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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.
..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?
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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.
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.
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
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?
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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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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