Reddit reviews Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World
We found 3 Reddit comments about Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Used Book in Good Condition
Then you may like this book.
It's why the place exists. It is, after all, an air force base.
I'd frankly be stunned if the NRO didn't have something like it. I mean, they developed this fucker over 45 years ago. I just get kinda tired of Aviation Week being all breathless and MSNBC/CNN/Whoever quoting them like a credible source, particularly when they aren't saying anything that hasn't been said in the open press again and again and again. The best way to hide a secret is to have it out in the open. Frickin' USA Today had a shot of "aurora" back in the mid '90's and an AP reporter caught a shot of something flying out of Scotland over fifteen years ago. But AVWeek just sorta goes "our sources say..." and people eat it the fuck up.
...okay, true story. Me and a buddy were looking at the D-21 at the Museum of Flight; they've got an M-21 (although it's labelled an A-12; I think Wiki is wrong) there that you can just walk up to and stare in the cockpit of. And me and my buddy were sitting there staring in awe and my buddy says "you think it coulda gone into space?"
...and this old Docent who had been standing behind us says
"I never got the throttles past seventy percent. The only thing that kept that machine from going into orbit was knowing I had no way of getting it back down again."
Old pilots tend to congregate around old birds. I took the guided tour at Pima and as we're rounding the corner in a bus and the dude is delivering his spiel he says "and this is the A-7 I flew in Vietnam, earning three kills over the course of 80 sorties."
And I think that is my beef. There's real stories out there. People are dying to tell them. And outfits like AvWeek wave their hands, say nothing, and everyone runs pictures of the XB-70. It's tiresome. And why I think Trevor Paglen is the shit.
He spoke at my school during my grad studies and rarely have I been so enthralled and entertained. Not only is his work truly compelling, urgent, important contemporary art, it also intersects politics, power, history and the nature of knowledge in a way that few others' do. I highly recommend his book, Blank Spots on the Map, as an introduction and primer to his work.
I can brag that I had dinner with him, but unfortunately (perhaps fittingly) no pictures exist.