Area 51 & the Geography of a Secret
We're In Hell2023-11-26
area 51#trevor paglen#were in hell#we're in hell#manhattan project#watergate scandal#cia#dark geography
679K views|9 months ago
💫 Short Summary
In this video, the concept of the 'Aesthetics of the Secret' is explored, using the example of the stop deportation posters at Heathrow Airport. The posters are described as a perfect example of how secrets can be used for political organizing, as they highlight the lack of transparency and the unknown details surrounding deportations. The video also discusses the work of artists Jill Midd and Trevor Paglen, who are known for their projects that highlight the limits of what is allowed to be known or seen.In the middle of the video, the speaker discusses the extensive classified information found in old military budget books, the lack of public knowledge about the black budget, the significant role of private contractors in military operations, and the mysterious patches of secret military programs. The section also delves into the history of Area 51 and the ethical implications of the militarization of private industry.The video explores the legal and ethical implications of the secretive nature of Area 51 and the concerning events surrounding the handling of top secret information and the workers' health issues. It delves into the parallels between the overlooked legal status of the area and past historical treaties, shedding light on the challenges of accountability and justice in such a classified environment. The secrecy and cover-ups surrounding Area 51's operations are highlighted, raising important questions about the ethical oversight of government.
✨ Highlights
📊 Transcript
✦
The poster about the deportations from the UK to Nigeria is an example of the aesthetics of the secret, where secrets are viewed as art and can be effective for political organizing.
29:34Secrets are often kept from the public, but their meaning is hidden and can be evaluated on an emotional and aesthetic level.
The stop deportation posters highlight the lack of transparency and the unknown details surrounding the deportations, making it an effective way to engage people in political organizing.
✦
Jill Midd and Trevor Paglen are artists who do an amazing job of highlighting the 'aesthetics of the secret' by creating artwork that reveals the limits of what we are allowed to see or know.
32:24Jill Midd's 'Evidence Locker' project involved filming her movements in Liverpool using CCTV cameras, showcasing the hidden surveillance in a creative way.
Trevor Paglen's 'Spy Project' in the Netherlands involved creating art installations that are physical descriptions of literal secret agents, challenging the idea of secrecy.
✦
Trevor Paglen's work focuses on capturing photographs of classified military and intelligence projects, highlighting the secrecy and surveillance in our world.
36:23He photographed spy satellites and classified military bases, showcasing the hidden infrastructure of the surveillance state.
Paglen's project also involved launching a sculptural object into space as the first purely artistic satellite, highlighting the presence of technology in orbit.
✦
The CIA's funding was kept secret and exempt from congressional oversight, leading to a series of controversial actions and operations.
44:22The CIA's funding was hidden inside the budgets of other government agencies, and Congress would never know the true purpose of the budget for anything they voted on.
The CIA's actions included waging a secret war in Le, operating air America for drug trafficking, and conducting assassinations and other illegal programs.
✦
The CIA was transformed from an evil secretive organization to an evil secretive organization with legal backing, and the director of operations who oversaw illegal programs was open about the agency's misdeeds.
48:15Richard Helms destroyed records and CIA's methods were revealed to Congress, violating his responsibility as DCI according to some.
The church committee and the Rockefeller commission agreed that the CIA's funding should be classified but a report of the total amount spent should be shown, but the intelligence community opposed it.
The CIA's budget was successfully kept secret and the president can reclassify it at any time by issuing a memorandum.
✦
In 1998, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the CIA forced the disclosure of the budget, revealing it to be 26.7 billion, but the CIA was able to black it out again the next year.
55:29The 911 Commission's report called for the release of the budget, and in 2007, the number was disclosed to be 43.5 billion, but the legal state of the black budget is now unclear.
Every intelligence official who addressed this issue stated that the number's secrecy is to send a message that the US military does not want the basic facts of what they do to be accessed by the public.
✦
The speaker explains how they found classified information in old military budget justification books by searching for specific keywords.
58:52Discovered that many 'weird-sounding' projects are actually not as interesting as they seem, such as 'Javelin' being just a type of missile and the 'teleport program' referring to a new kind of fiber optic cable.
Learned that a lot of boring looking stuff is actually extremely classified, like assessments and evaluations, senior leadership Enterprise, and modification of aircraft.
Noticed that certain sections in the expense spreadsheets have more classified stuff, with the Navy section containing the most, despite the belief that the Air Force and the Army are more secretive.
✦
The legal status of Area 51 is similar to the way the land was viewed as valueless to the settlers.
01:28:40Area 51's location was chosen because the land was not considered useful for anything else.
The Atomic Energy Commission's testing at the Nevada site marked the point where the Indian Wars went nuclear.
✦
The strategy for disposing of top secret trash at Area 51 led to people getting sick from the fumes.
01:31:09Secret industrial waste was burned in trenches at Area 51, causing thick and harmful smoke.
A man named Robert Frost died from a strange illness believed to be caused by the toxic smoke at Area 51.
✦
The EPA inspection report for Area 51 was classified, and the military claimed the base didn't exist, in response to lawsuits regarding workers' health issues.
01:33:02EPA inspection report for Area 51 was classified, and the military claimed the base didn't exist.
Workers at Area 51 had to burn secret industrial waste, leading to health issues.
Lawsuits were filed for the workers' health issues, claiming negligence on the part of the government and the EPA.
✦
The bodies of the workers who were exposed to the toxic chemicals at Area 51 had become classified secrets, and they were unable to access proper medical treatment or disclose their identities.
01:35:14The workers' bodies had been infused with classified toxic chemicals from the Air Force's projects.
The workers had to become more secretive to avoid military retribution.
One of the workers, Walter Kaza, eventually died from the effects of the toxic chemicals.
The Air Force published an unclassified safety supplement in 2005, warning about the hazards of the chemicals used at the Area 51 base.
00:00 question for you how do you destroy
00:03 something that doesn't
00:06 exist the answer soak it in jet fuel and
00:11 then set it on
00:13 fire did you know that until 2013 the US
00:18 government claimed that area 51 didn't
00:21 exist isn't that weird like it first
00:25 became known to the public in 1989 when
00:28 a guy named Bob Lazer gave an interview
00:30 claiming to have seen aliens and flying
00:32 saucers while working there and from
00:35 there Area 51 has moved well beyond the
00:38 world of Fringe conspiracy theories to
00:40 become such a massive piece of Pop
00:42 Culture that despite its existence
00:45 having been a state secret until 10
00:47 years ago it's probably the only Air
00:51 Force Base that most people watching
00:53 this could name off the top of their
00:54 heads like think about this the X Files
00:58 Twin Peaks Men in Black black Fringe
01:01 National Treasure 2 Warehouse 13
01:04 Independence Day and the first
01:06 Transformers movie all reference It And
01:09 yet when they came out the US government
01:12 was insisting that there's no such thing
01:14 as Area 51 and also stop asking in fact
01:19 with Independence Day specifically so
01:21 the US military will lend out like tanks
01:23 and jets and stuff to movies on the
01:25 condition that they get control over the
01:27 script to ensure that the movie is like
01:29 sufficient proar or whatever the
01:31 military actually pulled out of
01:33 Independence Day at the last minute
01:35 because Area 51 is in it like oh sure we
01:38 could totally loan you some Jets just
01:40 got to check over the script to make
01:42 sure there's nothing that could hurt the
01:44 US military let's see okay the US
01:48 intentionally bombing Houston we totally
01:52 would Vietnam vet with
01:55 PTSD it's funny because it's
01:58 true whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa
02:01 mentioning Area 51 that's a highly
02:04 classified government secret how do you
02:07 know about that but this wasn't just pop
02:10 culture either there was a lawsuit
02:12 against the military that was able to
02:14 produce hundreds of government documents
02:17 referring to Area 51 by name there were
02:20 pictures of it taken by Soviet spy
02:22 planes and American astronauts all of
02:24 which the military tried to suppress h
02:27 on a queer night you can go see it self
02:30 from the peak of the nearby Mountain Mr
02:32 Beast actually did that in 2019 it's not
02:35 that hard and yet despite all these
02:38 people saying how this is obviously real
02:41 we can see it the US government's
02:44 response was still no it's not and no
02:47 you can't and this naturally raises the
02:50 question right what actually is going on
02:53 out there Area 51 is a highly classified
02:55 Air Base in the middle of the Nevada
02:57 desert a little more than 80 miles north
03:00 of Las Vegas it's part of the Nellis
03:02 range complex historically home to the
03:04 United States most highly classified
03:07 projects these include its sister
03:09 facility the slightly less but still
03:11 extremely classified tonopa test range
03:14 as well as the Nevada Test Site which is
03:16 a place that had been established as an
03:18 animal sanctuary in the 30s but then was
03:20 taken over by the department of war in
03:23 1942 in 51 it was turned over to the
03:26 atomic energy commission now just the
03:28 department of energy who got to work
03:30 turning the land into the exact opposite
03:32 of an animal sanctuary a nuclear test
03:35 range where between the s's founding and
03:37 the Banning of nuclear testing in 1992
03:40 over a thousand bombs were detonated
03:43 while this proximity to decades worth of
03:46 nuclear tests might make the Nellis
03:48 range complex unappealing real estate to
03:51 ur I that very fact plus the surrounding
03:54 mountains which served as a natural
03:56 barrier made it the ideal location for a
03:59 secret base and so when the newly formed
04:02 CIA was looking for a place to test the
04:05 U2 spy planes that they were planning to
04:07 fly over the Soviet Union they came to
04:10 Nevada in April 1955 a test pilot named
04:13 Tony levier was told to disguise himself
04:15 as a hunter and get in an unmarked plane
04:17 to survey locations out of the places he
04:20 found the CIA picked Groom Lake a dry
04:22 lake bed in the Nellis complex the Salt
04:25 Flat made for a perfect natural runway
04:27 for planes and its remote location
04:29 ensured privacy for what they'd be
04:31 testing there while Area 51 was
04:34 originally meant to be temporary it soon
04:36 became a permanent installation as more
04:38 and more secret projects were tested
04:41 there of these projects the ones that we
04:43 know of include multiple generations of
04:46 stealth planes development of unmanned
04:48 drones beginning as early as the 60s as
04:51 well as foreign technology evaluation
04:53 which as far as we know mainly involved
04:56 testing the capabilities of captured
04:58 Soviet planes over at the ton of up a
04:59 test range each of these programs also
05:02 Justified an expansion of the facility
05:04 to the point where now almost any images
05:07 of the base feature huge amounts of
05:09 construction materials but beyond
05:12 anything they've done or hidden there
05:14 what makes Area 51 so famous and what in
05:17 a lot of ways is its defining feature is
05:20 ironically its secrecy and make no
05:23 mistake this is famous for very good
05:26 reason like the place is massive and we
05:29 know that at the very least they have an
05:32 Airfield there that's well beyond
05:34 state-of-the-art along with all the
05:36 infrastructure need to support that
05:39 think about the degree of social
05:40 engineering and opsec need to keep this
05:43 base operating for almost 70 years
05:45 without a single credible weak to show
05:48 you what I mean let me tell you a story
05:51 beginning in 1977 the pilots at Groom
05:54 Lake were test flying a stealth bomber
05:56 prototype code named have blue it was
05:59 built by locked Martin at a facility in
06:01 Burbank California called the Skunk
06:03 Works which is where they built and
06:05 developed all their secret government
06:07 projects some of the people who we know
06:09 flew these Jets were Bill Park Al
06:12 Whitley Ross Mare and Ken Dyson all
06:16 members of the
06:18 4450th Tactical group codenamed this is
06:21 real the goat suckers this is the actual
06:25 patch that they wore much more on that
06:27 later at least two goat suckers crashed
06:30 while testing loed stealth bomber Bill
06:33 Park whose landing gear failed to deploy
06:35 he ejected in time but was knocked
06:37 unconscious and suffered serious
06:38 injuries which left him unable to ever
06:40 fly again Ross Maul hair on the other
06:43 hand was less lucky dying in a fiery
06:46 explosion when he crashed his plane into
06:48 the side of a mountain about 15 mil
06:51 Northeast of Bakersfield
