Secret Empire 226
| Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA and the Hidden Story of America's Secret Espionage | |
| author | Philip Taubman |
| pages | 370 (including fun photos!) |
| publisher | Simon & Schuster |
| rating | 10/10 |
| reviewer | ginormous |
| ISBN | 0684856999 |
| summary | A great historical thrill ride of the development of the U-2, the Corona satellite and more. |
In the early days of the Cold War, the United States knew almost nothing about the Soviet's military capacity and had to risk the lives of hundreds of airmen in flights over Soviet airspace. Eisenhower, a five-star general, understood both that the human cost was too high and that the cost of not knowing how many missiles and bombs the Soviets had was even higher. He trusted a group of businessmen, engineers and professors -- including Polaroid's Edwin Land, Lockheed's Kelly Johnson and MIT's James Killian -- to help solve the problem.
Taubman, deputy editorial page editor at the New York Times, is a talented storyteller with an eye for good anecdotes. He spoke to dozens of the men who flew the planes and built the satellites, as well as those with an inside line to the thinking of the President himself. Although the story lacks the human drama of a tale like "The Right Stuff," it has more life than expected from a story where the heroes are machines. Even readers with background knowledge about the military or intelligence systems will learn a lot about what went on in the crucial first decades of the Cold War, when technology took spying to new levels and perhaps prevented World War III. The book is largely based on documentation that was declassified in the late 1990s, offering a fly-on-the-wall view of what went on in crucial, highly secret meetings. The writing transports readers through closed doors, allowing them the relive the urgency of the era.
A truly fascinating aspect of the book is how some of America's greatest scientific achievements and achievers were either unknown or had some of their work supressed during their lifetime for national security. These guys are heroes for their work and it's too bad they couldn't be recognized back in the 60s. It's great to do it now.
Secret Empire also is relevant to the current situation, and Taubman touches on spying in the post-Cold War world. Washington eventually became too dependent on satellites and technological spying, at the expense of human agents who are much more effective against bands of terrorists. Still, the book makes obvious that satellites have rightly become an essential piece of the nation's intelligence battery. The story of how they got there in the first place is fascinating, and Secret Empire is the first book with access to classified documents that does justice to the story.
FMI: see the website at www.secretempirethebook.com which has some really cool original documents from the book's research.
You can purchase Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA and the Hidden Story of America's Secret Espionage from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Early Recon flights (Score:2, Funny)
It's always both a shame and nice (Score:3, Interesting)
ya! a real tragedy! (Score:4, Interesting)
Off topic, but there's this debate about whether human intelligence is better or whether tech surveillance like listening to radio traffic or say flying reconnaisance flights, is more useful. The latest war in Iraq is, in my opinion, a fine example. No one had an accurate picture of what it was like inside Iraq. Frederick Forsyth ends his The Fist of God with the hypothesis that humint can never outdo tehnical intelligence. any views on this?
Re:ya! a real tragedy! (Score:1)
Re:ya! a real tragedy! (Score:2, Insightful)
Another example (Score:5, Insightful)
The story of Alan Turing is really tragic.
He was one of the main contributors to breaking the Enigma code, and also a true innovator in the field of computing.
Of course, his efforts were kept a secret until long after the war, and Turing never got any official recognition while he was alive. When the british government harrased him over his sexuality, he ended up taking his own life with cyanide. A sad story indeed.
Re:Another example (Score:2)
Re:Another example (Score:2)
Re:It's always both a shame and nice (Score:1)
U2..? High speed...? (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought that the U2 was built to simply out-altitude the opponent planes, and the downfall of the aircraft was when missile technology allowed them to shoot it down anyway...
Re:U2..? High speed...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, the U2 was designed to fly high enough that nobody could reach it to shoot it down, but a couple of generations of Soviet AA missiles later, that stopped being true.
The US continued using them, though, which is what lead to the Gary Powers incident.
Re:U2..? High speed...? (Score:3, Informative)
I think you mean continues. The US still uses them to a small degree. Although with the UAVs becoming more and more commonplace I suspect sooner or later it may be mothballed and only NASA will be using them.
