Baseless : my search for secrets in the ruins of the Freedom of Information Act

Format:

Book (regular print)

Title:

Baseless : my search for secrets in the ruins of the Freedom of Information Act

Other title(s):

My search for secrets in the ruins of the Freedom of Information Act

Author:

Baker, Nicholson author

ISBN:

9780735215757

9780735215764

Publication:

New York : Penguin Press, 2020.

Physical Description:

xiv, 450 pages : illustration, map ; 25 cm

Summary:

"Ten years into researching a book about the possibility that the United States had used biological weapons in the Korean War, Nicholson Baker was frustrated and disheartened. In the course of his research, he had become deeply disillusioned with the process of FOIA requests. He has been forced to wait years in some cases, while other requests have been answered only with documents rendered inscrutable, or even illegible, by copious redactions. Rather than wait forever, with his head full of secrets about government atrocities committed by his own country, Baker sets out to keep a personal journal of his obstructed research instead. He begins documenting his correspondence with the government administrators who are charged with responding to, and thus stymying, his requests. The result is one of the most original and daring works of nonfiction in recent memory, a singular and mesmerizing narrative into the history of some of the darkest and most shameful secrets of the CIA and US government--all willfully concealed to some degree despite the existence of the so-called Freedom of Information Act. In his preternaturally lucid and unassuming style, Baker unearths stories of CIA programs involving weaponized insects and the deliberate spread of Lyme disease; dangerous military experiments carried out on unsuspecting American citizens; and devastating chemical munitions designed to inflict terrible harm on innocent civilians in far-flung countries. At the same time, he shares beautiful anecdotes from his daily life in Maine feeding his dogs and watching the morning light gather on the horizon. The result is an astonishing and utterly disarming story about waiting, bureaucracy, the horrors of war, and, above all, the deadly secrets the United States government keeps from its citizens"-- Provided by publisher.

Corporate Subject:

United States. Freedom of Information Act.

Title Subject:

Freedom of Information Act (United States) (OCoLC)fst01359375

Subject(s):

United States. Freedom of Information Act.

Biological weapons -- United States -- History.

Biological warfare -- Research -- United States.

Intelligence service -- United States -- History.

Official secrets -- United States.

Government information -- United States.

Cold War.

Geographic Term:

United States.

Genre:

History.

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Silver Falls Library	358.38 BAKER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Newberg Public Library	358.38 BAKER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Salem Main Library	358.38 Baker 2020	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

"Staggeringly good." -- Counterpunch

A major new work, a hybrid of history, journalism, and memoir, about the modern Freedom of Information Act --FOIA -- and the horrifying, decades-old government misdeeds that it is unable to demystify, from one of America's most celebrated writers

Eight years ago, while investigating the possibility that the United States had used biological weapons in the Korean War, Nicholson Baker requested a series of Air Force documents from the early 1950s under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Years went by, and he got no response. Rather than wait forever, Baker set out to keep a personal journal of what it feels like to try to write about major historical events in a world of pervasive redactions, witheld records, and glacially slow governmental responses. The result is one of the most original and daring works of nonfiction in recent memory, a singular and mesmerizing narrative that tunnels into the history of some of the darkest and most shameful plans and projects of the CIA, the Air Force, and the presidencies of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.

In his lucid and unassuming style, Baker assembles what he learns, piece by piece, about Project Baseless, a crash Pentagon program begun in the early fifties that aimed to achieve "an Air Force-wide combat capability in biological and chemical warfare at the earliest possible date." Along the way, he unearths stories of balloons carrying crop disease, leaflet bombs filled with feathers, suicidal scientists, leaky centrifuges, paranoid political-warfare tacticians, insane experiments on animals and humans, weaponized ticks, ferocious propaganda battles with China, and cover and deception plans meant to trick the Kremlin into ramping up its germ-warfare program. At the same time, Baker tells the stories of the heroic journalists and lawyers who have devoted their energies to wresting documentary evidence from government repositories, and he shares anecdotes from his daily life in Maine feeding his dogs and watching the morning light gather on the horizon. The result is an astonishing and utterly disarming story about waiting, bureaucracy, the horrors of war, and, above all, the cruel secrets that the United States government seems determined to keep forever from its citizens.