06:53 California have blue was built for
06:56 darpa's stealth program which
06:58 appropriately was was and still is one
07:00 of the US military's most secret
07:03 initiatives loed would deliver the
07:05 planes from Burbank to groom Lake and
07:07 disassembled pieces to maintain secrecy
07:10 and I know that this is going to sound
07:13 obvious but stay with me here the
07:15 logistics for shipping those
07:17 disassembled Parts had to be planned by
07:19 someone that someone had an office that
07:23 office had janitors until 2004
07:27 everything I just told you was
07:28 classified well beyond top secret that
07:32 meant that the stealth program the plane
07:35 the men who flew it the death of Ross
07:37 Mare and many more like him and even
07:40 those janitors according to the US
07:42 government did not exist and that's what
07:46 we're going to be covering in this video
07:49 not so much just Area 51 but also the
07:52 secrecy that surrounds it when we talk
07:55 about secrecy we usually mean the thing
07:58 that's being hidden but instead I want
08:00 to look at Secrets as Secrets like how
08:04 does secrecy happen how does it work and
08:08 so in this video we're going to talk
08:11 about the dark geography of Area
08:15 51 now before we get into it there are a
08:18 couple things I want to address off the
08:19 top firstly you may have noticed that I
08:22 haven't mention the most famous
08:24 residents of Area 51 in this video I'll
08:28 only be using official sources generally
08:30 ones that have been previously
08:31 classified or in a couple of cases some
08:34 journalists who themselves have used
08:36 primary sources in their reporting this
08:38 isn't going to be a video about aliens
08:40 or any of the conspiracy theories around
08:43 Area 51 not because those aren't
08:45 important and worth talking about in
08:48 their own right they absolutely are but
08:51 I want to do something different here
08:53 but first speaking of great journalism
08:55 let me quickly tell you about this video
08:58 sponsor ground news while this video
09:01 will be dealing with government secrets
09:04 it's worth noting that the private
09:06 sector can be just as if not way more
09:09 sketchy they also work together a lot
09:11 too but we'll come back to that later
09:13 anyways now is a time when it couldn't
09:14 be more important to stay informed
09:16 especially since while I hate
09:19 infographic activism and think that we
09:22 should all touch Grass more and get
09:24 involved in real world activism that
09:27 said it feels like posting stuff online
09:30 is an unavoidable part of being
09:32 politically involved these days and so
09:34 the very least we can do is try to make
09:37 sure that we aren't sharing
09:39 misinformation I'm as guilty as anyone
09:41 of getting my news off of social media
09:43 but as I'm sure you know that's one of
09:45 the absolute worst places to get it
09:47 since not only do online platforms want
09:50 to lock us into Echo Chambers to
09:52 maximize outrage these platforms will
09:55 also actively censor certain news
09:57 sources or can come under the ownership
10:00 of people who love to actively share and
10:03 amplify right-wing conspiracy theories
10:06 all this can lead to us having massive
10:08 blind spots in the news that we consume
10:10 for example did you know that the CIA
10:13 has been working on developing its own
10:15 AI if you're part of my mostly left-wing
10:19 audience then probably not since the
10:22 story was mostly picked up by right-wing
10:25 or Centrist news sources this might be a
10:28 bit of a hot take but I think that the
10:30 left is kind of bad at covering AI like
10:34 there are tons of scams and Tech bro
10:36 dumb asses who will act like it makes
10:38 creative work obsolete which it
10:40 obviously doesn't but then I think that
10:43 a lot of people on the left overcorrect
10:46 and act like it's completely useless
10:48 which it definitely isn't either like
10:51 when we look at the way the story was
10:53 covered by left-wing Outlets like The
10:55 Daily Beast while they are the only ones
10:58 who correct L point out that this is
11:01 probably a bad thing the article seems
11:03 more interested in making fun of how
11:05 silly this is and doesn't even mention
11:08 the more important issues like how we
11:10 don't know where the CIA is getting the
11:12 data set this AI will be trained off of
11:14 or the privacy issues surrounding that
11:17 and just how the AI will be used in
11:19 general I'd also say that right-wing
11:21 outwits do a better job at
11:23 contextualizing this within the growing
11:25 AI arms race between America and China
11:28 I've been using ground news for a couple
11:29 months now and really like how I can use
11:31 it to follow specific Publications that
11:33 I like something that's become a lot
11:35 harder to do since meta has made it so
11:38 that Canadians can no longer view
11:40 Canadian news sources at the same time I
11:43 can also use it to make sure that I stay
11:45 up toate on the type of stuff that
11:47 doesn't cross my usual feed I really
11:50 like the way it also shows who owns each
11:52 news source as well as this new feature
11:55 that shows a direct comparison between
11:57 how left right and Center sources cover
11:59 any given story so go to ground. news/
12:03 wear inell by clicking the link in the
12:05 description or scanning this QR code to
12:08 get 40% off of their unlimited Vantage
12:11 plan or try out their Pro Plan for less
12:13 than a dollar a month anyways another
12:16 thing I want to go over real quick is a
12:18 common argument you'll sometimes see
12:20 that's kind of become a bit of a meme
12:22 where people will say how anyone who
12:25 believes in massive government
12:26 conspiracies has clearly never been a
12:29 project manager before these people will
12:32 point out how much Logistics would be
12:34 involved and how hard it would be to
12:36 keep people quiet if they had you know
12:39 staged the moon landing or something and
12:41 while I'm not saying that the conspiracy
12:44 theorists are actually correct here this
12:47 argument is straight up wrong military
12:49 bodies the US military in particular are
12:52 amazing at keeping secrets sorry to all
12:56 the managers out there but it's not
12:58 really comparable unless the Slackers on
13:00 your team would face a minimum of 30
13:02 years in prison if your presentation
13:04 doesn't go well for better or worse you
13:07 don't get to feed Albert LSD and push
13:09 him out a window if he doesn't do a good
13:11 job on his part of a PowerPoint the
13:13 different levels of security clearance
13:15 are shaped like a tree the first three
13:17 classifications confidential secret and
13:20 top secret make up the trunk this is
13:22 where pretty much all leaks happen
13:24 usually only at very low levels
13:26 generally by politicians secret and top
13:30 secret leaks are unbelievably rare
13:32 pretty much just limited to the ones by
13:34 Chelsea Manning Edward Snowden and the
13:37 Pentagon papers after that the tree
13:39 starts to Branch off into special access
13:42 programs these include what is
13:44 officially referred to as extremely
13:46 sensitive information I.E things like
13:48 nuclear war protocols or else more
13:51 commonly sensitive compartmented
13:54 information projects that as the name
13:56 suggests are compartmentalized meaning
13:59 that for example a computer scientist
14:01 and an engineer both working on building
14:03 the same drone will never be in contact
14:06 or know more than what's absolutely
14:08 necessary about what the other one is
14:09 doing in terms of the US military
14:12 liberal estimates put the number of
14:14 people on Earth who can see the entire
14:17 tree at about s with conservative
14:20 estimates saying zero and I think that
14:24 those ones are probably right anyways in
14:27 2004 have blue along with its younger
14:30 nextg sister plane tacet blue were
14:33 Declassified at a ceremony at Edwards
14:35 Air Force Base which Area 51 is a remote
14:37 Detachment of the ceremony was titled
14:40 out of the black into the blue the black
14:44 that they're referring to is what people
14:46 in the military and intelligence call
14:48 the black world you know when people
14:50 talk about the Deep State using critical
14:53 race vaccines to turn children into
14:55 trans immigrants or whatever while it's
14:59 probably not doing that the Deep state
15:02 is a very real thing the black world is
15:05 all the parts of the US Military and
15:07 intelligence that are classified and as
15:10 you can probably guess by the length of
15:11 this video it's very very big and in
15:16 this video we're going to try to explore
15:19 it now I don't have enough money to
15:22 afford the transportation and Firepower
15:25 needed to get into Area 51 link to my
15:27 patreon in the descript deson and so
15:29 instead you'll have to settle for what
15:31 is nowhere near the next best thing
15:34 learning about it by thinking about the
15:37 space of
15:38 secrecy in his book blank spots on the
15:41 map the artist and geographer Trevor
15:44 pagin unsurprisingly argues that one way
15:47 to do this is by thinking about Secrets
15:50 geographically and by that I don't mean
15:53 like memorizing their capitals but
15:55 instead if we stop looking at secrecy
15:58 just as a quality or a practice and
16:01 instead see it as a thing in and of
16:03 itself then that means that it can be
16:05 mapped and studied this is obviously
16:09 pretty tricky to do since Secrets by
16:11 definition don't want to be noticed but
16:14 the thing is that's actually where we're
16:16 going to find our in the problem with
16:18 keeping something secret is that
16:21 everything that exists leaves evidence
16:23 in some form or another and so a key
16:26 part of secrecy is of course covering
16:28 that evidence up but it doesn't end
16:31 there since the cover up also leaves
16:33 evidence of its own which requires more
16:36 coverups on top of that as soon as a
16:38 state begins this process and classifies
16:41 something as secret this cycle never
16:44 ends while I know that this seems
16:46 obvious it opens up a pretty interesting
16:49 way of looking at things you see as a
16:52 secret gets bigger the traces Left
16:55 Behind get bigger too and by collecting
16:58 these traces we can start to put
17:00 together a sort of negative image of the
17:02 secret learning its shape but not its
17:06 contents to give you an idea of how
17:08 secrecy spreads and what we can look for
17:11 let's come back to the story of have
17:13 blue and the stealth program the planes
17:15 that were being tested at Groom Lake
17:17 were Secret in every sense of the word
17:19 meant to be completely undetectable both
17:22 in Soviet airspace and the defense
17:24 budget this may be a little bit overly
17:27 poetic but I don't think that it's too
17:29 much of a stretch to understand them
17:31 almost as secrecy incarnate and so on
17:35 July 11th 1986 When Ross mhare took off
17:39 from Area 51 at 0113 hours secrecy
17:43 traveled around 200 miles Southwest
17:46 about half an hour after takeoff mhare
17:49 became disoriented in the night sky and
17:51 soon secrecy was smeared across the side
17:54 of the Sierra mountain range from there
17:57 secrecy entered entered into the lives
17:59 of the citizens of Bakersfield when
18:01 military personnel arrived on the scene
18:04 and made the First Responders and
18:05 Witnesses of the crash signed binding
18:07 Oaths never to reveal what they'd seen
18:10 that night or how about the Skunk Works
18:13 in Burbank California where the secret
18:15 had been built and designed 3 years
18:18 after the crash a potent cocktail of
18:20 industrial secrets with names like
18:23 carbon tetrachloride per chloro ethylin
18:26 and hexavalent chrom
18:28 had seeped into the surrounding water
18:31 air and soil causing the bodies of
18:34 burbank's inhabitants to start
18:35 developing secrets of their own I think
18:39 it's very easy to either rationalize or
18:42 at the very least accept the reality of
18:43 secrecy when we think of it as being
18:45 discreetly sealed away at remote
18:47 government bases these kinds of
18:50 off-limit spaces that belong to the
18:52 state but not its citizens can genuinely
18:55 be justifiable after all I don't think
18:58 that any reasonable person would argue
19:00 that no government should ever be able
19:02 to keep anything a secret with that said
19:05 it's worth bearing in mind that by its
19:08 very nature secrecy always spreads and
19:11 when it does very few people's lives
19:14 have ever been improved by an unexpected
19:17 runin with the black world now before we
19:20 go any further it's important to
19:22 understand that things weren't always
19:24 like this and so let's take a look at
19:26 how secrecy took root and grew
19:28 throughout the US
19:30 military that Story begins with
19:43 a while the Manhattan Project obviously
19:46 wasn't the first time that the American
19:48 Military acted in secret it was the
19:51 first time that the US military had
19:52 acted in secret on an industrial scale
19:56 the project was authorized by Roosevelt
19:58 1941 and came in at a whopping $1.88 n
20:03 billion
20:04 29.57 billion adjusted for inflation at
20:08 its peak it employed around
20:10 130,000 people which to put that in
20:13 perspective was roughly the size of the
20:15 US Auto industry all those people didn't
20:18 just need Labs or factories to work in
20:21 but also homes this led to the creation
20:23 of small communities with schools
20:26 churches movie theaters government ments
20:28 and infrastructure sites were built all
20:31 across America and Canada the three
20:33 largest of these Oakridge Hanford and
20:35 Los alos required a total of
20:38 63,000 acres and the displacement of at
20:41 least 5,000 people all this was Kept
20:44 Secret not only from the American public
20:47 and other governments but also Congress
20:50 and the courts as well given the size of
20:52 the operation even if they hadn't been
20:54 able to build the bomb just the secrecy
20:57 that they were were able to maintain on
