Slashdot Mirror
Secret Empire
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.
"What's that, Cecil, down below?" "I think it's an army!" "Take the balloon lower, Cecil!"
..that such people are recognized now. If I had contributed to the war effort in such a great way, I'd want to be recognized - but maybe that's just me. I guess that's just a part of war. Like the author said, it is nice to recognize them now. I wonder if any of them are still alive and will read this book?
find / -name "*.sig" | xargs rm
In all of the PBS documentaries that I've seen on the U2, I don't remember any of them calling it 'high speed'. In fact, I remember several references to fighters keeping up with it as it flew over the Soviet Union, but they weren't able to get up to the level it was flying at.
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...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Hey may have had trust in these men but what he did was "entrust" them to solve the problem ...
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.
Damn, you beat me to it ;)
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.
i wonder if the pilots listened to "still haven't found what i'm looking for" while they were flying...
:)
...some would probably rate Brown vs. the Board of Education, Brown II, and the Korean War as a little more "exciting" than aeriel reconnaissance. But then again, all those things fall in the category of "stuff that matters."
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
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.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
There's an old quote that goes something like this:
"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."
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
The U2 was very slow. It's essentialy a jet propelled glider designed to fly at the edge of space. This is why the CIA/USAF developed the A-12/SR-71. It had altitude AND speed. It's still probably the fastest jet powered aircraft ever flown (depending on what kind of powerplant the still-secret Aurora really has).
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.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
It was actually cool to see how necessary advances espionage gave birth to the digital camera for transmission purposes... very cool.
I love seeing the *why* of how things came about as much as the *how*.
The US continued using them, though, which is what lead to the Gary Powers incident.
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.
Do you really think World War III was prevented? Would it not be closer to say that it was delayed?
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.
It is especially tragic because of the nature of spy work - all those technical guys who could innovate while working under defense departments and who could not tell anybody about what they had done. Especially considering the acclaim that they would have earned in conventional academic circles.
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?
This sig is empty.
....we also used an improved version called the TR-1, with better avionics and extended range. We still have some older U2's as well, and yes, NASA uses them for high altitude data-gathering.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
James Bamford's Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency 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
Be more optimistic! ;)
(For example: When hunting for Moby Dick, bring along the tartar sauce...
There's no place like
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 recounts some details of a half-dozen U2s shot down over China between 1962 and 1969. Interesting stuff.
Damn straight the UN works. If this was about "freeing" people, we'd be fighting and supplying aid to the Congo, where hundreds of thousands of people have died because of war and famine. "....What's that??? The Congo has no oil?? Well I wanna get my dad a cool b-day present. Let's kill Sadaam!" - GW
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
Last year I particpated in a U-2 launch as a ground crew member. Actually, it was one of NASA'a ER-2s, which are U-2s that are painted white. NASA obtained two U-2s from the Air Force to fly a wide range of sensors, such as the AVIRIS hyperspectral imager. IIRC, the usual mission speed is 410 knots. The launch was an awesome experience. Those aircraft (nicknamed the "Dragon Lady") are a different breed. The wingspan is huge and the cockpit is very spartan and cramped. I really admire the pilots who sit in those things for 8-10 hours at a time while wearing a bulky spacesuit.
"I'm not, like, that smart. I, like, forget stuff all the time." -- Paris Hilton
By the way, there is plenty of oil inside the nation now called "The Congo" and just off-shore.
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.
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.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
It's a shame the reviewer repeats the conventional wisdom that the 1950's in the United States was an unexciting period. This gets said over and over again, but doesn't become true as a result. The 1950s were times of enormous social change and cultural achievement - it was during this time, for instance, that New York supplanted Paris as a center for the world of art. It was then that jazz - the most important musical movement of American history - came into full flower. And it was a time full of conflict and complexity in world affairs during which the United States experienced great success. It was really a much more exciting time than the sixties, which offered inferior music (rock & roll) inferior art (Andy Warhol) mixed results in world affairs and economic mismangement (Johnson's inflation).
(Did you know the Eisenhower administration was exciting?)
... His era is the one where the cold war got momentum.
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,
-- "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Jean Jacques Rousseau
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 spy satelite system. 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, B and D on Encyclopedia Astronautica - my favorite webpage for such things.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
While mostly about the stealth F-117, the book Skunk Works 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.
Music is a matter of taste. Since many more people prefer rock and roll to jazz, it indicates that perhaps rock and roll is "superior". Jazz by the 1950s was relegated to the fringe where it stays today.
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 revolution in the fringe. Even then, remember that bebop started in the 1940s, not the 1950s.
as they used extensive samples of a documentary about the Powers incident during many live performances of their banned 'U2' single.
Fuck Slashdot
"His era is the one where the cold war got momentum."
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 the time), Korea in 1950."
A couple of problems there: There were two nations called Korea involved (North and South). North Korea invaded South Korea, and the U.S. came to its aid to ensure South Korean sovereignty.
"The CIA successfully compeleted its second coup in Guatemala, 1953-54"
Not false, but true. And very good. The Soviets had installed a dictator, and the U.S. came to Guatemala's aid and kicked the colonialists out.