Author Notes

Nicholson Baker is the author of ten novels and six works of nonfiction, including The Anthologist, The Mezzanine , and Human Smoke. He has won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Hermann Hesse Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Maine with his wife, Margaret Brentano.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

America's biological warfare programs are the focus of epic struggles for transparency in this mordant exposé. Novelist and historian Baker (Substitute) recounts his years-long investigation into U.S. Air Force, Army, and CIA projects during the 1940s and 1950s, including efforts to weaponize bubonic plague-- and yellow fever--infected mosquitoes; feather bombs that dispersed turkey plumage dusted with crop-ruining plant pathogens; and a germ-warfare experiment that fogged San Francisco with bacteria. Controversially, he argues that biological weapons were used by the U.S. in the Korean War to spread lethal Korean hemorrhagic fever to Communist soldiers. Baker documents his quest to prove that thesis by obtaining military and intelligence documents through Freedom of Information Act requests, which proves a Kafkaesque ordeal of endless waiting for heavily censored reports. (There's no smoking gun, but his supporting evidence is substantial.) Written with bemused fascination and occasional outrage ("What a pointless horror," Baker observes of a study that infected guinea pigs with brucellosis), this lucid yet freewheeling narrative unearths much queasy detail about biological weapons and their promoters. The result is a colorful, engrossing recreation of a sinister history--and a convincing case for opening government archives to public scrutiny. Agent: Melanie Jackson, the Melanie Jackson Agency. (July)

Kirkus Review

The versatile author of fiction and nonfiction chronicles his "not entirely successful efforts to squeeze germs of truth from the sanitized documentary record of the U.S. government." In his latest, Baker, a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, among others, writes about his work from March 9, 2019 through May 19, 2019. During those months, he intensively explored mountains of documents to determine whether the government deployed illegal biological weapons during the Korean War. To search for truth about the biological weapons, Baker sent Freedom of Information Act requests to numerous government agencies, and he received radio silence. The daily diary pings between the flaws in the FIA--a 1966 law meant to encourage transparency by federal agencies--and the substance of what the author gleaned about biological warfare. To lighten a relentlessly downbeat narrative, Baker, ever articulate and witty, also introduces readers to his Maine home, which he shares with his wife and dogs, as well as the local weather, walks in the nearby wilderness, and other elements of his daily life. For readers who care about government openness, the narrative will be simultaneously illuminating and profoundly depressing. Because Congress failed to include enforcement mechanisms other than the possibility of time-consuming, expensive lawsuits, government agencies subject to the FIA violate it with impunity and suffer no penalties as a result. The custodians of the records often treat the documents as personal property rather than information financed, and thus owned, by taxpayers. The leading villains in Baker's saga, which he aptly describes as "a sort of case study, or diary, or daily meditation, on the pathology of government secrecy," are the Air Force, Army, and CIA, and his disclosures are rarely banal but rather consistently provocative and disturbing. Using both direct and circumstantial evidence, the author suggests that illegal weapons have been used against North Korea and perhaps against so-called enemy forces in other nations. Readers should be impressed by Baker's persistence, and most will end up charmed, however obliquely, by his obsessions. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

The seed of this book was planted more than 10 years ago, and its mission was to uncover the truth about Project Baseless, the U.S. program to, purportedly, deploy biological and chemical weapons in Korea in the early 1950s. The intrepid Baker's (Substitute, 2016) voluminous reading and tireless research turned into an obsession as he followed myriad forking paths of government subterfuge, secret meetings, code names, and other calling cards of Cold War spycraft. The nature of the project shifted as Baker submitted Freedom of Information Act requests, only to be repeatedly stymied by indefinite waiting periods for documents that have been redacted into indecipherability. Baker's effort to share his extensive knowledge has resulted in an awe-inspiring quest that reads like an adventure, a war story, and a scientific mystery of psychological suspense rolled into one. He uses a diary format, with daily entries from March 9 through May 18, 2019, that typically begin with brief asides about Baker's beloved dogs or the mundane household chores he undertakes before launching, once again, into the world of biological warfare and his country's ongoing attempts to hide its secrets. This approach proves to be an inspired choice as Baker's formidable narrative skill and tenacity provide for a thoroughly riveting account and powerful testimony to the need for truth.

Library Journal Review

Baker (Substitute) challenges what he views as government interference in his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that would have assisted his research on United States bacterial and chemical warfare during the Korean War. This gripping, but at times rambling, narrative describes U.S. Air Force experiments at Fort Detrick, MD during the Korean War, when untold numbers of animals, and perhaps some humans, were killed in efforts to find more efficient ways to destroy crops, including the deliberate spread of Lyme disease. Although Baker emphasizes Project Baseless, he discusses similar projects during World War II and the Vietnam War. The book, based on a decade of research, is presented in diary form from March-May 2019 that includes anecdotes of Baker's life in Bangor, Maine with his wife and dogs, which provide a jarring contrast to stories of plagues and starvation. He holds the CIA and State Department accountable for ignoring or heavily redacting his requests, and calls for all government records more than 50 years old to be released unabridged. VERDICT This flowing account reveals the dark side of wartime strategies clouded by denials of FOIA requests. It will fascinate Cold War-era historians and readers concerned about access to government information.--Karl Helicher, formerly with Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA