Blank Spots on the Map

by Trevor Paglen

  54: “Forty-niner Alonzo Delano” Quoted in Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream 1850-1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 53.

  54: “When William Lewis Manly” Quoted in Robert Glass Cleland, From Wilderness to Empire (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959), 131.

  54: “Lieutenant George Montague Wheeler” George Wheeler, “Preliminary Report Concerning Explorations and Surveys Principally in Nevada and Arizona,” Corps of Engineers (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1872), 11, 15, 16.

  55: “ ‘All the tribes’ ” Ibid., 27.

  55: “Wheeler possessed little sympathy” Ibid., 89.

  55: “Per his own estimation” Ibid., 27.

  55: “Despite his disdain” Ibid., 28.

  55: “Development spelled ruin” Rebecca Solnit, Savage Dreams (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 169.

  55: “Cattle devoured” Ibid., 167.

  55: “Slaughtered native peoples” Ibid.

  56: “In the 1860s and ’70s” Ibid. See also Brigham D. Madsen, The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1995). The Bear River is in Southern Idaho, which is also traditional Shoshone territory.

  56: “ ‘Nothing disappears completely’ ” Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (London: Blackwell, 1991), 229-30.

  56: “The explosions were called” These thoughts echo Rebecca Solnit’s. See Solnit, Savage Dreams.

  58: “Shoshone legend holds” Paul Nellen, interview with Raymond Yowell, http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/shoshone/.

  59: “It’s not clear whether” See Richard O. Clemmer, “Ideology and Identity: Western Shoshone ‘Cannibal’ Myth as Ethnonational Narrative,” Journal of Anthropological Research 52, no. 2 (Summer 1996), 207-23.

  59: “But the treaty of Ruby Valley” Solnit, Savage Dreams; Valerie Kuletz, The Tainted Desert (London: Routledge, 1998).

  Chapter 5

  64: “HAVE BLUE was built” Curtis Peebles, Dark Eagles: A History of Top Secret U.S. Aircraft (Novato: Presidio Press, 1999), 147-48.

  65: “The HAVE BLUE program” Ibid., 151.

  65: “Before its 1996 declassification” Ibid., 244-50.

  66: “At the Gathering of Eagles” Flight Test Historical Foundation, “Out of the Black . . . Into the Blue,” Gathering of Eagles 2004 Program, October 1, 2004; Peebles, Dark Eagles, 250.

  67: “The section on Doug Benjamin” Ibid., 20.

  68: “And then there was” Ibid., 22.

  70: “A local paper” Anastasia Mercer, “Parents Don’t Know What Pilot Son Did, but It Was Fantastic,” La Crosse Tribune, September 27, 2004, http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2004/09/27/news/z1pilot.txt (accessed 10/18/2005).

  71: “In the 1960s” For biographical details on Birk, see “Frank T. Birk,” Aviation Week & Space Technology 139, no. 6, August 9, 1993, 19. For Birk’s early career, see Christopher Robbins, The Ravens: The Men Who Flew in America’s Secret War in Laos (New York: Crown, 1987).

  71: “According to Merlin” Peter Merlin, “Black Projects at Groom Lake: Into the 21st Century.” Available at http://www.dreamlandresort. com/black_projects/black_projects_history.html (accessed 11/23/2007).

  71: “The biography of” Ibid.; Pamela Parmalee, “Industry Outlook,” Aviation Week & Space Technology 154, no. 20, May 14, 2001, 19.

  71: “Then I found the biography” Lanni’s biography has been subsequently taken offline. It remains on file with the author.

  73: “major Air Force command” Air Force Materiel Command Web site, http://www.afmc.af.mil/units/.

  74: “Born in 1889” David Kahn, The Reader of Gentlemen’s Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 2; for Yardley’s own book about the black chamber, see Herbert O. Yardley, The American Black Chamber (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1931).

  75: “As a telegrapher” Kahn, The Reader, 1.

  75: “One slow night” Ibid., 11.

  76: “ ‘I always assume that’ ” Quoted in James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), 22.

  76: “Yardley saw an opportunity” Kahn, Reader, 21.

  76: “As the First World War” Bamford, Puzzle, 23.

  76: “By the end of the war” Kahn, Reader, 50.

  76: “With the end of World War I” Ibid.

  77: “But there were stirrings” Bamford, Puzzle, 24.

  77: “The budget for Yardley’s” Ibid.

  77: “The War Department’s” Kahn, Reader, 54.

