

  Chapter 3

  35: “EG&G’s history” Phil Patton, Dreamland (New York: Villard, 1998), 250-51.

  36: “From time to time” Independent researcher Gary Sellani has several documents related to EG&G Special Projects, including copies of employment ads, at http://www.lazygranch.com/egg.htm (accessed 01/21/2008).

  37: “When it created” David Loomis, Combat Zoning (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1993), 9-10.

  38: “Just north of Mercury” When Lockheed announced the existence of Polecat at the Farnborough Air Show on July 19, 2006, the company declined to mention where the aircraft had been tested. Aviation and defense journalists assumed that the craft had been tested at Groom Lake, but when Lockheed released a video of the UAV in flight, it was clear that it had been tested somewhere else. By paying close attention to the background details of the video, it was possible to deduce that Polecat had actually been tested at a new site at Yucca Dry Lake. Recent satellite photography of the dry lake confirmed the existence of a new facility at the site. See Jim Skeen, “Lockheed Offers Polecat peek,” Los Angeles Daily News, July 26, 2006, available at http://aimpoints.hq.af.mil/display.cfm?id=12793 (accessed 03/02/2007). See also “Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works Reveals High Altitude Unmanned System,” Lockheed Martin press release, June 19, 2006. For the Polecat video, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsowPKvcIxo (accessed 03/02/2007).

  38: “A sprawling facility” See “Wing Infrastructure Development Outlook (WINDO) Environmental Assessment,” Nellis Air Force Base, December 2005, available at http://budget.state.nv.us/clearinghouse/Notice/2006/E2006-241.pdf. For acceptance testing of electronic warfare assets, see “Final Acceptance Testing of the Texas Instruments (TI) ASR-8/ MTD (AN/GPN-25) at Tolicha Peak, Nevada,” Radar Evaluation Squadron (Technical) (1954th) Hill Air Force Base, UT. October 15, 1980, available at http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb =getRecord&metadataPrefix=html& identifier=ADA09 6292.

  38: “But much about TPECR” See the Center for Land Use Interpretation’s, CD-ROM The Nellis Range Complex: Landscapes of Conjecture (Culver City: CLUI, 2004).

  39: “The Tonopah Test Range” For an early history of the TTR, see S. Hwang, et al., “1990 Environmental Monitoring Report, Tonopah Test Range, Tonopah, Nevada,” Sandia Report SAND91-0593, UC-630, 1991, 2-1.

  39: “For the last thirty years” See “Air Force Declassifies Elite Aggressor Program,” USAF press release, 11/13/2006, available at http://www.af. mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123031752.

  39: “In 1981, the newly created” Curtis Peebles, Dark Eagles: A History of Top Secret U.S. Aircraft (Novato: Presidio Press, 1999), 178.

  40: “But the base at Tonopah” Peebles, Dark Eagles, 248.

  40: “Sixty miles southeast” Powers quoted in Francis Gary Powers and Curt Gentry, Operation Overflight (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), 28.

  41: “Not that the ‘DET. 3’ name” Independent researcher Glen Campbell first uncovered the “DET. 3” designation. The story is told in Patton, Dreamland, 175.

  41: “On the flights where” This has been documented in detail by independent researcher and military monitor Joerg Arnu at his Web site, http://www.dreamlandresort.com/info/janet_audio.html (accessed 1/20/2008).

  43: “The ‘annihilation of space by time’ ” Karl Marx, Grundrisse, trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Penguin Classics, 1993), 539.

  44: “The landings began” Paglen and Thompson, Torture Taxi.

  45: “The name ‘Tepper Aviation’ ” For Tepper Aviation, see Ted Gup, The Book of Honor (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 321-28; Allan George, “Airline Carrying CIA Guns to Unita,” Independent, February 18, 1989; and Allan George, “US Weapons Boost Angolan Rebels,” Guardian, June 25, 1990.

  45: “The CIA created” Ted Gup, The Book of Honor.

  45: “Another secret geography” Paglen and Thompson, Torture Taxi. See also Stephen Grey, Ghost Plane (New York: St. Martin’s, 20
06).

  46: “It wasn’t until 2006” Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (New York: Crown, 2006), 6-9.

  46: “According to Isikoff and Corn” Ibid.

  47: “By the fall of 2002” Ibid., 153.

  47: “In the fall of 2002” Ibid.

  47: “Despite all the expense” Ibid., 211.

  Chapter 4

  50: “ ‘It is a soul-shattering silence’ ” Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 128. Rebecca Solnit and John McPhee have both used this quote to describe the silence of the Basin and Range.

  52: “ ‘Here, on the Humboldt’ ” Horace Greeley, An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859, Charles Duncan, ed. (London: Macdonald, 1963), 231; Reuben Cole Shaw, Across the Plains in Forty-Nine, Milo Milton Quaife, ed. (Chicago: The Lakeside Press, 1948), 135-36; Belknap quoted in John Walton Caughey, California, second ed. (New York: Prentice Hall, 1953), 251.

  52: “On arriving at the sink of the Humboldt” Shaw, Across the Plains, 137-38; Vincent Geiger and Wakeman Bryarly, Trail to California: The Overland Journal of Vincent Geiger and Wakeman Bryarly, David Morris Potter, ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1945), 189.

  53: “One emigrant described the landscape” Geiger and Bryarly, Trail to CA, 85.

  53: “The stretch was littered” Charles Glass Gray, Off at Sunrise: The Overland Journal of Charles Glass Gray, Thomas D. Clark, ed. (San Marino: Henry E. Huntington Library, 1976), 84.

  53: “Later that day” Ibid.

  54: “Milus Gay wrote” Quoted in Caughey, California, 251-52.

  54: “Upon completing the” Quoted in Aldous Huxley, “The Desert,” in Leonard Michaels, David Reid, and Raquel Scherr, eds., West of the West: Imagining California (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989), 320.