20:59 its own would have been a completely
21:01 unprecedented accomplishment to keep all
21:04 this secret for one thing the money had
21:05 to be hidden by 1944 hundreds of
21:08 millions of dollars were mysteriously
21:10 being sucked into unexplained line items
21:13 in the federal budget with names like
21:15 Manhattan engineering District engineer
21:18 service army or just Expediting
21:22 production all this seemed extremely
21:25 strange to a senator named Harry Truman
21:27 who assuming that someone was stealing a
21:30 fortune from the government during
21:31 wartime no Les began investigating but
21:35 the more Truman looked the weirder it
21:37 all got every lead he followed led him
21:40 into a maze of bureaucracy and shell
21:42 companies ending in a dead end
21:45 eventually Furious Truman confronted the
21:47 Secretary of War Henry L Stimson who
21:50 told the senator that the money was
21:52 going to a secret weapon on the orders
21:54 of the president and that Truman
21:56 wouldn't be told anything more than that
21:58 that it wasn't until he was sworn into
22:00 office a year later that he finally
22:02 learned about the bomb now if you've
22:04 seen Oppenheimer first of all I really
22:06 liked it other than the ending going on
22:08 way too long uh but also and I'm not
22:11 trying to do a Cinema Sins here I don't
22:13 see this as like a failure of the film
22:15 but just as someone who's interested in
22:17 that time one of the things that I kind
22:19 of wish that they'd shown more was how
22:22 new the scale of the secrecy was for the
22:25 military well it seems pretty normal by
22:27 current standards this was the first
22:29 time that the Army had operated under
22:31 these kinds of conditions on such a
22:33 large scale as Lieutenant General Leslie
22:36 Groves who oversaw the project would
22:38 testify at the Oppenheimer hearings the
22:40 Army as a whole didn't deal with matters
22:43 of security until after the atomic bomb
22:46 burst on the world because it was the
22:48 first time that the Army really knew
22:50 there was such a thing if you want to be
22:52 perfectly Frank about it and finally
22:55 there were the scientists for whom
22:57 secrecy wasn't wasn't only new but the
22:59 polar opposite of how they were used to
23:01 working it's a bit ironic then that the
23:04 secrecy of the Manhattan Project wasn't
23:06 Roosevelt's idea but the scientists in a
23:09 sense the real star of the Manhattan
23:11 Project was on August 2nd 1939 when
23:14 Albert Einstein and Leo sillard sent a
23:17 letter warning the president of the
23:19 potential dangers of nuclear bombs they
23:21 suggested that America start building
23:23 one as quickly as possible and do so in
23:26 secrecy in order to prevent a clear
23:28 Germany 5 months earlier on March 16th
23:31 the day after Hitler invaded
23:33 Czechoslovakia and triumphantly declared
23:35 on the radio that the country had ceased
23:37 to exist silard met with a small group
23:40 of physicists at Princeton all the men
23:43 there had two key things in common they
23:46 all understood the danger of nuclear
23:48 weapons and were all European Jews when
23:52 silard explained his plan for the letter
23:54 they agreed except for one hold out
23:56 Neil's boore
23:58 one of the fathers of quantum theory
24:00 famous for discovering how electrons
24:02 orbit the nucleus of an atom and also
24:04 for being the guy who in the Christopher
24:06 Nolan movie Oppenheimer says proved
24:07 Einstein wrong and also he almost
24:10 poisons him at the beginning bore was
24:11 against the idea of conducting nuclear
24:13 research in secret arguing that quote
24:16 secrecy must never be introduced into
24:19 physics and while I think that you can
24:22 absolutely make a valid argument against
24:24 him here this wasn't just a matter of
24:27 him being na
24:28 thing you have to understand is that Bor
24:30 didn't just view quantum physics as a
24:33 science but also as a moral philosophy
24:36 he gave lectures arguing that racism was
24:38 wrong because for bore it literally went
24:41 against the basic structure of the
24:44 universe again bore was not naive as a
24:47 Jewish Progressive and one of the first
24:49 people on Earth to learn about the
24:51 discovery of nuclear Vision it would
24:53 honestly be hard to find someone who is
24:56 more aware than Neil's Bor was of what
24:58 an existential threat a nuclear Germany
25:01 represented but nevertheless he was
25:04 still against secrecy arguing that once
25:08 it's allowed it would become a slippery
25:10 slope that'd be almost impossible to
25:12 come back from Furthermore he claimed
25:15 that science when kept secret will
25:17 always wind up as a weapon used to
25:19 enable the worst impulses of those in
25:21 power something that for bore the Nazis
25:24 were a perfect example of at Princeton
25:27 the physicists argued throughout the
25:29 night ultimately Ending by agreeing to
25:32 disagree for boore the whole argument
25:34 was moot anyways he pointed out that to
25:37 make a bomb they'd need lots of the
25:39 uranium isotope
25:41 u235 which it would be impossible to get
25:45 since bore calculated that it'd take the
25:47 largest plant in America over
25:50 26,000 years to produce a single gram of
25:53 the stuff he told the physicist Edward
25:56 Teller that it could never be done
25:58 unless you turn the United States into
26:00 one huge Factory about a month after the
26:03 meeting despite his colleagues in
26:05 America asking him to stay both to help
26:07 on the Manhattan Project as well as just
26:09 for his own safety bore returned to
26:11 Denmark to maintain his Institute in
26:13 Copenhagen which for the next three
26:15 years he ran as a safe haven for Jewish
26:18 scientists throughout Europe then in
26:21 August 1943 Germany dissolved the Danish
26:24 government and instituted martial law
26:26 Bor soon that he was going to be
26:28 arrested so he and his family fled to
26:31 Sweden and using every last bit of money
26:34 and influence he had left brought over
26:37 6,000 Jews with him saving their lives
26:42 from Sweden Bor and his family
26:44 eventually found their way to England
26:46 and then America where he was brought
26:48 into the Manhattan Project after seeing
26:50 the effects that secrecy and
26:52 compartmentalization were having on his
26:54 fellow scientists at Los Alamos as well
26:56 as the scale of the whole project bour
26:59 spoke to Edward Teller again saying you
27:01 see I told you it couldn't be done
27:03 without turning the whole country into a
27:05 factory you've done just that now like I
27:08 said there is a good case that you could
27:11 make against bore especially at that
27:12 meeting in 1939 when based on the
27:15 information they had I don't think that
27:18 it was unreasonable to say that while
27:20 yes secrecy and science may be bad if it
27:24 meant that Hitler wouldn't make a
27:26 nuclear bomb then that's a compromise
27:29 that's probably worth
27:31 making we'll never know if keeping
27:34 nuclear research secret played a crucial
27:36 role in preventing the Nazis from
27:38 winning the war but with that said
27:41 literally everything bore predicted came
27:44 true the Manhattan Project didn't just
27:47 create the atomic bomb but also the
27:49 black world all the secrecy that was
27:51 originally only meant to be a temporary
27:53 wartime measure soon became standard
27:56 procedure in 1944 when the Manhattan
27:59 Project was drawing to a close bore
28:02 began lobbying the American and British
28:04 governments to develop a post-war
28:06 nuclear policy that would serve as a
28:08 return to Scientific openness at this
28:10 point the original justification for the
28:12 secrecy was gone the Germans were being
28:15 pushed out of France and there was no
28:17 way they had the resources to make a
28:19 bomb even if they knew how but it didn't
28:22 matter secrecy had become the new normal
28:25 and so rather than listen to him
28:28 Churchill and Roosevelt both decided
28:30 that for advocating openness and
28:33 cooperation bore should be placed under
28:35 an investigation for treason while
28:38 secrecy had of course existed before
28:40 this previously programs would be
28:42 Declassified by default with secrecy
28:45 needing to be justified now the opposite
28:48 was becoming the case all information on
28:51 nuclear weapons was born classified and
28:54 the onus was now on those who argued for
28:56 transpar y to justify declassifying
28:59 something rather than keep it secret the
29:02 factory that America had become wasn't
29:05 going
29:08 anywhere hey so that was all pretty Grim
29:11 eh figured we could take a little break
29:13 from all that dark and depressing stuff
29:15 to talk about something cheerier for
29:17 example this poster so on January 25th
29:21 2017 members of the activist group
29:23 stopped deportation plastered hundreds
29:25 of these posters over all the ads on
29:27 trains on the London Tube they
29:30 specifically chose the Picadilly line
29:32 which goes to Heathrow Airport where
29:34 those deportations were taken place this
29:37 poster is an example of what Claire
29:38 berel calls the Aesthetics of the secret
29:42 in a paper by that name she makes a case
29:44 for thinking about Secrets as Secrets
29:46 but rather than seeing the secret
29:48 through the lens of geography like
29:50 paglin berel argues that we should think
29:53 about Secrets as art in a sense secrets
29:56 are the perfect aesthetic objects in
29:58 that by definition they resist being
30:02 intellectualized their meaning is very
30:04 intentionally hidden from us since we
30:07 don't know what they are we can only
30:09 evaluate them on a Vibes based level
30:12 thinking about them emotionally and
30:14 aesthetically this virtual argues makes
30:16 them ideal for political organizing like
30:19 it's kind of odd how okay with secrecy
30:22 people will often be when literally the
30:25 only thing that we can know about a
30:27 state secret is that it's information
30:30 that is intentionally being kept from us
30:33 like we are very literally involved and
30:36 in a way that we shouldn't necessarily
30:39 be okay with the stop deportation
30:42 posters are perfect example of how
30:44 effective this can be think about that
30:46 line 50 people will be taken to Nigeria
30:49 by force in secret on 31st of January
30:53 what exactly does the word secret mean
30:56 here like the UK deportations are very
30:59 literally not secret not just because
31:01 that sign tells the reader about them
31:04 but also because British politicians
31:06 have actively collaborated with the
31:08 media televising raids of deportations
31:11 to show how hard they are on immigration
31:14 in fact in a recent video Tom Nicholas
31:17 talks about how the Tories are currently
31:19 bragging about how they're forcing
31:21 Asylum Seekers to live on overcrowded
31:24 prison barges but it's not like the sign
31:27 is lying either there are lots of
31:30 aspects of these deportations that are
31:31 completely opaque for instance we don't
31:34 know much about these people who they
31:36 are what they're trying to flee from and
31:38 most of all how they're being treated
31:41 especially since these deportations are
31:42 done in a partnership between the
31:44 British government and private Airlines
31:46 and security companies part of the
31:49 effectiveness of these posters then is
31:51 that they include the people who see
31:53 them in something that it'd be very easy
31:56 to think doesn't involve them after all
31:59 why is it exactly that they aren't
32:01 allowed to know more about these
32:04 deportations for burel this aesthetic of
32:06 the secret is most useful when it's
32:08 being used to highlight something that's
32:10 a Known Unknown showing the limits of
32:13 what we're allowed to see or know it
32:16 sounds almost more like creating an
32:18 artwork than doing journalism and two
32:22 artists who do an amazing job of this
32:24 are Jill midd and Trevor pagin midd is
32:27 an American Artist who's worked a bunch
32:29 throughout Europe I'd affectionately
32:31 describe her work as batshit high
32:34 concept for example one project called
32:37 evidence Walker is a collection of
32:39 videos of her in Liverpool taken by CCTV
32:42 cameras where she did things like
32:45 calling the cops and having them guide
32:46 her through the city with her eyes
32:48 closed yeah that's fine looks great I'll
32:52 try and zoom in a little
32:54 bit there's quite a few people around
32:56 you now
32:59 to get the footage mid had to fill out
33:01 request forms which she decided to write
33:03 in the style of Love Letters uh in
33:06 another one called Lincoln ocean Victor
33:09 Eddie she struck up a conversation with
33:11 a New York City Cop started hanging out
33:13 with him a bunch and eventually got him
33:15 to agree to let her Shadow him on his
33:17 Patrol Lincoln ocean Victor Eddie also
33:20 spells out love in like police
33:23 code yeah a lot of her work takes
33:26 the police in a strange Direction the
33:29 work of mids that I'm most interested in
33:31 here though is one called the Spy
33:33 project so in the Netherlands there's a
33:35 law where government agencies have to
33:37 spend a certain amount of their budgets
33:39 on Art and so when the Dutch Secret
33:41 Service aivd was building a new
33:44 headquarters they made the amazing
33:46 mistake of hiring Jill her assignment
33:49 was to quote give the aivd a human face
33:54 which she took very literally by
33:56 spending the next 3 years interviewing
33:58 literal secret agents and then produced
34:01 a series of art installations that are
34:03 just physical descriptions of those
34:06 agents apparently when the aivd found
34:09 out what she was doing her boss told her
34:11 that they couldn't show the work since
34:13 it could put their agents in danger
34:15 saying that she could quote burn their
34:18 faces mid was like okay word and then
34:22 displayed the work anyway in the heg in
34:24 2008 and then the tape modern in 2009
34:28 she named the series of descriptions I
34:30 can burn your face I'll be honest I've
34:34 never been a fan of the whole cursive