  77: “submitted as a ‘confidential memorandum,’ ” Bamford, Puzzle, 24.

  77: “This early form” Ibid., 24-25.

  77: “For the next ten years” Ibid., 25-26 ; Kahn, Reader, 87.

  77: “The Radio Communication Act” Bamford, Puzzle, 28.

  77: “Nonetheless, the Black Chamber” Ibid., 33.

  78: “When Herbert Hoover” Ibid., 33-35.

  78: “Or so it seemed” James Bamford, Body of Secrets (New York: Anchor, 2002), 1-3.

  Chapter 6

  80: “The conversation took” Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), 291-92.

  81: “Szilard sketched out” Ruth Moore, Niels Bohr: The Man, His Science, and the World They Changed (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 257.

  81: “ ‘lest the Nazis learn’ ” Quoted in Rhodes, Making of, 294.

  81: “The Danish scientist” Information on Bohr in this paragraph from Finn Aaserud, ed., Niels Bohr Collected Works, vol. 11, 6.

  82: “As the physicists” Rhodes, Making of, 294.

  82: “Since 1933, Bohr” Moore, Niels Bohr, 219-20.

  82: “ ‘Using the word much’ ” Quoted in Ibid., 218-19.

  85: “The whole conversation was moot” Ibid., 271.

  85: “Such an undertaking” Rhodes, Making of, 294.

  85: “The next month,” Moore, Niels Bohr, 260.

  85: “Back in Copenhagen” Ibid., 260-61.

  85: “In April of 1940” Ibid., 275.

  86: “In late August of 1943” Ibid., 299-301.

  86: “On September 29” Ibid., 303-4.

  86: “Upon his arrival” Ibid., 307.

  86: “When Bohr set foot” Ibid., 320.

  86: “This led to inevitable mishaps” Ibid., 320.

  88: “ ‘What until a few years ago’ ” Aaserud, Collected Works, 105.

  88: “Army security officers” See Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (New York: Norton, 1997), 114-17.

  88: “Even Leo Szilard” William Lanouette with Bela Silard, Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992), 240.

  88: “Moreover, the physicists” Quoted in Moore, Niels Bohr, 330.

  88: “As Bohr learned” Rhodes, Making of, 379.

  89: “At its height” See Jeff Hughes, The Manhattan Project: Big Science and the Atom Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 154.

  89: “ ‘You see, I told you’ ” Rhodes, Making of, 501.

  89: “Roosevelt secretly authorized” Rhodes, Making of, 379.

  89: “Billions of dollars” See Leslie R. Groves, Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1962), 360-62.

  89: “When Truman discovered” Tim Weiner, Blank Check: The Pentagon’s Black Budget (New York: Warner Books, 1990), 20.

  90: “With an eye toward preserving” Groves, Now It Can, 362-63.

  90: “The future president” Rhodes, Making of, 623-26.

  90: “The secrecy that went” Quoted in Edward Shils, The Torment of Secrecy (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996), 42.

  91: “Bohr aggressively lobbied” Bohr quoted in Moore, Niels Bohr, 347.

  91: “For Bohr, the only” Aaserud, Collected Works, 101-8.

  92: “On August 26, 1944” Moore, Niels Bohr, 349-50.

  92: “The meeting at Hyde Park” See Barton Bernstein,
“The Uneasy Alliance: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Atomic Bomb, 1940-1945,” Western Political Quarterly 29, no. 2 (June 1976), 224-25; see also Moore, Niels Bohr, 352-53.

  92: “Churchill was clearly” Quoted in Moore, Niels Bohr, 352.

  92: “The meeting ended” Quoted in Bernstein, “Uneasy Alliance,” 224.

  93: “Secrecy had become” McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1988), 76.

  94: “As the war came to an end” See William Lanouette and Bela Silard, Genius in the Shadows: 293; see also Federation of American Scientists Web site at http://www.fas.org.

  94: “In 1946, the federation” Dexter Masters and Katharine Way, eds., One World or None, (New York: Federation of American Scientists/McGraw-Hill, 1946).

  95: “26.8 billion” This figure is based on the figure of $2.3 billion total for the Manhattan Project, as reported by Leslie Groves, and turned into 2007 dollars using the S. Morgan Friedman’s Inflation Calculator at http://www.westegg.com/inflation.

  Chapter 7

  98: “Amateur satellite observing” For the history of Moonwatch, see W. Patrick McCray, Keep Watching the Skies! The Story of Operation Moonwatch and the Dawn of the Space Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

  99 : “The state-sponsored” Desmond King-Hele, Observing Earth Satellites (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1983), 107-8.

