Blank Spots on the Map Page 31

  219: “Responding to the hostage situation” Steven Emerson, Secret Warriors (New York: Putnam, 1988), 12.

  219: “Within hours of the failed rescue attempt” Holloway Report, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB63/doc8.pdf (accessed 12/02/2007); Emerson, Secret Warriors, 14; Holloway Report, vi.

  220: “To fill the need for highly trained” “The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) Fact Sheet,” at http://www.soc.mil/160soar/soar_home.htm (accessed 05/02/2008); for the 160th SOAR, see Michael Durant and Steven Hartov, The Night Stalkers (New York: Putnam, 2006).

  220: “The Night Stalkers had a black counterpart” Emerson, Secret Warriors, 45-47.

  220: “The Army created other black units” Jeffrey Richelson, “Truth Conquers All Chains: The U.S. Army Intelligence Support Activity, 1981- 1989,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 12, no. 2, April 1, 1999, 168-200(33); for the ISA, see Michael Smith, Killer Elite: The Inside Story of America’s Most Secret Special Operations Team (New York: St. Martin’s, 2008).

  221: “In February 1982, SEASPRAY” Emerson, Secret Warriors, 90.

  222: “Bill Casey, who assumed the CIA helm” For portraits of Bill Casey, see Bob Woodward, Veil (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987); and Joseph E. Persico, Casey (New York: Viking, 1990).

  222: “Casey chose former Rome station chief” Duane Clarridge with Digby Diehl, A Spy for All Seasons (New York: Scribner, 1997), 197-98; Cohn and Thompson, “When a wave of torture.”

  223: “The long-held fiction” Holly Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua (Boston: South End Press, 1988), 114.

  223: “Casey first heard of the black army units” Emerson, Secret Warriors, 135-36, 149.

  224: “The new black military units” Ibid., 150.

  224: “September 8, 1983, saw two lightweight planes” Jeff Gerth, “On the Trail of a Latin Mystery, C.I.A. Footprints,” New York Times, October 6, 1983, sec. A; Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua, 149-50.

  225: “The same day as the Managua” Chamorro Affidavit, quoted in Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua, 151.

  225: “One of the problems of having” Emerson, Secret Warriors, 94-96.

  225: “With YELLOW FRUIT” Ibid., 96-97; for address, see ibid., 165.

  226: “At YELLOW FRUIT’s Annandale office” Tim Weiner, Blank Check, 184-88.

  226: “The document called for a three-point plan” Emerson, Secret Warriors, 152.

  227: “Congress tried to definitively” Leogrande, Our Own Backyard, 330-33.

  227: “Barry Goldwater, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee” Woodward, Veil, 320, 333.

  227: “In 1982, Congress had passed” Boland quoted in Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua, 175.

  228: “Fortunately for the group of people who’d” Emerson, Secret Warriors, chapter 17.

  Chapter 14

  229: “It didn’t used to be as easy” Wendy Griffin, “Aguacate Air Base Brings Back Contra Memories,” Honduras This Week, February 28, 2000, online edition available at http://www.marrder.com/htw/feb2000/national.htm (accessed 07/06/2007); Lydia Chavez, “U.S. and Honduras Are Still Playing Game on Nicaragua Rebels,” New York Times, July 8, 1984, sec. 1; also Robert McCartney, “Honduras Bars Role in Aid; Contras to Receive Money Elsewhere,” Washington Post, August 28, 1985, sec. A.

  230: Names have been changed to preserve privacy.

  233: “There was, however, another possibility” Walsh Iran-Contra Report, 166.

  233: “The Enterprise started unraveling October 5, 1986” Dominic Streatfeild, Cocaine : An Unauthorized Biography (New York: Picador, 2003), 326.

  233: “Eugene Hasenfus was the only survivor” Peter Ford and Lionel Barber, “Man Held by Nicaragua Says He Worked for the CIA,” Financial Times, October 10, 1986, sec. 1; Lawrence E. Walsh, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up (New York: Norton, 1998), 21.

  234: “At the crash site, the Nicaraguans” Julia Preston, “Clandestine Missions Described; Honduran Airfields Used by Planes Supplying Contras,” Washington Post, October 17, 1986, sec. A.

  234: “Felix Rodriguez was a longtime CIA operative” CIA Debriefing of Felix Rodriguez, June 3, 1975, available through the National Security Archive at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB5/che15_1. htm (accessed 02/15/08).