Not only do we still use the U2.... (Score:3, Informative)
A minor tidbit. (Score:3, Informative)
Recently, the U-2R/S models got major upgrade with non-afterburning versions of the GE F404 engine (almost identical to the engines on the F-117A); with these new engines the plane could operate at high altitudes longer due to improved fuel consumption and also were much more tolerant of compressor stalls at high altitude.
Re:U2..? High speed...? (Score:2)
However, I expect the U-2 to slowly leave operational service as the USAF begins to put into service the Northrup Grumman RQ-4A Global Hawk high-altitude reconnai
Multiple U2s shot down over China (Score:4, Interesting)
Does anybody have a link to pictures of all the U2s that were shot down by the Chinese? I know I've seen photos of them on display. We gave the planes to Taiwan, they flew them over the mainland, and down they came. I guess the loss of pilots and aircraft was considered to be an acceptable price for the information garnered from the program.
This page [taiwanairpower.org] recounts some details of a half-dozen U2s shot down over China between 1962 and 1969. Interesting stuff.
A time of leaps and bounds (Score:5, Informative)
It still amazes me to think of all of the technological leaps that were taken between 1947 and the early 60's. In less than two decades, we went from piston powered prop planes to aircraft that cruised at Mach 3 to the very edge of space (the U2 and SR-71 travel at such high altitudes that the crews wear suits adapted from the space program).
Thinking of the Blackbird, and especially North American's absolutely beautiful XB-70 Valkrie bomber (which cruised at mach 3 and used canards, which are only now coming into common use on aircraft designs), it's hard to be terribly impressed with today's aircraft. In many ways, modern aircraft are a step back.
All in all, it was an exciting time. Ironic, since much of it occured during the "boring" Presidency of Ike.
Re:A time of leaps and bounds (Score:5, Informative)
The Valkyrie bomber is simply too cool for words. Six afterburning engines, all in a row, with wing tips that droop down in flight for stability at Mach 3+ speeds. Did you ever see the video of the Valkyrie crash? I think it is Super Sabre that gets sucked up by the Valyries wake causing both planes to go down. All for an effin' PR shoot! Effin' marketers!
Re:A time of leaps and bounds (Score:2)
A photo of the accident is here [check-six.com].
The Valkyrie WAS too cool for words. There's only one left, and I'll never forget the time I saw it in person. It's at the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton Ohio. I sat on one of it's tires and had lunch. It was absolutel
Re:A time of leaps and bounds (Score:1)
Re:A time of leaps and bounds (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad so many people have been convinced that these types of research development projects are still not going on.
There is no way that the military and government would have just gotten to a certain point and stopped their efforts. They still are doing astounding amounts of research and development on secret shit that we will never know about.
Re:A time of leaps and bounds (Score:2)
Within 20 years there will no longer be a manned air force. The future is pilotless stealth drones.
Re:A time of leaps and bounds (Score:2)
Once in a while people stumble onto a very fruitful new field and progres is fast for the first few years. Just like computing has been for the last few decades. I'm sure we'll live long enough to look back and realize that computing has stagnated.
Good book having SR-71 & U2 history (Score:4, Informative)
While mostly about the stealth F-117, the book Skunk Works [amazon.com] by Ben Rich/Leo Janos contains a lot of anecdotal and interesting information about the U2 and SR-71 projects. Rich worked at the Lockheed Skunk Works through all three planes' lifecycles, and provides some insight into the quirks, challenges and personalities that surround the three aircraft.
Re:A time of leaps and bounds (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A time of leaps and bounds (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems to me we really haven't made much progress in aerospace since the Apollo moon flights.
The Concorde is going to be EOLed.
What happened to everyone? Or they're doing a lot of cool aerospace stuff but it's all secret? With all the satellites around I wonder how you can keep things a secret if you have test flights, unless they are really doing something amazing.
Or all the brains and money decided to go elsewhere?