  102 : “The billion dollar satellite” Robert Wall, “Titan IV Flaws in Software,” Aviation Week & Space Technology 151, no. 5, August 2, 1999, 31; William Harwood, “Military Satellite in Wrong Orbit,” Washington Post, May 1, 1999, sec. A.

  102: “In fact, they are so easy to mistake” See Anthony Eccles, “UFOs and the NOSS Problem,” Anomalist, available at http://www.anomalist. com/features/Noss.html (accessed 08/20/2007); and “Recent Australian UFOs Were Just U.S. Navy Satellites,” Listserv post at http://www.ufoinfo. com/roundup/v08/rnd0804.shtml (accessed 08/20/2007).

  103: “Though the question itself” Jeffrey Richelson, America’s Secret Eyes in Space (New York: Harper and Row, 1990), 231.

  107: “From here, things get” Information taken from the Visual Satellite Observers Home Page at http://www.satobs.org/element.html (accessed 08/21/2007) and the Space-track.org page on TLE formats at http://www.space-track.org/tle_format.html (accessed 08/21/2007).

  109: “The list ends with” See Gunther’s Space Page, http://space.skyrocket.de (accessed 8/20/2007); and Elaine M. Grossman and Keith J. Costa, “Small, Experimental Satellite May Offer More Than Meets the Eye,” Inside the Pentagon, December 4, 2003. Reprinted at http://www.globalse-curity.org/org/news/2003/031204-asat.htm (accessed 08/20/2007).

  111: “The shuttle’s pilot” For Casper’s NASA biography, see http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/casper.html (accessed 08/28/2007).

  111: “A blurb in” “Secret Mission,” Aviation Week and Space Technology 132, no. 4, January 22, 1990, 23.

  112: “An article in Aviation Week” “Soviets Claim Reconnaissance Satellite Launched by Atlantis Has Failed,” Aviation Week & Space Technology 132, no. 13, March 26, 1990, 23.

  113: “The New York Times eventually wrote” Warren Leary, “Space Shuttle Lifts Off with Secret Military Cargo,” New York Times, November 16, 1990, sec. A.

  115: “The story goes like this” See Allen Thompson, “A Stealth Satellite Sourcebook,” 02/11/2007 version.

  115: “Allen Thompson uncovered” See, for example, “Memorandum for Deputy of Technology/OSA; Subject: A Covert Reconnaissance Satellite,” April 17, 1963, in Thompson, “Stealth Satellite Sourcebook.”

  116: “This is a relatively straightforward” There really was a design for a stealth aircraft carrier. See Ben Rich, Skunk Works (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1994), 280.

  119: “Legend holds that” Fred Watson, Stargazer: The Life and Times of the Telescope (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2004), 57.

  119: “But early scientists” Ibid., 47.

  120: “Fast-forward 450 years” Quoted in Philip Taubman, Secret Empire (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 213, 215.

  120: “For his part, Eisenhower” Ibid., 214.

  120: “On January 22, 1958” William Burrows, Deep Black (New York: Random House, 1986), 104.

  121: “Since 1955, the Air Force” Ibid., 84, 90-91.

  121: “After Sputnik, U.S. space” Ibid., 107.

  122: “When the photographs” See “Memorandum for the Director of Central Intelligence; Plans for Handling Satellite Photography (CORONA),” August 24, 1960, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB225/doc05a.pdf.

  123: “On August 26, 1960” Memorandum for the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, Director of Central Intelligence, August 26, 1960, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB225/doc05b.pdf; http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB225/doc05c.pdf.

  123: “TALENT KEYHOLE was just” National Reconnaissance Office, “The Retirement of BYEMAN,” Security Newsletter 4, August/September 2004, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB225/doc06.pdf.

  123: “The CIA’s Photographic Interpretation” Steve Vogel, “Charting a Military Course; After Cartographic Consolidation, Mapping Agency Is Aiding Forces in the Balkans,” Washington Post, May 9, 1999, sec. A; National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Web page: http://www.nga.mil/portal/site /nga01/index.jsp?epi-content=GENERIC &itemID=91a8353e5 cbd0110VgnVCMServer3c02010aRCRD&beanID=1629630080&viewID= Article; Jeffrey Richelson, The US Intelligence Community, 5th ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 2008), 51.

  124: “Throughout the U-2, CORONA” Richelson, US Intelligence Community, 38.