  234: “Rodriguez’s partner at Ilopango” Anne Louise Bardach and Larry Rother, “A Bomber’s Tale: Part I: Taking Aim at Castro,” New York Times, July 12, 1998; Holly Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua (Boston: South End Press, 1988), 274; for Posada’s CIA history, see “Luis Posada Carriles, the Declassified Record,” National Security Archive Briefing Book no. 153, May 10, 2005, available at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153, (accessed 02/15/2008); Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua, 274; Alexander Cock-burn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press (New York: Verso, 1999), 294.

  235: “In 1998, Posada claimed” Bardach and Rother, “A Bomber’s Tale”; “No Deportation for Cuban Militant,” BBC News, September 28, 2005. Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4289136.stm (accessed 02/18/2007).

  235: “Headquartered at a restricted section” Walsh, Iran-Contra Report, 166.

  235: “When Nicaraguan authorities” Julia Preston and Joe Pichirallo, “Phone Calls Suggest Exile Tied to Resupplying Contras; Fugitive Contacted Spouse in Miami,” Washington Post, October 31, 1986, sec. A.

  235: “Continuing the CIA’s off-the-books” Michael Gillard, “Former MOD Minister Helps Out Arms Company Chief,” Observer, November 13, 1994.

  236: “According to Senate Iran-Contra” Inouye quoted in Weiner, Blank Check, 203.

  236: “The statistics confirm Marcos’s analysis” Douglas Farah, “Look at Us Now—We Are Worse Off than Ever,” Washington Post, June 1, 1993, sec. A.

  237: “In a 2007 report, the United Nations concurred” “Report of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self determination: Addendum: Mission to Honduras,” Ms. Amanda Bevavides de Perez, chairperson, February 20, 2007, 5, 17.

  238: “Aboard an Air Force Two” Office of the Vice President, “Vice President’s Remarks to the Traveling Press, Air Force Two, En route, Muscat, Oman,” December 20, 2005, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051220-9.html (accessed 06/08/2007).

  239: “In the majority opinion” “Report on the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair with Supplemental, Minority, and Additional Views,” H. Rept. no. 100-433; S. Rept. no. 100-216 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1987), 13-22.

  239: “Dick Cheney’s office authored the minority opinion.” Ibid., 545; 583-85.

  240: “In early 2005, according to Seymour Hersh” Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection,” New Yorker, March 7, 2007.

  Chapter 15

  243: “Identification cards dangling from their necks” For background on KBR, see Dan Brody, The Halliburton Agenda (New York: Wiley, 2005). For military contract figures, see USAspending.gov.

  244: “KBR’s charter plane from Dubai departed” Account of Bagram from Dan Ephron, “Life at Bagram,” Newsweek online, July 5, 2007, available at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19619662/site/newsweek/ (accessed 07/30/2007).

  244: “Kabul International Airport is an entirely different affair” Tamim Ansary, “An Afghan-American Speaks,” Salon.com, September 14, 2001, available at http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/14/afghanistan/ (accessed 07/30/2007); Michael R. Gordon, Eric Schmitt, and Thom Shanker, “Scarcity of Afghanistan Targets Prompts U.S. to Change Strategy,” New York Times, September 18, 2001, sec. A.

  245: “Violence, like the traffic rules” Peter Beaumont, “US Pulls Out Karzai’s Military Bodyguards,” Guardian (UK), November 24, 2002, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/24/afghanistan.peter-beaumont (accessed 07/30/2007).

  249: “In the hours after 9/11” Richard A. Clark, Agains
t All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), 24.

  249: “CIA Director George Tenet envisioned” Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 50.

  249: “The weekend following the attacks” Ibid., 76.

  249: “Tenet’s proposal was a vision of the future” Ibid., 76-78.

  250: “The CIA director’s vision” Ibid., 76-77.

  250: “On Monday, September 17” Ibid., 101.

  250: “The CIA spearheaded the American invasion” Gary Schroen, First In (New York: Presidio, 2005); for Schroen’s earlier career, see Steve Coll, Ghost Wars (New York: Penguin, 2005).

  251: “Within a few weeks, Schroen’s team” Michael Smith, Killer Elite (New York: St. Martin’s, 2006), 215-16 ; Schroen, First In; for Schroen’s earlier career, see Coll, Ghost Wars; for the early stages of the Afghanistan invasion see Schroen, First In, and Gary Bernstein with Ralph Puzzullo, Jaw-breaker (New York: Crown, 2005).

  251: “Other major Northern Alliance commanders” For the Northern Alliance, see Coll, Ghost Wars; Smith, Killer Elite, 215; “National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,” 146. For Sayyaf, see John Anderson, “The Assassins,” New Yorker June 10, 2002, 72; and Schroen, First In, 117.

