Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World

by Trevor Paglen

Book Overview

Welcome to a top-level clearance world that doesn't exist...Now with updated material for the paperback edition.

This is the adventurous, insightful, and often chilling story of a road trip through a shadow nation of state secrets, clandestine military bases, black sites, hidden laboratories, and top-secret agencies that make up what insiders call the "black world."

Here, geographer and provocateur Trevor Paglen knocks...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451229169
• ISBN13: 9780451229168
• Release Date: March 2010
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

An Important Book That Every American Should Read

No one can argue that the U.S. Government doesn't need to keep secrets. Details of ongoing military operations, data that could harm the economy, and sensitive personal or medical records, for example, should not be in the public domain. But some Government agencies' passion for secrecy goes far beyond what is needed. They hide from the eyes of the public information that could do no conceivable harm if revealed. Worse, some agencies cynically use the "national security" umbrella to conceal illegal activities not only from the public, but also from the very elected representatives who are charged with overseeing them. Classified or "black" expenses, not subject to justification or disclosure, make up a major part of the Department of Defense budget, and a significant majority of Government employees work on classified activities. This situation is clearly incompatible with a society in which informed public debate is supposedly (but not always actually) a cornerstone of the democratic process. In "Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World," Dr. Trevor Paglen takes an interesting approach to examining America's black landscape. He seeks to identify the actual physical areas that must exist in order for these classified activities to take place. He looks for the "blank spots on the map," the places where buildings, industrial facilities, airfields, prisons and other brick-and-mortar structures have been expunged from the public record. An example is the Area 51 flight test facility at Groom Lake, Nevada, an enormous air base that the U.S. Air Force arrogantly denied existed until the late 1990s. Today, anyone can bring up Google Earth and inspect Area 51 in all of its sprawling splendor. It has been there for more than 50 years (Air Force denials to the contrary). Dr. Paglen's quest to find such facilities takes him across the U.S. and to Central America and the Middle East. By looking at the borders where these blank areas contact the "white" world, Dr. Paglen is able to sketch out a picture of the scope and magnitude of some of the things that are going on today that "they" don't want "us" to know about. It's a fragmentary and incomplete picture, to be sure, but even so it is eye-opening and intensely disturbing. He sums up his findings perfectly in the Epilogue: "The black world has sculpted the United States in numerous ways. Creating secret geographies has meant erasing parts of the Constitution, creating blank spots in the law, institutionalizing dishonesty in the halls of government, handing sovereign powers...to the executive branch, making the nation's economy dependent upon military spending, and turning our own history into a state secret." Having first-hand experience with just a small part of the black world that Dr. Paglen describes, I was very impressed that he got that part right. When an author makes errors in describing something that I have personal knowledge of, I must then question the accurac

Excellent, answers a lot of questions

Along with his other book answers a lot of questions. This gives the history of how we got in this mess, and makes the "Bourne" movies very believable. The UFO's are obviously out of Area 51 & its environs, probably a mixture of Tesla and the NAZI "Foo" fighters. Highly recommend.

The "Black World" tool of "The Secret State"

This book is a good follow up to the authors work Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights about "Extraordinary rendition." This is the incredible story of "the black world". The Black sites....and some of the philosophy of the black ops themselves. This one goes deeper into the bigger picture. The reader gets a glimpse of the so called "black world" Use of the word "black" is good espionage trade craft jargon. Gives the feeling not just "secret" but also not legal. The author's definitions of secrecy itself are quite interesting. One fact you learn that makes the book itself worthwhile is the black world or the secret state got its start or excuse from the massive buildup when the US was making the bomb...The Manhattan Project. Paglen sites that there has been even more cash spent since then. Where has all this cash gone? Some reviewers mentioned this book is not for the conspiracy researcher. I think there is plenty in this book for the research or lay reader. Although it is "lucid" enough for the conspiracy hater as well. A great fast read! Note we have a black operatives world complete with super weapons and a secret torture airlines as big as Air America during Nam. All above the Law and often private off the books ect. Yes this book is ok for the conspiracy reader. Bravo Zulu

There was a man who wasn't there.

The U.S. National Security Act of 1947 established a national security structure which was felt to be necessary to protect the U.S. from what was perceived as serious threats from foreign and domestic enemies. Almost immediately a parallel structure, invisible to public, was created as a compliment to the public national security establishment. This parallel structure is what this absolutely fascinating book refers to as the "black world." According to Trevor Paglen, a geographer by trade, this black world can bounded by adroit compilation of blank areas on official maps, deleted passages from official documents, and acute observations of restricted areas and activities. Well he has certainly done a very thorough job of it. He begins with the secret and unacknowledged government test sites scattered throughout the country, but especially in the South Western U.S. that actually employ an astonishingly large number military and civilian workers yet still are literarily off the map. He subsequently tackles such arcane topics as black operations, black funding, and a host of other unacknowledged, often denied, U.S. activities including questionable and even illegal programs and operations. Perhaps the most discouraging information he provides is how easily it is for officials of the black world to hoodwink congress and the media, both nominal guards against government excesses. Certainly the most astonishing thing he reveals is that the black world in total may employ as many as 4 million military and civilians who carry secret or higher clearances. The fact that this many people can be involved and yet so many black activities remain completely off the gird is pretty scary in itself. This reviewer has tremendous respect for the academic discipline of geography. It combines some of the best features of social and physical science and perhaps is the most effective system for understanding the phenomenon of Globalization. Some 60 years ago one branch of geography that was called "cultural geography" sought to describe the relationship between societies and the environment in which they lived. The term may no longer be used, but Paglen is a cultural geographer in the best sense of the term.