  124: “By the time the NRO’s existence” Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community, “Preparing for the 21st Century: An Appraisal of U.S. Intelligence,” February 13, 1996, ch. 13, available at http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/report.html.

  Chapter 8

  128: “As the arch-spy” Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 6.

  128: “On May 22, 1999” Florida Today article quoted from SeeSat-L list at http://satobs.org/seesat/May-1999/0321.html.

  129: “It took almost three years” Allan Thompson, “A Stealth Satellite Sourcebook.”

  131: “Using the SRP analysis” SeeSat-L post, August 2002.

  132: “This mission reminds me” http://satobs.org/seesat/Aug-2002/0075. html.

  132: “And so, Molczan” This section is based on a close reading of more than a decade of Listserv posts to the SeeSat-L list.

  134: “A researcher named Anthony Kenden” Anthony Kenden, “Was ‘Columbia’ Photographed by a KH-11?” Journal of British Interplanetary Society, February 1983, 73-77.

  134: “In June of 1983” See Curtis Peebles, Guardians (Novato: Presidio, 1987), 137.

  135: “In late 2004, the MISTY” Dana Priest, “New Spy Satellite Debated on Hill,” Washington Post, December 11, 2004, sec. A.

  135: “In the summer of 2007” Noah Shachtman, “Head Spook Kills Off Lame Spy Sat,” Wired Danger Room blog, June 22, 2007, http://blog. wired.com/defense/2007/06/head-spook-kill.html (accessed 05/01/2008).

  136: “After McConnell’s statement” Mark Mazzetti, “Spy Director Ends Program on Satellites,” New York Times, June 21, 2007, sec. A.

  136: “It later came out” Walter Pincus, “Nominee Defends Ending Programs; Kerr Testifies About Satellite Contracts,” Washington Post, August 2, 2007, sec. A.

  Chapter 9

  138: “In January 2003” Statement: Mark Klein, April 6, 2006. Available at http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/70621; see also “Spying on the Home Front,” Frontline, PBS, aired May 15, 2007.

  140: “Tien’s case, however” “Judge’s Refusal to Dismiss EFF’s Spying Case Sets Stage for Congressional Showdown,” Electronic Frontier Foundation Press Release, July 21, 2006, available at http://www.eff.org/news/a
rchives/2006_07.php#004843 (accessed 07/19/2007).

  141: “authoring a classified legal opinion” James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts,” New York Times, December 16, 2005, sec. A.

  141: “Yoo told Fox News” Fox News, January 30, 2006. Transcript available at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,183179,00.html (accessed 02/14/2008).

  144: “Powell claimed that the” Charles Hanley, “Powell’s Case for Iraq War Falls Apart 6 Months Later,” Associated Press, August 11, 2003; “The Man Who Knew: Ex-Powell Aide Says Saddam-Weapons Threat was Overstated,” 60 Minutes, February 4, 2004. Transcript available at www.cbsnews. com/stories/2003/10/14/60II/main577975.shtml.

  144: “ ‘Satellites and intercepts can’t’ ” Robert Baer, See No Evil (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 18, 140.

  147: “The 1980s were boom times” George C. Wilson, “Air Force Plans to Hide Secret Fighter; Billion-Plus Program Also Would Arm ‘Stealth’ Radar-Evader,” Washington Post, March 21, 1987, sec. A.

  147: “The pages of public accounting” Bill Keller, “Defense Department Seeks More Money for Secret Weapons, Analyst Says,” New York Times, February 12, 1985, sec. B, 24; for code names, see Bill Arkin, Code Names (Hanover: Steerforth Press, 2005).

  147: “Somewhere in an unmarked hangar” John Tirpak, “The Robotic Air Force,” Air Force Magazine 80, no. 9, September 1997; for Quartz, see Richelson, “United States Intelligence Community,” 39.

  148: “Air Force officers at” Richard Leiby, “Secrets Under the Sun,” Washington Post, July 20, 1997, sec. F.

  148: “A chronic cough” Author’s interviews with Stella and Nancy Kasza, Las Vegas, NV; Leiby, “Secrets Under the Sun.”

  149: “When Frost died” Leiby, “Secrets Under the Sun.”

  150: “The lawsuit had several” Ibid.

  150: “Responding to the lawsuit”: Keith Rogers, “National Security Defense Cut from Groom Lawsuits,” Las Vegas Review Journal, November 11, 1994, available at http://www.reviewjournal.com/webextras/area51/1994/lawsuits/security.html (accessed 07/09/2007).