Synopses & Reviews
Blank Spots on the Map is an expose of an empire that continues to grow every yearaand which, officially, it isnat even there. It is the adventurous, insightful, and often chilling story of a young geographeras road trip through the underworld of U.S. military and C.I.A. ablack opsa sites. This is a shadow nation of state secrets: clandestine military bases, ultra-secret black sites, classified factories, hidden laboratories, and top-secret agencies making up what defense and intelligence insiders themselves call the ablack world.a Run by an amorphous group of government agencies and private companies, this empireas ever expanding budget dwarfs that of many good sized countries, yet it denies its own existence.
Author Trevor Paglen is a scholar in geography, an artist, and a provocateur. His research into areas that officially donat exist leads him on a globe-trotting investigation into a vast, undemocratic, and uncontrolled black empireathe unmarked blank areas whether you are looking at Google Earth or a U.S. Geological Survey map. Paglen knocks on the doors of CIA prisons, stakes out the Groom Lake covert air base in Nevada from a mountaintop 30 miles away, observes classified spacecraft in the night sky with amateur astronomers, and dissects the Defense Departmentas multibillion dollar black budget. Traveling to the Middle East, Central America, and even around our nationas capital and its surrounding suburbs, he interviews the people who live on the edges of these blank spots.
Paglen visits the widow of Walter Kazra, who, while working construction at Groom Lake, was poisoned by the toxic garbage pits there. The U. S. Air Force defense to his estateas suit? The base does not exist. The U. S. Supreme Court declined to review the case. Whether Paglen reports from a hotel room in Vegas, Washington D. C. suburbs, secret prisons in Kabul, buried CIA aircraft in Honduras, or a trailer in Shoshone Indian territory, he is impassioned, rigorous, relentlessaand eye-opening. This is a human, vivid, and telling portrait of a ballooning national mistake.
Synopsis
Paglen's research into areas that officially don't exist leads him on a globe-trotting adventure into a vast, undemocratic, and uncontrolled "black empire, which he chronicles in this adventurous and often chilling road trip through the underworld of the U.S. military.
Synopsis
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 on the doors of CIA prisons, stakes out a covert air base in Nevada from a mountaintop 30 miles away, dissects the Defense Department's multibillion dollar "black" budget, and interviews those who live on the edges of these blank spots.
Whether Paglen reports from a hotel room in Vegas, a secret prison in Kabul, or a trailer in Shoshone Indian territory, he is impassioned, rigorous, relentless-and delivers eye-opening details.
About the Author
Trevor Paglen, Ph.D., has published numerous research papers in academic journals and his writing has appeared in The Village Voice and The San Francisco Bay Guardian. He is the author of I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me and Torture Taxi. He is also an internationally recognized artist who exhibits frequently in major galleries and museums around the world. He lives in Berkeley, California.