  252: “As American teams of Special Forces” Dana Priest, “CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons,” Washington Post, November 5, 2005, sec. A.

  252: “Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, and Jay Bybee” John Barry, Michael Hirsh, and Michael Isikoff, “The Roots of Torture,” Newsweek, May 24, 2004, 26 ; Jane Mayer, The Dark Side (New York: Doubleday, 2008).

  253: “The first was Guantánamo Bay” Karen Greenberg and Joshua Dratel, eds., The Torture Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 25-28, 29-37; for Guantánamo Bay, see Derek Gregory, “Vanishing Points: Law, Violence and Exception in the Global War Prison,” in Derek Gregory and Allan Pred, eds., Violent Geographies: Fear, Terror and Political Violence (New York: Routledge, 2006); and Amy Kaplan, “Where Is Guantánamo,” American Quarterly 57:3 (2005), 831-58.

  254: “A second solution to the White House’s geography problem” Paglen and Thompson, “Torture Taxi.”

  254: “From the beginning, Guantánamo Bay” James Risen, State of War (New York: Free Press, 2006), 29.

  254: “For the CIA, Guantánamo Bay” Ibid., xx.

  Chapter 16

  256: “By the time we arrived” Carol Leonnig and Eric Rich, “US Seeks Silence on CIA Prisons,” Washington Post, November 4, 2006, sec. A.

  256: “Laid Saidi, an Algerian man” Craig Smith and Souad Mekhennet, “Algerian Tells of Dark Term in U.S. Hands,” New York Times, July 7, 2006 ; Paglen and Thompson, “Torture Taxi.”

  256: “The former prisoners give similar” “Declaration of Khaled El-Masri in Support of Plaintiff’s Opposition to the United States’ Motion to Dismiss or, in the Alternative, for Summary Judgement,” El-Masri v. George Tenet, Civil Action No. 1:05cv1417-TSE-TRJ. El-Masri’s statement was originally written in German—direct quotes are from the English translation provided in the court documents. In some cases, I’ve relied on El-Masri’s original statement in German when it contained untranslated details.

  257: “As he recounted in his diary” Portions of Binyam Mohammed’s account were reprinted in the Daily Mail, December 11, 2005, available at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=371330&in _page_id=1770 (accessed 06/06/2006).

  258: “Accounts from other prisoners” Prisoner accounts provided by Clive Stafford Smith’s office, Binyam Mohammed.

  259: “A Red Cross report on the prison” David Cloud, “Red Cross Cited Detainee Abuse Over a Year Ago; Agency Filed Complaints About Abu Ghraib Prison Months Before U.S. Probe,” Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2004, sec. A.

  261: “Jack Idema’s military career” Peter Bergen, “Shadow Warrior,” Rolling Stone 974, May 19, 2005, 56-88.

  262: “During this same time” Ibid.

  263: “From time to time” Christina Lamb, “The Strange Story of Tora Bora Jack,” Times online, August 8, 2004, available at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article466759.ece (accessed 05/02/2008).

  264: “A spokesperson for the Defense Department” Quoted in ibid.

  265: “Boykin had made headlines” For Boykin, see Richard Leiby, “Christian Soldier,” Washington Post, November 6, 2003, sec. C. Quotes from Bergen, “Shadow Warrior.”

  265: “Idema’s relationship with officials” Bergen, “Shadow Warrior.”

  00: “When Idema entered Afghanistan” For a remarkable account of warlordism in post-Taliban Afghanistan, see Sarah Chayes, The Punishment of Virtue (New York: Penguin, 2006).

  266: “Jack Idema’s Task Force Saber 7” Nick Meo, “Vigilante Fooled NATO into Helping Raids,” Independent (London), July 5, 2004, 18.

  266: “Idema’s Task Force Saber 7 was just another” Lamb, “Strange Story.”

  267: “A key part of Rumsfeld’s transformation” Jennifer D. Kibbe, “The Rise of the Shadow Warriors,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2004.

  267: “In March 2004, Donald Rumsfeld” Jennifer D. Kibbe, “Covert Action and the Pentagon,” Intelligence and National Security 22:1, 57-74.

  268: “Unlike the CIA, the military doesn’t” Kibbe, “Rise of the Shadow Warriors”; Alfred Cumming, “Covert Action: Legislative Background and Possible Policy Questions,” Congressional Research Service Report #RL33715, updated October 11, 2007.