Re:A time of leaps and bounds (Score:3, Insightful)
The U2 did indeed fly very slow, but the incredible thing about it was that the range between its stall speed (when it was going too slow to fly, and would tumble out of the sky) and the speed at which its wings would be ripped off was about 10mph. So the pilots would have to keep the aircraft in that very narrow range for up to ten hours during their flights, all the while doing scientific and espionage photography and data gathering
Re:A time of leaps and bounds (Score:2)
It still amazes me to think of all of the technological leaps that were taken between 1947 and the early 60's.
Is it just a coincidence that the Roswell UFO crash was in 1947? The U2 and SR-71 were built using alien technolody.
Re:A time of leaps and bounds (Score:2)
Re:U2..? High speed...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:U2..? High speed...? (Score:2)
At that altitude, if you flew too fast, you'd break the sound barrier, and this plane could not withstand the shock wave, it was subsonic.
But if you slowed down, the air was so thin, that the wings would stall and the plane would fall out of the sky.
It's main survivable attribute was the fact that it flew so high, no other fighter could intercept it, and no antiaircraft missi
Re:U2..? High speed...? (Score:2)
The Soviets knew that the U2 was flying over because of occasional sightings from fighters, etc. but they didn't know when and where for a long time. And when the fighters could spot the thing, they couldn't even approach its altitude
trust (Score:2, Informative)
tr.v. entrusted, entrusting, entrusts
1. To give over (something) to another for care, protection, or performance: "He still has the aura of the priest to whom you would entrust your darkest secrets" (James Carroll).
2. To give as a trust to (someone): entrusted his aides with the task. See Synonyms at commit.
Re:trust (Score:1, Informative)
"Entrust" can only operate on a noun ("secrets", "the task"), never a verb ("to solve the problem").
u2 and survelliance... (Score:4, Funny)
Funnier if you know Negativland (Score:2)
Re: the "exciting" Eisenhower administration (Score:4, Insightful)
Military Industrial Complex (Score:5, Insightful)
The interesting thing of all is, even though Eisenhower built the military industrial complex that we have today, his last act of president was to condemn it, and warn Americans of its future activities.
Click here to read Ike's farewell speech [msu.edu]
It is this same military industrial complex that gave rise to so many of the technologies that we use today, such as e-mail. Something for the /. community to think about.
Re:Military Industrial Complex (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, he did mostly hold the line on military spending. He
Re:Military Industrial Complex (Score:1)
I recall reading something written by Col. David Hackworth where he said that the Army was starved for resources by Eisenhower.
The Eisenhower administration started the "Nuclear Army", where we could save money on mundane things like fuel and ammo and spend more on battlefield nukes. They were convinced at the time that the next war would be nuclear so there was little point in supporting or building up conventional forces.
Re:Military Industrial Complex (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Military Industrial Complex (Score:2)
You mean Douglas MacArthur, who had requested and was denied, the discressionary use of atomic bombs on December 9th, 1950. The Chinese had entered the conflict on November 25th.
MacArthur was dismissed from command in April, 1951 because of his public advocacy of attacking the Chinese staging area across the border in contradiction to President Truman's policy of containment.
Re:Military Industrial Complex (Score:2, Insightful)
While this is true, it's not really the whole story. You can't say that without the Cold War or the Space Race that we would not have e-mail. There is just no way of knowing how things would have developed if the money spent on the military had been diverted into other research areas or even back into people's pockets. It is likely that
Re:Military Industrial Complex (Score:2)
A good example is how influential power compani
Re:Military Industrial Complex (Score:1)
The coverup that was proposed (and indeed attempted) claimed that the U2 was a NASA weather aircraft. (isn't it always?) But Kruschev didn't let it go by. Pics of the U2 with NASA markin [nasa.gov]
Re:Military Industrial Complex (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, bullshit. Commercial email can be traced back to TWX/Telex, which was around in the 1950s well before any internet installations. The military was not responsible for TWX, finance companies (i.e., commodities traders) drove its widespread acceptance in the business community.