34:36 neon lights look but this is so wild
34:39 that I have to make an exception here
34:41 that's
34:42 nuts as for Trevor paglin this is kind
34:45 of weird but while I was writing this
34:47 video he actually came to Toronto where
34:49 I live to give a talk which I went to
34:52 and after I very normally went up to him
34:55 and explained that I'm a YouTuber and
34:57 had spent the last month going over
35:00 basically all of his work and got him to
35:03 agree to an interview with me so I mean
35:05 do you want to just like uh introduce
35:06 yourself really quickly first uh tell
35:08 people sort of who you are and what you
35:10 do hi my name is Trevor paglin and I'm
35:13 an artist but I mean that in a pretty
35:16 expansive sense so I do a lot of stuff
35:19 other than you know putting stuff on
35:21 walls so Trevor's underselling himself a
35:23 bit here I describe a lot of his early
35:25 work as basically photographs of things
35:28 that you aren't supposed to photograph
35:30 for example he did this series called
35:32 the other night sky where he took all
35:34 these pictures that look like they could
35:35 be default Mac backgrounds right except
35:38 you see these lines those are spy
35:41 satellites that the US government claims
35:44 don't exist he's also photographed CIA
35:47 black sites all over the world as well
35:49 as of course Area 51 oh and here are
35:52 some photos of the undersea cables that
35:54 carry the internet across the ocean
35:57 these ones are also tapped by the NSA
36:00 you you might have to learn how to scup
36:03 lately he's been branching out into
36:04 sculptures for example here's a cube he
36:07 made out of the radioactive glass that
36:09 was created during the Trinity test now
36:12 being displayed in the Fukushima nuclear
36:15 exclusion Zone oh and here's the orbital
36:18 reflector a piece of installation art
36:20 that you can see in lower orbit around
36:23 the Earth Trevor Pagan's orbital
36:25 reflector is the the first satellite to
36:27 launch into low earth orbit purely as an
36:30 artistic gesture serving no military
36:33 commercial or scientific interest
36:35 orbital reflector is an a work of art
36:38 that takes the form of a satellite goes
36:40 up into space it shoots out the side of
36:42 the rocket and that brick shape opens up
36:46 inside is a giant reflective balloon
36:49 that balloon inflates the shape of a
36:51 giant Diamond as the spacecraft travels
36:55 over the Earth it reflects sunlight when
36:57 it reflects that sunlight down it
37:00 appears as a point in the sky slowly
37:03 moving across the night sky I think that
37:06 his work is unbelievably cool and if
37:09 you'd like to see me nerd out over him
37:11 you can watch the hourlong interview on
37:12 my patreon one of the things I really
37:14 like about Pagan's photos of Secrets
37:17 though is how in a lot of ways the real
37:20 subject of them is secrecy itself for
37:22 instance with these pictures of secret
37:25 bases well I do find some of them
37:27 extremely visually striking these aren't
37:30 particularly good representations of the
37:33 thing that they're supposedly
37:34 documenting or look at these ones of
37:37 various bases on the Nellis complex I
37:40 don't know if you could really call
37:42 these good pictures in the traditional
37:44 sense of the word but that's kind of the
37:47 point unless you have a satellite or a
37:50 spy plane these are the best pictures
37:52 that it's possible to get and that way
37:55 the graininess and extortion is
37:57 essentially the real subject of the
37:59 picture these aren't photos of Area 51
38:02 they're photos of how hard Area 51 is to
38:08 photograph now let's get back to the
38:10 history by jumping to July 1947 when the
38:14 United States Congress signed the CIA
38:17 into existence with the National
38:18 Security Act in a pretty radical
38:21 departure from how things are now this
38:23 actually wasn't a completely popular
38:25 idea given recent memories of how the SS
38:29 and gestapo had turned out many
38:31 lawmakers weren't too keen on the idea
38:33 of the president having what amounted to
38:35 a peacetime secret police one of the
38:38 biggest of these opponents was Truman's
38:40 own Secretary of State Dean aters who
38:43 pointed out that if the CIA was created
38:46 then quote neither the president the
38:49 National Security Council nor anyone
38:51 else would be in a position to know what
38:54 it was doing or to control it these
38:57 concerns were soothed however by Future
38:59 Secretary of Defense James Forstall who
39:02 promised that the CIA would never
39:04 conduct any secret operations also the
39:07 future CIA director and eternal Scion of
39:10 be abub Alan dullis pinky promised
39:13 Congress that the CIA would never
39:16 consist of more than a couple dozen
39:18 people throughout the United States and
39:21 a certain number of people abroad very
39:25 chill no big deal
39:27 definitely no need to worry about how
39:28 many a certain number is but these very
39:32 obvious lies were all Truman need to
39:34 hear to sign the National Security Act
39:36 into law now if the use of words like a
39:40 couple dozen and a certain number make
39:42 you worried that this is all getting a
39:45 bit too specific I mean how is the CIA
39:48 supposed to function if it's chained
39:49 down with that kind of red tape well
39:53 don't worry Section 102 of the National
39:55 Security Act outlines the
39:57 responsibilities of the CIA it mostly
39:59 covers the type of stuff you'd expect
40:01 for a secret intelligence agency you
40:03 know gather intelligence advise the
40:05 National Security Council coordinate
40:08 operations assist other agencies however
40:10 they need to and one final thing line
40:14 five of the cia's directive simply reads
40:17 that they are to perform such other
40:20 functions and duties related to
40:22 intelligence affecting the National
40:24 Security as the nation Security Council
40:27 May from time to time direct that line
40:30 lays out the vast majority of what the
40:33 CIA actually does the National Security
40:36 Act was signed into law in July of 1947
40:39 and before the end of that year other
40:42 functions and duties had come to mean
40:45 waging a secret war against the Soviets
40:47 and intervening in Italy's election to
40:50 prevent a communist from winning and
40:52 that was just the start the following
40:55 year the national sec Security Council
40:57 secretly issued directive NSC 10-2 which
41:01 created the Office of policy
41:02 coordination and authorize the CIA to
41:05 conduct and I quote propaganda economic
41:08 Warfare preventive direct action
41:10 including sabotage anti-sabotage
41:13 Demolition and evacuation measures
41:15 subversion against hostile States
41:17 including assistance to underground
41:19 resistance movements gorillas and
41:22 Refugee Liberation groups and support of
41:25 indigenous anti communist elements in
41:27 threatened countries of the Free World
41:30 or in other words other functions and
41:33 duties related to intelligence affecting
41:35 the National Security not only that
41:38 directive 10-2 also instructed the CIA
41:41 that its covert operation should be
41:43 quote so planned and executed that any
41:46 US Government responsibility for them is
41:49 not evident and that if uncovered the US
41:52 Government Can plausibly disclaim any
41:54 responsibility for them essentially they
41:57 were told to conduct their missions in
41:59 such a way that if they were caught the
42:01 president would be able to lie and claim
42:03 to have not known about them also
42:06 interesting is that while all this was
42:08 happening the CIA didn't even have a
42:11 budget yet but not ones to let something
42:13 as trivial as that get in the way of a
42:15 good coup they got their funding from
42:17 our old friends non-descript line items
42:20 in the pentagon's budget not to worry
42:23 though this was all fixed in 1949 by the
42:26 Central Intelligence Agency act oh also
42:29 by fixed I mean made so much worse the
42:33 ACT gave the CIA a seal of office laid
42:35 out employment and hiring conditions for
42:37 their employees which wouldn't you guess
42:39 were unbelievably LAX but most
42:42 importantly the bill officially wrote
42:45 the black budget into law this is
42:47 actually kind of nuts though the bill
42:49 didn't State what the black budget would
42:51 be instead it said this the report does
42:55 not contain a full and detailed
42:57 explanation of all the provision of the
42:59 proposed legislation in view of the fact
43:01 that much of such information is of a
43:03 highly confidential nature however the
43:06 committee on armed services received a
43:08 complete explanation of all features of
43:10 the proposed measure the committee is
43:12 satisfied that all sections of the
43:14 proposed legislation are fully Justified
43:17 and I want to be fair here while I would
43:19 disagree I can see there may be a logic
43:22 to not making the actual budget publicly
43:25 known but this meant that Congress was
43:28 going to be voting on a bill that they
43:30 weren't allowed to know the contents of
43:33 and this wouldn't be the last time that
43:35 happened either included in the bill was
43:38 a provision that said that the cia's
43:39 funding would be completely exempt from
43:41 congressional oversight the way that
43:44 this would work is that from then on the
43:46 cia's funding would be hidden inside the
43:48 budgets of other random government
43:51 agencies that means that if this bill
43:54 was made to law then Congress would
43:56 would never again know the true purpose
43:58 of any budget for anything they ever
44:01 voted on the house passed it 348 to4 now
44:06 it's beyond the scope of this video to
44:08 do a full history of all the sketchy
44:10 stuff the CIA got up to with this blank
44:12 check they'd been handed definitely look
44:14 into that though because those guys are
44:16 messed up if you're looking for a good
44:18 place to start check out this video by
44:19 chill Goblin but for now let's just talk
44:22 about a couple of incidents that led the
44:24 American government to wonder if maybe
44:26 they'd screwed up somehow the first had
44:29 to do with Le where throughout the 60s
44:30 and 70s Congress and the American public
44:33 gradually came to learn that the CIA had
44:35 been waging a secret War there for
44:37 around 20 years not only were they
44:39 spending over 300 million a year there
44:42 maintaining a secret army of 36,000
44:46 soldiers who were getting up to just so
44:48 many war crimes but also the cia's
44:52 airline air America which had become one
44:54 of the largest in the world had a little
44:56 problem where its Pilots were allegedly
44:59 pulling night shifts using their planes
45:01 to
45:02 ship you guessed it heroin when Senator
45:06 Alan ellender from the Appropriations
45:08 Committee was asked about this he
45:10 eloquently replied it was not I did not
45:14 know anything about it I never asked to
45:17 begin with whether or not there were any
45:19 funds to carry on the war and this sum
45:22 the CIA asked for I love the smell of
45:26 flop sweat in the morning anyways in
45:29 1971 Congress stood up to the CIA for
45:32 the very first time and cut off funding
45:34 for the war in Le to be clear this did
45:37 not stop the CIA from continuing
45:40 operating in Le but maybe we can give
45:42 Congress some participation marks for at
45:44 least trying to stand up to them another
45:47 big yikes for the CIA was just around
45:50 the corner though stop me if you've
45:51 heard this before but in 1972 Washington
45:54 police arrested a group of of men who
45:56 were caught breaking into the Democratic
45:58 National Committee headquarters at the
46:00 Watergate Hotel complex among them were
46:03 James McCord Bernard Barker Eugenio
46:06 Martinez Frank fiori and E Howard hunt
46:09 all of whom had pretty serious
46:11 connections to the CIA now much smarter
46:14 people than me have spent decades
46:17 debating to what extent the CIA was
46:19 involved in Watergate if it was at all
46:21 that said one of the few rules that the
46:24 CIA was supposed to abide by was not
46:27 targeting Americans historically that
46:30 hasn't worked out too well but this is
46:33 all to say that regardless of whether or
46:35 not the burglars were working for the
46:36 agency or just Nixon himself the fact
46:39 that these five guys were there at all
46:42 caused the press and then Congress to
46:44 start asking all sorts of questions
46:46 about how the CIA was being run I'm not
46:49 going to go through the whole Watergate
46:51 scandal here by the way there's like a
46:53 thousand movies and shows about it plus
46:55 I just went through the whole Manhattan
46:57 Project I think this is enough what is
46:59 worth noting though is that first of all
47:01 the outrage this spark caused Congress
47:04 to actually start placing limits on the
47:06 president and CIA in 1973 they overruled
47:10 Nixon's veto on the War Powers
47:12 Resolution which made it so that the
47:14 president would have to consult them
47:15 before doing a military also in December
47:19 1974 they passed the Hugh Ryan Amendment
47:23 which made it so the president would
47:25 have to issue reports on all covert
47:27 operations interestingly though at the
47:30 same time the CIA was getting hate from
47:33 the executive branch as well basically
47:36 the director of Central Intelligence
47:37 Richard Helms had been reluctant to
47:39 suppress the FBI's investigation into
47:42 Nixon he still did it after Nixon
47:44 blackmailed him but because of that old
47:46 tricky dick was like these guys
47:49 fired Helms and replaced him with James
47:52 slesinger on his way out Helms destroyed
47:55 as many records as he could get his
47:57 hands on which as director of the CIA
48:00 was a lot like being able to get your
48:02 hands on records is like most of what
48:05 that job entails and so slesinger
48:07 essentially walked in on his first day
48:09 to see a sweaty Richard Helms pushing a
48:11 folder marked MK Ultra into a shredder
48:15 he'd been ordered by Nixon to turn the