  268: “After the Iran-Contra scandal” Kibbe, “Rise of the Shadow Warri. ros.”

  269: “As the war on terror dragged on” Human Rights Watch Statement on U.S. Secret Detention Facilities in Europe, November 7, 2005, available at http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/11/07/usint11995.htm (accessed 02/18/08).

  269: “The black site prison program” Eric Schmitt and Carolyn Marshall, “In Secret Unit’s ‘Black Room,’ a Grim Portrait of US Abuse,” New York Times, March 19, 2006.

  270: “But the black sites were” See The Torture Papers; El-Masri v. Tenet; Arar v. Ashcroft; For the torture memos, see Dana Priest and R. Jeffrey Smith, “Memo Offered Justification for Use of Torture,” Washington Post, Tuesday, June 8, 2004, sec. A.

  270: “First, the bill provided CIA” http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051230-8.html.

  271: “Almost a year later” The full text of Bush’s speech is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060906-3.html.

  271: “In Justice Breyer’s concurring opinion” The text of Breyer’s opinion is available at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/05-184.ZC.html.

  272: “In early 2006, law professor” Mark Denbeaux et al., “Report on Guantanamo Detainees: A Profile of 517 Detainees,” Seton Hall University, February 8, 2006; see also John Simpson, “No surprises in the war on terror,” BBC News, February 13, 2006, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4708946.stm (accessed 1/05/2007).

  272: “Denbeaux showed that not all” Jane Mayer, The Dark Side 183-85.

  Epilogue

  276: “The “ ‘power of the purse’ ” Federalist No. 58.

  276: “Oliver North would equate secrecy with legality” North quoted in Weiner, Blank Check, 210.

  277: “At this moment, approximately four million” Peter Galison, “Removing Knowledge,” Critical Inquiry 31 (Autumn 2004); U.S. Department of labor statistics at http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs041.htm (accessed 12/19/2007).

  Pg. 332: “Contemporary trends to outsource” “Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008,” Senate Report 110-75, 110th Congress, 1st Session, May 31, 2007.

  278: “Ben Rich, the former chief of Lockheed’s” Rich, Ben with Leo James, Skunk Works (New York: Back Bay Books, 1994), 306.

  278: “Dwight Eisenhower spoke” Dwight David Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953.

  279: “Upon his retirement eight years later” Farewell speech of Pr
esident Dwight Eisenhower, January 17, 1961.

  279: “Now recall that study by” Galison, “Removing Knowledge.”

  281: “Off-the-books military teams” For U.S.-funded Sunnis, see Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection,” New Yorker, March 5, 2007.

  281: “It’s easy to imagine that the antidote” Here I’m echoing Keenan’s argument about mobilizing shame. See Thomas Keenan, “Mobilizing Shame,” South Atlantic Quarterly 103, no. 2/3, Spring/Summer 2004, 435- 49; for visibility as a precondition of knowledge, see Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Vintage, 1973), 53-55.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not have been possible without the support of far too many people and institutions to mention here. Numerous people have served as guides, mentors, interlocutors, and supporters over the course of this project. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Gillian Hart, Jean Lave, Ananya Roy, and Michael Watts read and provided invaluable feedback on this manuscript. My immensely talented brother, Jack Paglen, spent weeks reviewing, fine-tuning, and providing helpful commentary on this project. Michael Light provided the quiet and beautiful space in the desert where much of this book was written. More than anyone, the late geographer Alan Pred took me under his wing and provided a unique combination of freedom, guidance, and encouragement.

  None of this work would have been possible without the support of the geography department at U.C. Berkeley, the Berkeley Center for New Media, the art department at Berkeley, Claudia Altman- Siegel, Bellwether Gallery, Greg Hopkins, Allison Kave, Elisabeth Schneider, and Becky Smith.

  Other people who were instrumental in realizing this project include: Joe Bryan, Kelly Burdick, Lauren Cornell, Kurt Cuffey, Apsara DiQuinzio, Aaron Gach and CTM, Ken Goldberg, Suzanne Guthrie, Renee Green, Adriene Jenik, Thomas Keenan, Shiloh Krupar, Yates McKee, Julia Meltzer, Peter Merlin, Greg Niemeyer, Marisa Olson, Patrick Paglen, the Pred Family, G. W. Schulz, Rebecca Solnit, Elizabeth Thomas, A. C. Thompson, Nato Thompson, David Thorne, Richard Walker, Anne Walsh, and Benjamin Young. Praba Pilar was a constant source of support and inspiration.