Don't confuse conspicious use with "giving rise" to tech. When it comes to computers, the census had more
Re:Military Industrial Complex (Score:2)
Well I dunno. It was the officially stated reason anyway. That Kernighan and Thompson really wanted to play computergames and needed an excuse doesn't really invalidate the original supposition, that the military had nothing to do with it.
The military had everything to do with Multics though, out of the frustration of which, UNIX grew.
Old quote (Score:2, Funny)
"Roosevelt proved a man could be President for life, Truman proved that any man can become President, Eisenhower proved we don't really need a President."
Re:Old quote (Score:1)
"Roosevelt proved a man could be President for life, Truman proved that any man can become President, Eisenhower proved we don't really need a President."
i guess the current adminstration proves that any idiot can become president.
i guess the current adminstration proves that it isn't necessary to win the election to become president
etc
Re:Old quote (Score:1)
Re:Old quote (Score:1)
Re:Old quote (Score:1)
Re:Old quote (Score:1, Flamebait)
If I had to pick between going in the history books for starting a war, or for getting some action on the job, I know which one I would pick.
Re:Old quote (Score:1)
Re:Old quote (Score:2)
Kennedy banged marilyn monroe.
Our previous administration proves that you don't need taste to be president.
Re:Old quote (Score:2)
Re:Old quote (Score:1)
Saw a documentary on this... (Score:2)
I love seeing the *why* of how things came about as much as the *how*.
Don't bother. (Score:3, Interesting)
I recently read this book. The material it covers should make a great book. It covers Kelly Johnson and his U-2 and SR-71 planes, Polaroid's Edwin Land, spy satellites - this book could have been great.
My favorite book covering engineering projects is "The Making Of The Atomic Bomb" by Richard's Rhodes. It gives a good understanding of the science behind the bomb, the men who built it, and the historical setting that the work occurred in.
In contrast, "Secret Empire" gives a little taste for the technology and personalities behind these machines, but it only left me hungry. This book never lives up to the material it covers.
The NSA and Gary Powers (Score:5, Interesting)
James Bamford's Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency [amazon.com] has an amazing chapter on Ike's personal involvement in the U2 missions, and, when the Congress was investigating those U2 missions after Gary Powers was shot down, Ike's insistance that his subordinates lie to the Congress under oath about Ike's involvement. This insistance is an impeachable offense, by the way.
Body of Secrets is very worth checking out if the back story of spying is of interest. And much more entertaining than his previous NSA history, The Puzzle Palace.
mahlen
All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British manufacture. --bumper sticker
Re:The NSA and Gary Powers (Score:1)
Project Auora (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Project Auora (Score:2)
So..... you're saying that the Aurora can go past the moon?
Re:Project Auora (Score:1)
Re:Project Auora (Score:2)
Aren't they tied with the crews of Apollo 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 (all of which orbited the moon)?
Do you mean Project Aurora? (Score:5, Interesting)
A really good site on Aurora is here [fas.org].
One interesting note....the only reason the public has any inkling about Aurora at all is because of a typo in a USAF budget request in the early 90's. Someone included a request for funding for "Project Aurora Aircraft" in the budget. As soon as a reporter found it, as many copies of the document were confiscated as possible, and new copies sans the Aurora mention were distributed to the public. God bless human incompetence.
Re:Do you mean Project Aurora? (Score:1)
Re:Do you mean Project Aurora? (Score:1)
I couldnt remember all the details, and didn't even know if it was an urban legend, but a google search turned up the following.
http://www.vectorsite.net/avf
Re:Do you mean Project Aurora? (Score:2)
With project codenames like HAVE BLUE and SENIOR TREND, I want to know what they were smokin'!
We no longer have cool codenames. We stuck with names like OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM or OPERATION INFINITE JUSTICE (oops, I mean OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM).