48:17 CIA upside down which essentially meant
48:19 transform it from an evil secretive
48:22 completely unaccountable organization
48:24 into an evil secretive completely
48:27 unaccountable organization who'd
48:29 suppress an FBI investigation against
48:31 the president without needing to be
48:33 blackmailed slesinger did this by firing
48:36 over a thousand agents which made him so
48:38 unpopular at the agency that when his
48:41 portrait was hung in the lobby a hidden
48:43 camera had to be installed to stop
48:45 people from defacing it as you may have
48:47 guessed slesinger didn't last long at
48:49 this post after a job well done cleaning
48:52 house at the CIA and discovering a
48:54 disgusting amount of illegal activity
48:57 while he did it Nixon promoted slesinger
48:59 to secretary of defense and his deputy
49:02 director of operations William Kobe
49:04 became the new DCI a veteran of both
49:07 World War II and Vietnam Kobe was
49:10 definitely more known for the latter
49:12 where he oversaw The Phoenix Program
49:15 which the CIA described as quote a set
49:18 of programs that sought to attack and
49:20 destroy the political infrastructure of
49:22 the vietcom that set of programs
49:25 included assassinations death squads
49:28 kidnappings secret prisons and torture
49:31 when questioned about it at his swearing
49:33 in ceremony Kobe estimated that the
49:36 program was directly responsible for the
49:38 deaths of over 20,000 people so you know
49:43 not a great guy this made it all the
49:45 stranger that when Gerald Ford had his
49:48 VP Nelson Rockefeller conduct a series
49:50 of hearings investigating misdeeds by
49:52 the CIA Kobe was shocking ly open about
49:56 the horrible the agency had gotten
49:58 up to see the Rockefeller hearings were
50:01 very clearly for show a move by Ford to
50:04 direct heat away from the White House
50:06 and towards the CIA without actually
50:09 having to go after the CIA either in the
50:12 hearings Kobe revealed so much that the
50:15 vice president actually pulled him aside
50:17 and said Bill do you really have to
50:21 present all this material to us we
50:23 realize that there are secrets that you
50:26 fellas need to keep and so nobody here
50:29 is going to take it a Miss if you feel
50:31 that there are some questions you can't
50:33 answer quite as fully as you seem to
50:36 feel you have
50:38 to now before we give Kobe the award
50:41 from most based war criminal it's
50:43 important to understand where he was
50:45 coming from here prior to joining the
50:47 military Kobe had worked as a lawyer at
50:50 father of the CIA William Donovan's Law
50:52 Firm where he defended massive
50:54 corporations from antitrust suits
50:57 something he'd learned in his lawyer
50:59 days was that stonewalling didn't work
51:02 instead it was best to be forthcoming
51:04 with information while being sure to
51:06 Fram set info in such a way that the
51:09 client came off looking good Kobe was
51:12 trying to do the same thing here while
51:14 many in the government and intelligence
51:17 thought that he was destroying the CIA
51:19 in reality Kobe saw openness as the only
51:23 way to save it all this reveals one of
51:26 the most common misconceptions about
51:28 State secrecy the idea that revealing
51:31 secret wrongdoings is an effective way
51:33 to stop them in reality when an IL legal
51:36 classified program is brought to light
51:38 more often than not the response isn't
51:40 to end the program but to make it legal
51:44 this is honestly a depressingly
51:46 reasonable case against whistleblowing
51:48 and while I do definitely think that it
51:51 is still good to reveal these kinds of
51:53 secret activities to me this does show
51:56 that simply revealing them isn't enough
51:59 but with that said one massive
52:02 Counterpoint to that argument is the
52:05 fact that Kobe's plan made some very
52:08 powerful people Furious Richard Helms
52:11 claimed that by revealing the cia's
52:13 methods to Congress Kobe had violated
52:16 his responsibility as DCI going so far
52:19 as to compare Kobe's actions to the
52:22 Allies raiding the Nazis secret
52:24 intelligence after World War II which
52:28 it's kind of telling how the CIA are the
52:31 Nazis in that metaphor eh Ford agreed
52:34 with Helms though and can Kobe as
52:36 part of his 1975 Halloween Massacre
52:39 replacing him with George Herbert Walker
52:42 Bush now throughout all of this one of
52:45 the key questions at stake both for the
52:47 Rockefeller commission and the church
52:48 committee had to do with whether or not
52:51 the cia's budget should be classified
52:54 see one of the problems with the cia's
52:56 funding being exempt from Congress was
52:58 that in addition to them using it to
53:00 fund a whole bunch of Secret Wars and
53:03 just wildly unethical programs the black
53:06 budget was also more than a little bit
53:10 unconstitutional Section 1 article 9
53:12 Clause 7 of the US Constitution requires
53:15 the government to publish a record of
53:17 all spending and given the that the
53:19 CIA had been getting up to both the
53:22 church committee as well as the much
53:24 more Max Rockefeller commission agreed
53:27 that they should probably start
53:29 following the rules by at the very least
53:31 showing their receipts the intelligence
53:34 Community wasn't having it putting aside
53:37 their differences Helms Kobe and Bush
53:39 all testified to the church committee
53:41 that the black budget should stay hidden
53:43 and like when I say this literally no
53:46 one was calling for the release of
53:48 sensitive information on exactly how all
53:50 the money was being spent which is what
53:53 the Constitution actually requires
53:55 they were literally just calling for
53:57 them to report the total amount spent
54:00 all three dcis agreed that releasing the
54:03 grand total wouldn't affect anything but
54:05 still opposed it claiming that it was a
54:08 slippery slope oh sure right now you're
54:11 just asking us to release the budget but
54:12 where does it end who knows what laws
54:15 will wind up having to obey like that's
54:19 not even much of an exaggeration here's
54:21 how Bush senior put it I have concluded
54:24 that one figure standing alone is all
54:27 but meaningless but this meaningless
54:31 figure will inevitably lead to a demand
54:34 on the part of some for more detail I
54:37 worry about the whittling away process
54:40 that might take place I hope this
54:42 committee will resist the urge to move
54:44 towards accommodation by revealing the
54:47 budget figures the demand will not cease
54:51 Jesus I feel like no matter where you
54:54 stand on this issue anyone should be
54:56 infuriated by the attitude they had here
54:59 like this shouldn't be called an
55:01 accommodation they talk about it as if
55:03 they're granting a privilege to a
55:05 spoiled child instead of literally being
55:08 asked to follow the law thankfully
55:11 Congress also found the slippery slope
55:14 argument to be completely ridiculous and
55:16 so with popular support on both sides of
55:19 the aisle they pushed back against the
55:21 intelligence community and won now I'm
55:25 just with you as usual the bad
55:27 guys won and the budget stayed secret
55:29 this isn't the end of the story but from
55:32 here it gets a lot less climactic in
55:34 1998 a successful Freedom of Information
55:36 Act lawsuit against the CIA forced the
55:39 disclosure of the budget 26.7 billion or
55:42 34.9 billion adjusted for inflation but
55:45 then the next year the CIA was like
55:48 psych you and the budget went black
55:51 again in 2004 the 911 Commission
55:54 published the report and called for the
55:56 release of the budget arguing that the
55:58 degree of secrecy and
55:59 compartmentalization that the
56:00 intelligence Community operated under
56:02 had contributed to their failure to
56:04 prevent the attack and thanks to this in
56:07 2007 the number was released 43.5
56:11 billion or 55.9 today but from that
56:15 point on the legal state of the black
56:17 budget gets a lot murkier for one thing
56:20 the president can at any time reclassify
56:23 it by issuing a memorandum but also the
56:26 2007 ruling only Declassified the
56:28 National Intelligence program and not
56:30 any other programs like for instance
56:33 tactical intelligence and led activities
56:35 or the joint military intelligence
56:37 program since then there's been a
56:40 constant bipartisan push to declassify
56:42 the Top Line of all government agencies
56:45 these efforts have however been met with
56:47 an equally by partisan refusal by
56:50 whoever's in the White House and the
56:52 thing to keep in mind here is that
56:55 every intelligence official who's
56:57 addressed this has made it clear that
56:59 these numbers don't reveal anything on
57:01 their own and so releasing them wouldn't
57:04 pose a risk the reason that they're
57:06 secret is to send a message the US
57:09 military does not want a world where the
57:12 basic facts of what they do can be
57:15 accessed by people like you or I they
57:18 even see something as simple as being
57:20 able to look up how much money they
57:22 spend as a dangerous first step
57:25 and
57:26 so I decided to do just that let's do
57:30 some digging and see how close to the
57:34 black budget we can actually get you can
57:36 download the department of defense's
57:38 budget at com controller. defense.gov
57:41 now I have no idea what I'm really doing
57:44 here so I might have messed something up
57:46 if you spot something please correct me
57:48 in the comments I don't know why I said
57:50 that as if commenters are usually shy
57:52 about that sort of thing who WI oh me
57:56 I'm too nervous to correct an inaccuracy
57:59 in a video essay I'm just going to leave
58:01 a little comment about how watching this
58:04 video is like ordering CIS Conor on
58:07 wish.com but anyways from there I
58:10 started by going through each
58:11 spreadsheet and finding the obvious
58:13 stuff a bunch of classified programs are
58:15 straight up listed in the budget the
58:16 project number that they're all listed
58:18 under is just a bunch of nines which
58:20 makes it super easy to find them all
58:22 after that I control F around a bit
58:23 looking for words like classified or
58:26 special and found a few more from there
58:28 I started really digging which I did in
58:31 the least efficient way possible I
58:33 started by skimming through the
58:34 thousands of line items in these
58:36 spreadsheets looking for anything that
58:38 seemed weird as much as things like
58:40 Soldier lethality advanced technology or
58:43 long range kill chains may sound
58:46 absolutely the goal was to find
58:48 things that really didn't give anything
58:50 away programs that consisted of just
58:52 like one or two random words usually in
58:55 all caps things like pilot fish retract
58:58 Larch retract Juniper chalk Eagle chalk
59:01 Coral link Pia link Evergreen the list
59:06 goes on from there I found the
59:08 justification books and cross referenced
59:10 everything I'd highlight to check if
59:12 they were actually classified the secret
59:14 stuff like the ones I just mentioned all
59:16 look something like this at this point
59:19 uh I realized what I should have been
59:20 doing all along and just started
59:22 searching all these books for words like
59:24 classified secret special compartmented
59:28 and title 10 which refers to the law
59:31 requiring them to disclose certain
59:32 classified info to Congress something
59:35 interesting I found while doing this is
59:37 that a bunch of the really weird
59:39 sounding projects like Javelin or my
59:42 personal favorite teleport program
59:45 actually aren't that interesting Javelin
59:47 is just a type of missile and the
59:49 teleport program is actually a new kind
59:50 of fiber optic cable that they're
59:52 working on meanwhile a lot lot of really
59:55 boring looking stuff is in fact
59:57 extremely classified things like
59:59 assessments and evaluations senior
01:00:02 leadership Enterprise or just
01:00:04 modification of aircraft by the way
01:00:07 something else I learned while working
01:00:08 on this did you know that the plural of
01:00:10 aircraft is aircraft like aircrafts
01:00:14 isn't a word crazy what other
01:00:17 grammatical secrets are they hiding from
01:00:19 us another interesting thing is that
01:00:21 each spreadsheet is for a different kind
01:00:23 of expense and something thing you
01:00:25 immediately notice is that certain
01:00:26 sections have way more classified stuff
01:00:28 than others some of this makes sense for
01:00:30 example the weird wine items I found
01:00:32 were all in research development test
01:00:34 and eval as well as procurement which
01:00:36 makes sense those are pretty logical
01:00:38 places for top secret Technologies to
01:00:40 come up where this gets strange though
01:00:43 is that the spreadsheets also sort
01:00:45 everything by branch of the military and
01:00:48 almost all the classified stuff is in
01:00:50 the Navy section with only a few for the
01:00:53 Air Force and next to nothing for the
01:00:55 Army the thing is this isn't because the
01:00:59 Navy is the most secretive in fact it's
01:01:01 the exact opposite both the Air Force
01:01:04 and the Army say in their justification
01:01:06 books that they don't include classified
01:01:08 projects for security reasons they do
01:01:11 actually let some through but it's
01:01:13 almost all super vague stuff like
01:01:15 information security or foreign material
01:01:18 acquisition and exploitation the Air
01:01:21 Force does have some bangers though and
01:01:23 their rdt and e like we got seek Eagle
01:01:27 special space activities and probably
01:01:29 the most overtly Sinister thing on this
01:01:32 list joint military deception initiative
01:01:35 I took every classified program I could
01:01:37 find and add them all up in a separate
01:01:40 spreadsheet but before we get to the
01:01:42 grand total let me just say that as we
01:01:44 just covered this is by no means
01:01:46 exhaustive or even close to the actual