Not sure if it's in this book, but I read a funny story one time about some early overflights of the USSR using modified B-29 bombers. On a flight over the Kamchatka peninsula, one plane suddenly found themseleves in/near a group of Russian bombers.
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.
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Philip Taubman was on C-SPAN's Booknotes last Sunday. They have information about the book, a transcript of the interview, and even video (not sure what format).
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.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
So...Why isn't the UN fighting in the Congo?
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.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
More WMDs were found in the first 12 days of the war, than in the 12 years prior....
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Yes, but we aren't comparing zero to zero, we are comparing two to several dozen.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
NY Times, April 16, Page B1, "U.S. Inspectors Find No Forbidden Weapons At Iraqi Arms Plant" //the title gives it all away, but I'll make my point w/this paragraph
"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 specific information from Iraqi scientists or military officers."
Reuters
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
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
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 sure of is that the mirrors in the more recent spysats are *larger* and higher quality that that of the Hubble, so using the Hubble might actually be coinsidered "slumming" over at the NRO. ;-)
--- Ban humanity.
no they're not, they're dirty and spread disease ... Vermin ?!?!!? I thought you said German.
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
The interesting thing is I haven't heard any follow up on this. Neither confirmation nor retraction. Anyone with follow up on this?
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
The U2 also had a very narrow speed at which it could maintain flight at it's cruising altitude. IIRC, it was plus or minus 1 mph.
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 missile of that period could reach it. (but later, the soviets built one that COULD take it out).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
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.
The interesting thing is I haven't heard any follow up on this. Neither confirmation nor retraction. Anyone with follow up on this?
We really don't need one.
If more than 10 days after the discovery, the Bush administration is not shouting about this from the rooftops, it's for one simple reason: it turned out to be a false-positive.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Actually, the TR-1A got redesignated U-2R and U-2S during the 1990's after the Cold War ended.
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.
U-2R/S models are still operational with the USAF today, primarily for wide area tactical reconnaissance using visual, IR/UV and electronic intelligence sensor from high altitude just outside enemy territory. Remember before Operation Iraqi Freedom started there was a big argument in the UN about U-2 overflights to monitor arms compliance by Iraq?
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 reconnaissance drone, which does everything the U-2 does in terms of reconnaissance but without risking the pilot. What's interesting is that the USAF could have had something akin to Global Hawk with the Compass Cope reconnaissance drone that was developed during the 1970's.
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)
perl -e 'printf("%x!\n",49153)'
The U2 was not fast at all. In fact, back in the day the U2 didn't run with engines on over Soviet airspace at all. It glided making as little noise and creating as little heat as possible. It was designed to avoid detection at all. And did so beautifully for many years.
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 and any AA had nothing to lock onto nor the ability to accurately fire at something that high up.
Someone below said the U2 got shot down due to missle advancements, but AFAIK this is not really the case, although later missle advancements threatened the U2. The Soviets didn't even know the U2 was up there until problems occured. I don't remember the specifics, but technical problems created a situation where the pilot had to drop to a much lower altitude. In doing so he popped up on Soviet radar and was fired upon. Although the U2 is a graceful aircraft, it is lacking in the agility and speed department. It was designed to avoid detection, not fire.
This is one of my favorite aircraft, partly because I'd love to know what it's like to float on the edge of space and partly because it has to be the most passive military aircraft ever designed. No weapons and no "power" so to speak of, just the ability to glide with its tremendous wings on the edge of space.
The SR-71 was designed with the backup plan of if it was detected, it could outrun any missle or plane, and out-altitude anything at the time. But primarily, both of these recon aircraft were built to avoid detection at all and did so quite well. Suprisingly the U2 is still in service, while the SR-71 is not.
And since many more people prefer hiphop to rock and roll, it indicates that perhaps hiphop is superior. Rock and roll by the 1990s was relegated to the fringe where it stays today.
Look to the 1970s for the real "Rock and Roll Era"... a time when rock and roll was almost synonymous with the term popular music.
Rock and roll is not important in American musical history except where it contributed to the true dominant force, hiphop.
Sure, Rock and roll changed in the 1990s, but it was still a tempest in a teapot: a revolution in the fringe. Even then, remember that Grunge started in the 1980s, not the 1990s.
My father is a blogger.
You got it. But there's more, the book has an epilogue kinda thing where Forsyth takes the pulpit and talks about how the powers-in-charge thought electronic surveillance was enough humint couldn't be done without.
This sig is empty.
Most Semites are Arabs, not Jews. Most Jews, especially Israeli's are Ashkenazi and trace their roots back to Russia, Poland and E. Europe. Certainy, "anti-semetic" is a key word used by Jews, not Arabs, to surpress criticism of Israel. No group or nation should be above criticism.
It was Eisenhower who warned us all about the dangers of the military industrial Complex. Good advice, considering what is going on today. http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/i ndust.html
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 struggled with what he should do. He tried to represent something more than just the core constituency of his own party, too.
Contrast Ike before D Day with George W. leading by "instinct" and priding himself on not fretting too much. No question who I'd want leading me.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.