Obligatory Fawlty Towers quote (Score:3, Funny)
Offtopic, but I thought it was cool (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway, in the book, he describes how after he was kicked out of Germany for being a spy, he went to help out a guy named Georges Ronin in Paris with high-altitude aerial reconnaissance. The problem was that above 8,000
MST3K's lament (Score:1)
Re:MST3K's lament (Score:1)
War? The transistor was invented at Bell Labs; not war related. The first microprocessor was built by INTEL under contract to Busicom, a Japanese calculator company. No war there either.
I suspect that war accelerates some discoveries, but inventions happen when all the supporting technology comes together. We would have computers today whether WWII happened or not. Indeed, Turing was working on the logical foundations of com
Deep Black (Score:1)
Exciting Times (Score:3, Interesting)
Jazz? Not that important in 1950s. (Score:1, Interesting)
Look to the 1920s for the real "Jazz Age"... a time when jazz was almost synonymous with the term popular music.
Jazz is not important in American musical history except where it contributed to the true dominant force, rock and roll.
Sure, jazz changed in the 1950s, but it was still a tempest in a teapot: a
Espionage and the Eisenhower Era (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, anyone who has looked at the Eisenhower era would know its exciting. But no one looks at history anymore.. including, apparently, you. Its just his name thats boring =)
Some interesting things of note in the Eis era:
-The USA came out of isolationism and began enforcing "Containment Policy" : The application of force anywhere there is percieved communist expandsion. This is still their Foreign Policy guideline today. (but it deals with terrorists)
-The USA went to war against the little known country (at the time), Korea in 1950. This was the first appliction of containment.
-The CIA formed its Office of Special Operations, the espionage division.
-The CIA and the State Department successfully completed its first foreign coup: Iran, 1953.
-The CIA successfully compeleted its second coup in Guatemala, 1953-54.
There are a number of other interesting things.. you guys should check it out. Modern history is still quite relevent. (only 40-50 years old! younger than your dad! Your dads not irrelevant is he? =)
Thanks for listening,
Re:Espionage and the Eisenhower Era (Score:2)
Re:Espionage and the Eisenhower Era (Score:2)
Clarifying false assumptions (Score:1, Interesting)
The cold war really got started when Lenin overthrew a democratic government in the 1910s, and then proclaimed a global empire, which he started by invading and conquering several nations which were neighbors to Russia. It did go into higher gear in the 1950s due to Soviet imperial intentions in Eastern Europe, and its aggression against Cuba and the Vietnams, and also its imperialism in Africa.
"The USA went to war against the little known country (at
Re:Clarifying false assumptions (Score:2)
You're riding roughshod over history there: Arbenz was legaly elected, by the democratic election in 1950.
He did try to make United Fruit stop behaving badly, up to threatening and effecting nationalisation as part of land reforms, and that was his undoing.
You can be a fascist/communist/environmentalist all you like and the US government will leave you alone, b
Re:Espionage and the Eisenhower Era (Score:2)
Nope. There was no country of Korea. There was North Korea and a South Korea. North Korea.invaded the South Korea.
was the first appliction of containment
Nope. That would a little earlier when the Commies tried to take over Greece. The US aided in a counter-insurgency war.
USA came out of isolationism..."
Nope. That happened in 12/7/1941. The Roosevelt and Truman administrations were not isloationist.
Corona? (Score:3, Informative)
What I find interesting is that what most people in the US and the rest of the world thought to be a series of peacefull research sateliets named Discovery, actually was the corona [nro.gov] spy [fas.org] satelite [nasa.gov] system [si.edu]. It's even more amazing when you realise what they actually achived with such a 'primitive' system, starting virtually from scratch.
I also found some links to the Thor booster and Agena spacecraft, variants A [astronautix.com], B [astronautix.com] and D [astronautix.com] on Encyclopedia Astronautica [astronautix.com] - my favorite webpage for such things.
Funny Story (Score:3, Interesting)
They were in a panic, but amazed that weren't under fire and basically ignored, until they realized the Russian bombers were Tu-4s - which were bolt-for-bolt copies of B-29s designed from a plane that was siezed by the USSR during a WWII emergency landing. Their B-29 had a bright-red tail, so they were mistaken for another Soviet bomber.