01:01:49 black budget number first of all tons of
01:01:51 unclassified projects are actually
01:01:53 umbrellas made up of a mix of classified
01:01:56 and unclassified sub projects some of
01:01:58 these are pretty small for example in
01:01:59 the project ISR and info operations some
01:02:03 of the classified sub projects aren't
01:02:05 even a million dollars others are much
01:02:08 bigger like in the Navy's rapid
01:02:09 prototyping experimentation and
01:02:11 demonstration program something that's
01:02:14 also interesting about that program is
01:02:16 that the sub projects grandstand maror
01:02:19 and dog are some of the only ones I've
01:02:22 found that are classified Above Top
01:02:24 secret as sensitive compartmented
01:02:26 information but yeah the point is that
01:02:29 tracking down all these sub projects
01:02:31 gets complicated quickly and I
01:02:33 definitely missed a ton of them but more
01:02:36 importantly even if I had gotten
01:02:39 everything this is barely even
01:02:41 scratching the surface of the black
01:02:43 budget as I just mentioned the Air Force
01:02:45 and army don't publish any information
01:02:47 on their classi projects but also the
01:02:51 fact that they even say that makes them
01:02:53 way more open than a lot of other
01:02:56 agencies for instance if we look up
01:02:58 something like say the nsa's budget it's
01:03:02 fully just left
01:03:03 blank this isn't even getting into all
01:03:06 the agencies that are still completely
01:03:07 classified or how the CIA can hide its
01:03:10 funding in the budgets of other
01:03:12 government agencies something that the
01:03:13 Snowden weeks confirmed happens a lot
01:03:17 what I'm providing here is just the
01:03:19 amount that I was able to confirm and so
01:03:22 bearing that in mind and knowing that
01:03:23 the actual number is way higher the US
01:03:27 military's black budget for fiscal year
01:03:29 2024 is at
01:03:33 minimum 95 Bill
01:03:36 995 M
01:03:40 68900 which to put that in perspective
01:03:43 is a little more than three Manhattan
01:03:46 projects a little less than six times
01:03:49 the GDP of Le or just under 11% of the
01:03:54 us defense budget by the way while
01:03:57 everything I've shown you here is
01:03:58 completely publicly available
01:03:59 information and several journalists have
01:04:01 in the past done the exact same thing
01:04:03 that I'm doing now I look pretty hard
01:04:06 and as far as I can tell this figure
01:04:08 specifically for the fiscal year 2024
01:04:10 hasn't been posted anywhere else online
01:04:13 so that's pretty cool uh I'll include a
01:04:16 link in the description so that anyone
01:04:17 who's interested can access all of my
01:04:19 work feel free to do whatever you want
01:04:21 with it just please don't roast me for
01:04:23 not knowing how to use Excel now before
01:04:26 we move on from funding one last thing
01:04:28 that probably goes without saying but
01:04:29 still is absolutely is the fact
01:04:32 that most of the people doing these
01:04:34 secret projects or any military project
01:04:36 for that matter aren't even government
01:04:39 employees an article from 2019 by the
01:04:42 Watson Institute at Brown University put
01:04:44 the ratio of contractors to military
01:04:46 personnel at 1.5 to1 meaning that there
01:04:50 were 50% more people working for private
01:04:53 companies than for the actual military
01:04:56 while this trend really took off in the
01:04:58 2000s the seeds were planted in the 9s
01:05:01 by none other than History's Greatest
01:05:03 villain Al Gore thanks for
01:05:07 inventing the internet nerd if it wasn't
01:05:10 for you I'd only have a normal amount of
01:05:13 interest in erotic Homestuck fanfiction
01:05:16 in 1993 under Clinton Gore launched an
01:05:19 initiative to as he called it reinvent
01:05:21 government I.E privatizing
01:05:25 and on what I've really come to talk to
01:05:27 you about today the revolution in
01:05:30 governing that we call Reinventing
01:05:32 government and that your action agenda
01:05:35 calls redesigning government you know
01:05:39 what that means because Governors have
01:05:40 led the way in trying to create a
01:05:43 government that works better and costs
01:05:46 less it has become a cliche to criticize
01:05:49 the federal government people call it
01:05:51 bloated bureaucratic wasteful
01:05:54 how could they get that impression it's
01:05:56 just beyond me of course they get that
01:05:59 impression because it is all too
01:06:01 accurate there are those who say we
01:06:03 didn't cut spending enough to them I say
01:06:07 we made more than 200 deep specific cuts
01:06:11 and I also say We've Just Begun part of
01:06:14 what I want to talk to you here about
01:06:15 today is uh involves further Cuts in
01:06:19 spending why can't government be run
01:06:22 more like a business you were so
01:06:25 stupid you piece of sh sorry
01:06:29 I'll get back to you later so when Gore
01:06:32 proposed this the Republican Congress
01:06:34 responded with a collective okay and so
01:06:37 they got to work making the US
01:06:39 government run like a business you know
01:06:41 for profit and all of this happened just
01:06:44 in time
01:06:46[Music]
01:06:52 for as you may may have guessed the
01:06:54 privatization of the military really
01:06:56 went into overdrive after 9/11 when the
01:06:58 war on terror created a sudden boom and
01:07:01 demand for private contractors to work
01:07:03 overseas performing Advanced
01:07:04 interrogations at CIA black sites and
01:07:08 now here we are new and more powerful
01:07:11 Technologies of secrecy have
01:07:13 consistently been rolled out with things
01:07:15 like Mass surveillance and extraordinary
01:07:17 Renditions which if you don't know what
01:07:19 those are the CIA is allowed to kidnap
01:07:23 anyone on Earth who they suspect of
01:07:25 being a terrorist there are many
01:07:27 documented cases where they just got the
01:07:29 wrong person and so imagine getting
01:07:32 kidnapped brought to a CIA black site
01:07:35 where you're tortured for months only
01:07:37 for your captors to realize that you
01:07:39 didn't do the thing that they thought
01:07:40 you did and so they release you by just
01:07:43 dumping you on the side of the road in a
01:07:45 country halfway across the world from
01:07:47 your home where you don't speak the
01:07:49 language and when you finally find a way
01:07:52 to get back home you learn learn that
01:07:54 all courts have consistently ruled that
01:07:56 there will never be any compensation for
01:07:59 any victims of this practice nor will
01:08:02 anyone responsible ever face any
01:08:05 consequences the last documented case of
01:08:07 this was in 2008 although there's
01:08:10 absolutely no reason to think that this
01:08:12 doesn't still happen the fact that it's
01:08:14 been so long since we last heard about
01:08:16 it is much more likely a result of these
01:08:18 being done under greater secrecy than
01:08:21 any
01:08:22 reforms so anyways I decided to see for
01:08:25 myself just how much the US hires
01:08:27 defense contractors so I did some more
01:08:30 digging and found sam.gov a site that
01:08:33 has basically all the data on government
01:08:35 contracts in America the site actually
01:08:37 made me create an account complete with
01:08:39 my phone number so but from there I was
01:08:42 able to find the list of the top 100
01:08:44 government contracts the latest one they
01:08:46 had was from 2022 so this might be a
01:08:49 little out of date but I don't think
01:08:51 that there's too much reason to think
01:08:52 that it's changed that much also holy
01:08:55 this is by far the most evil
01:08:58 spreadsheet I've ever seen the list
01:09:00 includes Pharma companies you know
01:09:01 obviously maderna and fizer companies
01:09:04 like Dell GE AT&T and FedEx as well as a
01:09:08 handful of construction contractors and
01:09:10 logistics companies and then the rest is
01:09:13 basically all just health insurance
01:09:15 companies oil and gas defense
01:09:18 contractors oh and also at the bottom of
01:09:20 the list at 93 there's the geog group a
01:09:24 company that runs all the largest and
01:09:26 least Humane private prisons in America
01:09:29 in a just world this spreadsheet would
01:09:31 be the list of successful prosecutions
01:09:33 at the hag the largest category by far
01:09:36 though is of course defense contractors
01:09:38 making up 4ia the top 100 contracts
01:09:42 those 40 companies in turn account for
01:09:44 32.5% of all money paid out to
01:09:47 government contractors in
01:09:49 2022 one of these companies is called
01:09:51 Booze Allen Hamilton they famous for
01:09:53 bringing us such hits as the total
01:09:55 information awareness and prism systems
01:09:58 two of the largest mass surveillance
01:10:00 tools the world has ever seen that we
01:10:03 know of part of why we know about those
01:10:05 is actually because of the other thing
01:10:07 that bah is known for which is being the
01:10:10 former employer of one Edward Snowden
01:10:13 this very cool and good company has
01:10:16 bragged in their promotional material
01:10:17 that they employ over 10,000 people with
01:10:20 security clearance Above Top Secret
01:10:23 another company on the list is amum
01:10:25 which has actually operated at the
01:10:27 Nevada test range their website boasts
01:10:30 about the work they've done training
01:10:32 special ops units saying that they've
01:10:34 conducted 650 Plus classes across 34
01:10:38 different courses including Advanced
01:10:40 skills or there's Leos formerly the
01:10:43 science applications international
01:10:45 corporation one thing about them is that
01:10:48 they really love hiring veterans like
01:10:50 there's a whole section on their website
01:10:53 for it but that's not all Leos really
01:10:56 goes the extra mile and so their board
01:10:59 of directors and Senior Management also
01:11:01 came from the military specifically
01:11:04 they've hired two former secretaries of
01:11:06 defense a former director of Central
01:11:09 Intelligence and one of the architects
01:11:11 of the Iraq War also in 2022 30 out of
01:11:15 their 38 lobbyists had previously held
01:11:18 government jobs hey so quick correction
01:11:21 here uh Dr David k was not one of the
01:11:25 architects of the Iraq War he was in
01:11:27 fact the head un weapons inspector who
01:11:30 resigned after testifying that there
01:11:32 were no wmds the rest of these people
01:11:34 are huge pieces of Dr K I feel like
01:11:39 we could maybe say that he made some
01:11:41 questionable employment choices but uh
01:11:46 definitely not an architect of the Iraq
01:11:48 War and pretty impressive and like dope
01:11:52 guy so as you may have guessed all this
01:11:55 is terrible for one thing as is
01:11:58 pretty much always the case with
01:11:59 large-scale privatization rather than
01:12:02 saving the government money this is
01:12:04 actually costing them just so much more
01:12:07 firstly the government will generally
01:12:09 still have to pay to train people often
01:12:12 times they'll pay a private company who
01:12:14 charges more then once they're trained
01:12:17 those same private companies will then
01:12:20 poach the staff from the military and
01:12:23 then contract them back again for a
01:12:26 higher price but not only that it's also
01:12:29 actually just a bad thing for the
01:12:31 majority of the military to be private
01:12:33 contractors operating for a profit and I
01:12:37 know that probably sounds like some out
01:12:39 there Cy mumbo jumbo but that's not
01:12:43 coming from me it's actually the opinion
01:12:45 of the military and private contractors
01:12:49 so in I I'm pretty sure it was 2007 but
01:12:53 it's kind of hard to tell the journalist
01:12:55 and author railen Hillhouse uncovered a
01:12:57 PowerPoint made by the defensive
01:12:59 intelligence agency that contained this
01:13:02 slide which explicitly lays out the
01:13:06 problems with the privatization of the
01:13:09 military not only that in an interview
01:13:12 John Ganon the former deputy director
01:13:14 for intelligence and at the time of the
01:13:16 interview president of the defense
01:13:18 contractor BAE Systems
01:13:21 said this is a personal view but I
01:13:25 happen to believe analysis is the
01:13:27 responsibility of the government and the
01:13:29 government is accountable for it and you
01:13:32 can't delegate that and pass it off to
01:13:34 contractors a contractor is going to
01:13:37 look at a government requirement and
01:13:39 it's going to go and find people
01:13:42 wherever it can and get the greatest
01:13:44 number of people at the lowest price and
01:13:46 maximize The Profit to the business to
01:13:48 do it when I was in government hiring
01:13:51 people I was looking for the best
01:13:53 possible people I could get against the
01:13:55 priorities I fully understood and the
01:13:58 mission that I had that is not what the
01:14:01 private sector does I know that from
01:14:04 personal experience because I've worked
01:14:06 on both sides of the house
01:14:09 here so now let's move away from talking
01:14:12 about money and on to something a bit
01:14:14 more interesting in 2007 grainy photos
01:14:18 began to emerge of a mysterious oddly
01:14:20 shaped aircraft flying through the Skies
01:14:22 of a Afghanistan the British journalist
01:14:25 Bill Sweetman nicknamed the mystery
01:14:27 plane the Beast of Kandahar over the
01:14:30 next couple years more and more
01:14:32 sightings trickled in and we started to
01:14:34 get better pictures of the aircraft
01:14:37 defense analysts took an interest and
01:14:39 soon identified it as an unmanned aerial
01:14:42 vehicle better known as a drone they
01:14:45 also figured out that it was probably
01:14:46 based of the Kandahar Airfield
01:14:49 eventually in 2009 the United States Air
01:14:52 Force confirmed that the Beast was in
01:14:54 fact the latest offering from our
01:14:56 friends at the Skunk Works the locked
01:14:59 Martin rq1 170 Sentinel a stealth grone
01:15:03 meant for surveillance and
01:15:04 reconnaissance code named The Wraith the
01:15:07 RQ 170 is still largely a mystery to
01:15:11 this day but I want to try and dig into
01:15:13 it a bit more specifically let's see how
01:15:16 much we can learn about the people who
01:15:18 tested it when it comes to them we know
01:15:21 two things that the the Beast of
01:15:23 Kandahar was known to them as Operation
01:15:26 Desert Prowler and that when they were
01:15:29 testing it they wore this patch we can
01:15:33 actually learn a few things from this
01:15:35 one is their location you see these six
01:15:37 stars that means that they were based
01:15:39 out of Area 51 5 + 1 makes 51 another
01:15:43 interesting detail is the Roman numerals
01:15:46 9 and 11 which appear on all of their
01:15:49 patches this is actually really
01:15:51 interesting since Sweetman and other an
01:15:53 IST think that the Drone started
01:15:54 development in the '90s for one thing
01:15:57 this means that they didn't actually
01:15:58 start testing it until after 9/11 but we
01:16:01 can narrow it down further by looking at
01:16:04 The Wraith at the
01:16:05 center
01:16:07 so this is the cover of the 2002 album
01:16:12 The Wraith shangry law by the Insane
01:16:15 Clown
01:16:17 posi yeah just next time you imagine
01:16:20 like a super secret high-tech war room
01:16:23 be sure to include a contingent of
01:16:25 people wearing full jug makeup because
01:16:28 apparently yeah this is from I think my
01:16:31 favorite of Trevor Pagan's projects
01:16:33 where he collected and catalog dozens of
01:16:35 Patches from secret military programs he
01:16:38 published them all in a book called I
01:16:40 could tell you but then you would have
01:16:42 to be destroyed by me I think it's out
01:16:44 of print so I wasn't able to get my
01:16:45 hands on a physical copy but I want one
01:16:48 so bad so how does this like happen
01:16:53 that like if you're in a secret
01:16:57 unit
01:16:59 um normally your heraldry and patches
01:17:02 and stuff like that is you're you're
01:17:05 you're given that by the office of
01:17:07 heraldry so this office in the military
01:17:09 this is you're in this you know unit and
01:17:12 it's lineage goes back to the Civil War
01:17:15 and so this is the different icons that
01:17:17 go and that to symbolize the heritage of
01:17:19 your unit um if you're in a secret unit
01:17:21 that office of heraldy is not in to the
01:17:24 fact that you exist so they can't make a
01:17:25 patch for you so what do you do and you
01:17:29 know I've been told well we can't just
01:17:31 not have a patch cuz that would be
01:17:32 really weird so what they'll do is um
01:17:35 design it internally and then vote on
01:17:38 you know you know there's ton of artists
01:17:40 out there that you know they're have a
01:17:42 job in the military whatever they'll
01:17:43 design something then the generally the
01:17:45 people in the unit will vote on it and
01:17:47 so let's dive in and use these patches
01:17:50 to perform a cursory Vibe check of these
01:17:53 various programs while the jugal over at
01:17:55 Desert Prowler have clearly established
01:17:58 themselves as the only Squadron whose
01:18:00 members steal catalytic converters on
01:18:02 their off days unsurprisingly a lot of
01:18:05 the other patches are significantly
01:18:07 nerdier for instance here's a patch from
01:18:10 the military space plane technology
01:18:13 program or Mist this patch actually had
01:18:16 to be discontinued after Lucas
01:18:18 Entertainment threatened to sue them for
01:18:20 using an X-Wing proving that George
01:18:23 Lucas is so litigious that even the US
01:18:26 military is scared to with him a
01:18:29 lot of these patches have little nerdy
01:18:31 jokes though the best of these and just
01:18:33 My overall favorite is this one we don't
01:18:36 actually know what the program It's
01:18:38 associated with is there are some Clues
01:18:41 though the six stars probably refer to
01:18:43 Area 51 but also dragons plus the arrow
01:18:47 around the world generally means spy
01:18:49 satellites my favorite part though is
01:18:52 the Latin around the rim which roughly
01:18:54 translates to I'm dead serious here all
01:18:57 your base are belong to us getting into
01:19:01 the less fun badges though here's the
01:19:03 one for 10 cap or tactical exploitation
01:19:05 of national capabilities which is
01:19:08 basically a collection of programs that
01:19:10 research combat applications for
01:19:12 reconnaissance satellites like as
01:19:14 opposed to strategic applications which
01:19:16 is what they're normally used for as you
01:19:18 can see their badge features an alien
01:19:21 and what's probably a stealth plane or
01:19:23 maybe a satellite and at the bottom it
01:19:26 says obrant Dum matent which is a quote
01:19:30 by the Roman Emperor Caligula
01:19:32 translating to let them hate so long as
01:19:35 they fear so my read of this one is that
01:19:39 it's unbelievably try hard I feel like
01:19:42 the people at ten cap are for sure just
01:19:44 like really mean
01:19:47 nerds but for the meanest nerds we have
01:19:50 to go over to the nro by the way do you
01:19:54 know about the nro so the national
01:19:56 reconnaissance office is America's
01:19:58 Secret space agency and like this might
01:20:02 hurt for any other people who are really
01:20:03 into space as kids but NASA is kind of
01:20:08 just their shell company that isn't to
01:20:10 say that NASA doesn't do the things that
01:20:12 they say they do but just that it's also
01:20:15 not uncommon for their launches to just
01:20:17 be a cover story for the nro launching a
01:20:19 new spy satellite some other interesting
01:20:22 facts about them are that they have the
01:20:24 largest budget of any intelligence
01:20:27 agency and until 1992 their existence
01:20:31 was completely secret and so with all
01:20:34 that being said it probably won't
01:20:36 surprise you too much to find that the
01:20:39 badges for their programs are more than
01:20:42 a little super villain esque for example
01:20:45 here are two badges commemorating the
01:20:46 launch of the Onyx spy satellite with
01:20:49 the tagline we own the night or a bit of
01:20:53 background before I show you this next
01:20:55 one so spy satellites often work in
01:20:57 groups of three or four called
01:20:59 constellations one of these is called
01:21:01 the trumpet constellation which was
01:21:03 completed in
01:21:04 1997 in the documents that they had to
01:21:07 submit to the UN the US government
01:21:09 claimed that the constellation was for
01:21:11 quote practical applications and uses of
01:21:15 space technology such as weather or
01:21:19 Communications now I'm not saying that
01:21:22 they were
01:21:23 lying but if that's what the
01:21:26 constellation was really for it seems a
01:21:29 bit weird that the nro made this patch
01:21:32 to celebrate it like unless they meant
01:21:36 that they're using the constellation to
01:21:38 control the weather this seems like a
01:21:41 weird logo to use or lastly in 2003 they
01:21:45 launched a secret satellite of Cape
01:21:47 Canaveral code name Mentor not a lot is
01:21:50 known about the satellite but based on
01:21:53 the patch they made to commemorate
01:21:56 it probably not good right and I I feel
01:22:00 like this is bad but I think that the
01:22:02 most interesting patch to me is this one
01:22:05 worn by the 22nd military airlift
01:22:07 squadron at Travis Air Force Base these
01:22:10 are the people who transport classified
01:22:12 aircraft onto the base and cargo planes
01:22:15 Nob stands for none of your
01:22:18 business the thing that I love about
01:22:21 this one is that more than any of the
01:22:23 others I can picture exactly who the
01:22:26 person wearing it is like their job is
01:22:29 classified enough that it comes with all
01:22:31 the downsides of never being able to
01:22:33 tell any of their friends or family what
01:22:35 they do it's not easy either the
01:22:38 shipments are done at night which makes
01:22:39 it hard to fly not to mention all the
01:22:42 sleep problems that come with being
01:22:43 nocturnal but also it's not really one
01:22:46 of the cool jobs either right they
01:22:49 aren't test flying stealth bombers or
01:22:52 going on secret missions they're
01:22:54 delivering cargo and so I can just
01:22:57 picture this person hanging out on the
01:22:59 base or wherever wearing this patch and
01:23:01 just itching for someone to ask them hey
01:23:04 what does Nob stand for so they can
01:23:08 smile all cool and
01:23:10 say none of your
01:23:13 business and that's kind of what I love
01:23:16 so much about these patches in a
01:23:18 nutshell it's not just the glimpses they
01:23:20 give into the cultures that groom lake
01:23:22 or the nro but how when looking into
01:23:26 State secrecy so much of it inherently
01:23:29 involves navigating how the government
01:23:31 wants you to see or more often not see
01:23:34 these programs instead these show the
01:23:37 ways that the actual people working
01:23:39 there want to be seen
01:23:41 themselves now let's come back to the US
01:23:44 Air Force's Little slice of nowhere in
01:23:47 the Nevada desert of all the Mysteries
01:23:50 and unexplained things around area 15 1
01:23:53 one of the strangest is that the United
01:23:55 States government can't actually prove
01:23:58 that Area 51 is even in America at all
01:24:03 going back as far as the first settlers
01:24:04 owing to its vast scope searing heat
01:24:07 lack of rain and brutal terrain the
01:24:10 Nevada desert has always been sort of a
01:24:12 No Man's Land reading the accounts of
01:24:15 the first Europeans to cross it it
01:24:17 literally sounds like they're describing
01:24:20 hell this wasn't somewhere that was fit
01:24:22 to develop but instead a brutal obstacle
01:24:25 to get through on the way to
01:24:28 California in the 1850s when Mormons
01:24:31 established the first permanent American
01:24:33 settlements rest sites for travelers
01:24:36 headed west they also had to create
01:24:38 their own legal system since not even
01:24:41 the federal government wanted to go
01:24:43 there while the settlers may not have
01:24:45 liked this some people who did were the
01:24:47 area's other residents the indigenous
01:24:50 tribes of the Great Basin up until
01:24:52 around the 1850s the western shason and
01:24:55 southern peti people had been mostly
01:24:57 undisturbed by white settlers while
01:24:59 living on the land now known as the
01:25:01 Nellis complex things changed fast
01:25:04 though by the end of the decade silver
01:25:07 was discovered in Nevada and then gold
01:25:09 soon after attracting thousands to the
01:25:11 area the new arrivals began settling the
01:25:14 territory of the western shashona plant
01:25:16 life was cut down for fuel or fed to
01:25:19 cattle local game was scared away and
01:25:21 conflict between the white settlers and
01:25:23 Indigenous people became common and
01:25:25 bloody setting off a violent cycle with
01:25:29 their traditional means of living now
01:25:30 taken away the Shon turned instead to
01:25:33 brutal raids on the settler Supply roads
01:25:36 things culminated in
01:25:38 1863 beginning when soldiers stationed
01:25:41 at Ruby Valley carried out the Bear
01:25:43 River Massacre wiping out a village of
01:25:46 250 Shon things ended later that year
01:25:50 with the Western Shon signing the treaty
01:25:52 of Ruby Valley declaring peace and
01:25:54 friendship while they were held at
01:25:57 gunpoint damn I've been making friends
01:25:59 wrong this whole time the terms of the
01:26:01 treaty were that all raids and violence
01:26:03 committed by the shason would stop and
01:26:05 that the United States would be given
01:26:07 the rights to travel freely and mine the
01:26:09 land in exchange the US would pay a
01:26:12 yearly amount to compensate the Shon for
01:26:14 any inconveniences this cause them two
01:26:17 important things were missing from the
01:26:19 treaty though firstly while it's very
01:26:21 clear about ending all violence against
01:26:23 Americans it never says anything about
01:26:26 violence against the shason as the
01:26:28 European settlements grew the Mind soon
01:26:30 poisoned the water and genocidal attacks
01:26:33 were committed against the shason people
01:26:36 with local newspapers calling for them
01:26:37 to be wiped out just like how present
01:26:40 day Area 51 represents a legal black
01:26:43 hole exempt from any regulations or
01:26:45 oversight the Shon people found
01:26:48 themselves on the receiving end of an
01:26:50 American tradition older than an apple
01:26:52 pie they were in a gray area Bound by
01:26:56 the law but not protected by it but
01:27:00 another factor that contributed to this
01:27:02 gray area was the second thing that was
01:27:04 missing from the treaty while Americans
01:27:06 were granted free movement on the land
01:27:09 and all mining claims the actual
01:27:11 ownership of the land stayed with the
01:27:13 shason since the desert was so
01:27:16 inhospitable the Americans didn't think
01:27:18 it was worth taking not only that the
01:27:21 Treaty of Ruby is one of the few that
01:27:23 the government never bothered to nullify
01:27:26 despite multiple attempts to buy the
01:27:28 land from them the Western shashona have
01:27:30 refused and the land remains unseeded to
01:27:33 this day now like I said this video
01:27:36 isn't going to be going into aliens but
01:27:39 even if you disregard all the conspiracy
01:27:41 theories around it Area 51 is still a
01:27:45 very scary place as I'm sure anyone
01:27:48 watching this understands the base is
01:27:50 extremely heavily guarded and and said
01:27:52 guards are authorized to use deadly
01:27:54 force the meme raid got it very wrong
01:27:57 they definitely could stop us all but
01:28:01 what makes it really scary to me at
01:28:03 least isn't just that the guards there
01:28:05 could kill you but the fact that there
01:28:07 are no forms of accountability if they
01:28:09 did as the stealth plane expert and
01:28:12 Author Jim Goodall put it the thing that
01:28:15 bothers me about Area 51 is that a
01:28:18 camouflage dude in a white Jeep Cherokee