Taubman on C-SPAN (Score:2)
Philip Taubman was on C-SPAN [c-span.org]'s Booknotes [booknotes.org] last Sunday. They have information about the book, a transcript of the interview, and even video (not sure what format).
Ike -- Boring? You're kidding, right? (Score:3, Interesting)
The book sounds good, and might make a nice complement to "Blind Man's Bluff," the rambling pop title about the history of submarine espionage. The PBS "American Experience" about Eisenhower is excellent, too, and covers the whole U2 angle quite a bit. Very watchable.
Where we got the idea that Eisenhower presided over a sleepy, suburban dream of America, I really don't know. Maybe that's how the Republicans like(d) to dream about life before those nasty 60s radicals shook everything up?
Take a look at the foreign policy Ike ran, though -- trying desperately to negotiate with the USSR from a position of strength in the new nuclear age while also staving off the "military industrial complex" (a phrase he coined) -- and he comes out in retrospect as a man of purpose and great ability. The one U2 flight too far, and he felt he'd failed... But the guy had a conscience in a way W. Bush wouldn't even recognize, and he did his damnedest under trying circumstances. Hardly dull, anyway.
Conscience: look for yourself (Score:2)
I really meant "in a way W. Bush wouldn't even recognize." W. seems to live in a world where struggling to figure out the right thing to do is a sign of ineffectual moral weakness. Apparently a confident leader already knows the right thing to do, so he doesn't stew over things... (His dad, in interviews, has said he's proud W. doesn't stay up late worrying.) Ike
Eisenhower - Eisenhauer (Score:2, Interesting)
Reminds me of a story my dad told me one day:
It's about a german private named "Eisenhauer" that became a POW of the Russians in WW2.
Somehow he never understood why he always seemed to get a special treatment - actually they (the Russians) were always very polite to him and seemed to treat him in a special way, almost like an officer which he wasn't.
As it turned out later, he came from the same village as Pres. Eisenhower's ancestors... (somewhere close to Pirmasens - Germany)
Re:GERMANS!!! (Score:1)
Re:GERMANS!!! (Score:1)
(For example: When hunting for Moby Dick, bring along the tartar sauce...
Re:GERMANS!!! (Score:1)
Re:GERMANS!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
WW4 is the current War (Netwar and 4GW) between the Anglo/American West on one side, and Political Islam with Authoritarian/Buerocractic Elites and Leftist on the other.
Re:WMD hunting (Score:1)
Re:WMD hunting (Score:1)
"But after a week of intensive work in which expectations of finding proof of unconventional weapons that Washington insists exists soared and were repeatedly deflated, the military experts said the survey had shown only how difficult it is likely to be to discover hard evidence of production of prohibited weapons without spe
Re:WMD hunting (Score:1)
Separately, U.S. news station National Public Radio reported that U.S. forces had found a weapons cache not far from Baghdad of about 20 medium-range missiles equipped with sarin or mustard gas and "ready to fire."
yahoo [yahoo.com]
Re:WMD hunting (Score:1)
Re:WMD hunting-The UN works. (Score:1)
Oil in the Congo (Score:1, Informative)
None of the "war for oil" claims ever work. The united states goes to war in Yugoslavia, no oil there. Saudi Arabia actually cuts off oil in the 1970s. No oil there. The united states actually refuses oil from certain countries out of human rights/terrorism/etc concerns.
On top of that, the U.S. could have gotten cheaper oil with more oil-company profits with Saddam in Iraq than they ever will now.
Re:WMD hunting-The UN works. (Score:2)
The failure of the UN to take any active measures against dictatorships and totalitarian states testifies to its ineptitude. The UN treats thugs as the peers of civilized nations and treats borders and sovereignty with more respect than the rights and freedoms of people trapped behind those borders.
Re:satellite resolution (Score:2)
I'm not a big optics expert, so I'm not sure if there are different optimizations for the optical systems of the Hubble's instruments versus those of a spy satellite. They are both Cassegrian optical systems. I beleive the diffraction limit is the limiting parameter.
One thing I'm mildly