01:28:20 can come up to you shoot you in Cold
01:28:23 Blood drag your butt a quarter of a mile
01:28:26 inside the perimeter of the base and
01:28:28 throw it out where the buzzards can get
01:28:30 to you and there isn't a government
01:28:32 agency or law enforcement agency in this
01:28:35 country that has the authority to go in
01:28:38 there and get your body even if they
01:28:40 could there's no one who can be held
01:28:42 accountable because the place doesn't
01:28:44 officially exist you might as well be on
01:28:47 Mars I like how he starts that so
01:28:49 casually just like you know what my
01:28:51 biggest gripe is one of the most
01:28:53 chilling things you've ever heard but
01:28:56 also I think that there's something of a
01:28:58 through line between the current legal
01:29:00 status of Area 51 and the Ruby Valley
01:29:03 treaty that being the way the land was
01:29:05 viewed as valueless to the settlers the
01:29:09 desert was a wasteland and therefore
01:29:11 there was no point in formally acquiring
01:29:13 it its only value after all was as a
01:29:16 place to mine and kill indigenous people
01:29:19 in fact there's almost an argument to be
01:29:21 made for there having been an advantage
01:29:24 to not claiming the land and instead
01:29:26 turning it into a gray area not part of
01:29:29 the us but within its territory creating
01:29:32 a sort of nowhere and the thing about
01:29:35 nowhere is that it's the perfect place
01:29:38 to bury a body this Wasteland nowhere
01:29:42 status was exactly what would draw the
01:29:44 Army there 100 years later when setting
01:29:47 up the Nellis range the Air Force
01:29:50 explained that they chose the location
01:29:52 because the land quote wasn't much good
01:29:54 for anything but Gunnery practice you
01:29:57 could bomb it into Oblivion and never
01:29:59 notice the difference in a sense when
01:30:02 the atomic energy commission began
01:30:04 setting off bombs at the Nevada test
01:30:06 site in
01:30:07 1951 that marked the point when the
01:30:10 Indian Wars went
01:30:12 nuclear now to finish up here I think
01:30:15 that a pretty reasonable thing to ask is
01:30:17 what can be done about this and while
01:30:20 I'm not going to give a particularly
01:30:22 optimistic answer I think that it's
01:30:24 important to look into what happens when
01:30:26 secrecy is brought into the US legal
01:30:29 system but before we do that let's talk
01:30:32 about a surprisingly complicated
01:30:34 question what do you do with top secret
01:30:38 trash well it seems kind of funny this
01:30:41 actually represents a real problem for
01:30:43 Logistics and operational security like
01:30:46 first of all secret bases aren't exactly
01:30:48 on a garbage route and even if they were
01:30:51 things like like for instance the radar
01:30:53 absorbing paint they use on stealth
01:30:55 planes are State secrets that they can't
01:30:58 just send to the dump at Groom Lake the
01:31:00 way they solved this problem was
01:31:02 naturally as clever as it was elegant
01:31:05 they had the men there dig trenches the
01:31:07 size of football fields at the southern
01:31:09 edge of the base threw the garbage in
01:31:12 dosed it in jet fuel and then burned it
01:31:16 this strategy was so ingenious that soon
01:31:18 loed Martin was sending the Industrial
01:31:21 Waste produc used by the Skunk Works
01:31:23 over to Area 51 and unlabeled drums to
01:31:25 be burned as well workers on the base
01:31:28 described the smoke from these burn pits
01:31:30 as being as thick as London Fog and
01:31:33 before long people started getting sick
01:31:36 one of these men was Robert Frost in
01:31:39 1990 at the age of 57 he succumbed to
01:31:42 the strange illness he developed that
01:31:44 his doctor had been unable to treat his
01:31:47 widow Helen tried to sue his employer
01:31:49 for wrongful death but the suit failed
01:31:52 since she couldn't prove to the court
01:31:54 that her husband's chronic cough and the
01:31:56 bleeding rashes were caused by his job
01:31:59 and not as the defense claimed a result
01:32:02 of him being an
01:32:04 alcoholic just dragging this dead man's
01:32:07 name through the mud in service of the
01:32:09 most absurd and disrespectful argument
01:32:12 imaginable like it says here that when
01:32:15 your husband's doctor performed a biopsy
01:32:17 he found traces of toxic industrial
01:32:20 chemicals that was probably because he
01:32:22 was cheating on you but the case was
01:32:24 given new life when it fell into the
01:32:26 hands of a Georgetown law professor
01:32:28 named Jonathan Turley who filed two
01:32:30 class action lawsuits on behalf of Helen
01:32:32 Frost and six Anonymous colleagues of
01:32:35 her late husband who'd come forward with
01:32:37 similar symptoms one of turley's Suits
01:32:40 named the Secretary of Defense the
01:32:42 National Security advisor and the Air
01:32:44 Force secretary as defendants while the
01:32:46 other was against the EPA who he alleged
01:32:49 had committed criminal negligence by by
01:32:51 failing to ensure that area 51 was up to
01:32:54 code the military responded first by
01:32:58 quietly bringing the EPA to groom lake
01:33:00 so that they could conduct an inspection
01:33:02 which ended the lawsuit against them
01:33:04 however the report that their inspection
01:33:07 generated was classified a move which
01:33:09 was to put it mildly unusual and to put
01:33:12 it accurately illegal meanwhile the
01:33:16 military stonewalled turly claiming that
01:33:19 the base didn't exist and that even if
01:33:21 it did it was a state secret it was only
01:33:24 after Turley produced literally hundreds
01:33:26 of unclassified government documents
01:33:28 referring to Area 51 that they
01:33:30 eventually conceded that there was in
01:33:32 fact an operating location at groom dry
01:33:35 lake but nothing more except now the
01:33:38 military also had a question of their
01:33:40 own who wants to know see pursuing this
01:33:44 case was extremely risky as part of
01:33:46 their jobs all of the workers had been
01:33:48 made to sign ndas the breach of which
01:33:50 carried 30 years years in prison the six
01:33:53 living workers took every effort to
01:33:55 ensure that their identities remained
01:33:57 secret and on all court documents they
01:33:59 only appeared as John Doe but despite
01:34:02 this as the case progressed they began
01:34:05 noticing strange cars following them and
01:34:07 their families by day and parking on
01:34:09 their streets at night turly told them
01:34:12 to assume that their phones were tapped
01:34:15 but the John doees weren't deterred for
01:34:18 them this was a matter of life and death
01:34:20 the primary goal of the case was for the
01:34:22 EPA report to be Declassified so they
01:34:25 could learn what exactly they'd been
01:34:27 exposed to and get proper medical
01:34:29 treatment thankfully in September 1995
01:34:33 it seemed like their hopes were being
01:34:34 answered when US District Judge Philip
01:34:37 Pro sided with the plaintiffs he ruled
01:34:40 that the government had to release the
01:34:42 report by October 2nd the only way they
01:34:45 could stop this now would be with an
01:34:47 executive order from the president
01:34:49 himself and so on September 29th
01:34:53 1995 Bill Clinton signed presidential
01:34:56 determination number 95- 445 stating
01:35:01 that both the base and the report would
01:35:03 stay secret this also effectively ended
01:35:07 the lawsuit while they could still
01:35:09 technically proceed with the trial since
01:35:12 the base and everything that happened on
01:35:14 it was classified that meant that now
01:35:16 turle wouldn't be able to present any
01:35:19 evidence or testimony when when the six
01:35:21 John do filed the lawsuit they were
01:35:23 essentially asking a question about
01:35:25 their bodies they wanted to know what
01:35:28 they were becoming what was causing
01:35:30 their difficulty breathing or this
01:35:32 strange rash that made their skin look
01:35:35 like dry scales and left their bed
01:35:38 sheets soaked in blood every morning the
01:35:41 answer was that they had been
01:35:43 transformed into Secrets biopsies of the
01:35:47 affected skin revealed an exotic list of
01:35:49 toxic industrial chemicals
01:35:52 their literal flesh had been infused
01:35:54 with the Air Force's secret projects
01:35:57 their bodies had become classified
01:35:59 programs that they weren't cleared to
01:36:02 access Ironically in their attempt to
01:36:04 find answers they had to become even
01:36:06 more secretive in order to avoid the
01:36:09 military's retribution even their names
01:36:11 were Stripped Away and replaced with
01:36:13 John Doe a
01:36:15 placeholder in April 1995 5 months
01:36:19 before the trial would end one of the
01:36:21 John
01:36:21 passed away once dead the details of his
01:36:24 life and what ended it could be revealed
01:36:27 his name was Walter Kaza he was 73 when
01:36:30 he died of kidney cancer he'd been
01:36:33 married to his wife Stella for 45 years
01:36:36 they had a daughter named Nancy he had
01:36:38 received three bronze Stars fighting the
01:36:41 Nazis and when he came home he took a
01:36:44 job as a sheet metal worker at an
01:36:46 operating location at groom dry lake the
01:36:50 chemicals that killed him have names too
01:36:53 hydrogen cyanide nitrogen oxides sulfur
01:36:57 oxides carbon monoxide carbon dioxide
01:37:01 polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons
01:37:04 hydrochloric acid hydrocloric acid fosin
01:37:08 and from
01:37:09 mahide in 2005 the air force made a
01:37:12 mistake and published an unclassified
01:37:16 safety supplement meant to warn
01:37:18 emergency workers about the hazards
01:37:20 associated with the chemicals used in
01:37:22 the construction of
01:37:24 f-117's the type of plane that was being
01:37:27 tested and burned when Kaza Frost and
01:37:31 the other John Doe were working at the
01:37:33 base as is often the case when the
01:37:35 government claims state secret privilege
01:37:38 keeping the EPA report secret was never
01:37:41 a matter of National Security it was
01:37:44 just a way for the Air Force to avoid
01:37:46 the consequences of their
01:37:49 wrongdoing and so with that all being
01:37:53 said question for
01:37:55 you how do you destroy someone who
01:37:58 doesn't
01:38:01 exist the
01:38:03 answer however you want
01:38:08[Music]
01:38:15[Music]
01:38:20 to
01:38:26[Music]
01:38:50 a
01:39:12[Music]
01:39:20 n
01:39:25[Music]
01:39:32[Music]
01:39:40[Music]
01:39:45[Music]
01:39:50 n
01:39:56[Music]
01:40:08 n
💫 FAQs about This YouTube Video
1. What is the 'Aesthetics of the Secret' and how is it demonstrated in the context of the UK deportations?
The 'Aesthetics of the Secret' is the idea that secrets can be viewed as art and are effective for political organizing. This is demonstrated in the context of the UK deportations through the stop deportation posters, which highlight the lack of transparency and the unknown details surrounding the deportations, engaging people in political organizing.
2. Who are Jill Midd and Trevor Paglen, and how do their projects exemplify the 'Aesthetics of the Secret'?
Jill Midd and Trevor Paglen are artists who exemplify the 'Aesthetics of the Secret' through their projects. Midd's project, 'The Spy Project,' involved creating physical descriptions of secret agents, while Paglen's work showcased the limits of what is allowed to be known or seen, such as his photographs of classified military and intelligence projects.
3. What is the significance of the creation of the CIA and the concerns surrounding its operations?
The creation of the CIA raised concerns about the potential for abuse of power, as the agency's operations were shrouded in secrecy. This led to debates and investigations into the CIA's activities, including its involvement in secret wars and the manipulation of intelligence.
4. How did the disclosure of the CIA's methods by William Colby and the investigation by the Church Committee impact the perception of the agency?
The disclosure of the CIA's methods by William Colby and the investigation by the Church Committee led to a shift in the perception of the agency. It revealed the extent of the CIA's covert operations and raised concerns about the lack of oversight and accountability in the intelligence community.
5. What is the current status of the CIA's budget and the efforts to declassify it?
The current status of the CIA's budget is still classified, with ongoing efforts to declassify it. However, the intelligence community has opposed the declassification, citing the need to keep sensitive information confidential. The budget's secrecy is seen as a message that the US military does not want the public to have access to the basic facts of its operations.
6. What is the significance of the classified projects 'Javelin' and 'teleport program'?
The 'Javelin' project is just a type of missile, and the 'teleport program' refers to a new kind of fiber optic cable. This discovery suggests that some projects may sound more interesting and mysterious than they actually are.
7. How are the classified projects categorized in the expense spreadsheets?
The classified projects are categorized by branch of the military, with the Navy section containing the most classified stuff, the Air Force having some vague projects, and the Army revealing very little.
8. What is the relation between the amount of classified information and the branch of the military?
The Navy section contains the most classified stuff, but it is not because the Navy is the most secretive. The Air Force and Army, on the other hand, have less classified information, with the Air Force including some vague projects and the Army revealing very little.
9. What was the speaker's approach to finding classified information in old military budget justification books?
The speaker started searching for specific keywords like 'classified,' 'secret,' 'special compartmented,' and 'title 10' in the books, which led to the discovery of a significant amount of classified information.
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