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Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act
"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 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"--
464 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 21, 2020
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794 people want to read
About the author
Nicholson Baker
39 books966 followersNicholson Baker is a contemporary American writer of fiction and non-fiction. He was born in Manhattan in 1957 and grew up in Rochester, New York. He has published sixteen books--including The Mezzanine (1988), U and I (1991), Human Smoke (2008), The Anthologist (2009), and Substitute (2016)--and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, the New York Review of Books, Best American Short Stories, and Best American Essays. He has received a National Book Critics Circle award, a James Madison Freedom of Information Award, the Herman Hesse Prize, and the Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1999, Baker and his wife, Margaret Brentano (co-author with Baker of The World on Sunday, 2005), founded the American Newspaper Repository in order to save a large collection of U.S. newspapers, including a run of Joseph Pulitzer's influential daily, the New York World. In 2004 the Repository’s holdings became a gift to Duke University. Baker and Brentano have two children; they live on the Penobscot River in Maine.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
September 21, 2021
Pretty interesting dive into the US government's testing and probable use of biological warfare; specifically during the Korean War. Baker's other focus is on the government agencies' total disregard for the Freedom of Information Act. The decision to format this book as a journal works well as it gives the reader a sense of Baker's frustration with the lack of transparency with FOIA requests. After a while, however, the book becomes redundant and I found myself losing interest. Takeaways: the US government has done some pretty crazy shit, and FOIA isn't as effective as it was intended to be and is largely ignored (illegally) by just about every military branch and government agency. Pretty good book but a little bit bloated.
July 30, 2020
Reminded me of Human Smoke. Incredibly gripping non-fiction. The Freedom of Information Act. Toothless and unenforceable. Yet the secrets still spill out. The CIA, if what happened on September 11th wasn’t enough proof, what a mess. Punted me on to a load of other fascinating books I need to read. Just great stuff. Government secrets. Where are your tax dollars going? Loved this Baker effort. Highly recommended.
December 24, 2020
So for all the conspiracy theories out there, nothing like settling down with a Quaker deviant (House of Holes, Vox, The Fermata) for a restful couple of months in an idyllic New England setting as he makes FOIA requests that are largely ignored and explores the CIA and the USA's forays into biological warfare.
I feel edified and horrified simultaneously.
I must say though that the air drop of lab voles with no biological weapons as a scare tactic was a classic government move.
I don't know if Nicholson is peaceful in his existence, but he at least brought some semblance of peace to me. Intriguingly written before the pandemic, it feels like a pandemic book in its isolation, but maybe for the bookish the world is always in a pandemic of stupid.
I feel edified and horrified simultaneously.
I must say though that the air drop of lab voles with no biological weapons as a scare tactic was a classic government move.
I don't know if Nicholson is peaceful in his existence, but he at least brought some semblance of peace to me. Intriguingly written before the pandemic, it feels like a pandemic book in its isolation, but maybe for the bookish the world is always in a pandemic of stupid.
February 15, 2021
A very nice follow-up to The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War—A Tragedy in Three Acts.
Both offer dark and disturbing perspectives on the CIA during the Cold War. They feature some of the same big players: Frank Wisner, the Dulles brothers, Truman. They also cover some of the same events (e.g. PBSUCCESS, the CIA-engineered coup in Guatemala). That's where the similarities end, though. Baseless covers a wider span of years, focuses primarily on the question of whether or not the US used biological/chemical weapons during the Korean War, and is as much a record of what it feels like to write a history of an organization that would prefer its actions not be remembered as it is a history of that organization.
That cliche thing people sometimes say about a book, that it contains "more questions than answers," really does apply here. Here's Baker near the end of the book:
Baker isn't just raising questions about what happened but also about why the CIA is so invested in people not having access to the records that contain the answers. He writes:
I can understand why some might find Baker's approach frustrating, if not outright misleading in the way it offers provocations/suggestions without proof. A NYTimes reviewer writes:
But that's the whole project. He doesn't claim to be a capital-H historian writing some kind of definitive tome; he's just a writer disturbed by the bits of evidence (and gaps in evidence) that he's able to piece together from heavily redacted or still-classified records, records that are at this point many decades old. He doesn't claim to know anything he doesn't know that he knows--he conjectures about what may be behind redactions, but allows that he could be totally wrong. This book's most useful effect may be to spark a desire in its readers for access to the truth, for an end to the CIA's well-documented resistance to FOIA requests and the like.
I can also imagine some readers finding the book's format a bit grating. It is structured as a daily diary that Baker kept from March to May of 2019. That is really the only chronology/structure happening here. He jumps between years and focuses and people within and between his entries. In that sense the book feels a bit unprocessed, more like a collection of notes than a journey from point A to point B.
Every entry follows the same structure and produces a sort of hypnotic (sometimes verging on boring) effect: Baker describes some details of his environment ("a big, clangingly, smilingly, enigmatically empty Maine sky," steam escaping from boiling potatoes, seeing his dog's paw amidst the covers on his bed) and then 10-ish pages of "content," sometimes pure history, sometimes conjecture, sometimes overly detailed descriptions of wheat-rust experiments, sometimes notes on his FOIA fellow-travelers like MuckRock. Sometimes an interleaving of all of it:
This diary style worked for me, I really love the way Baker writes and thinks. Consider:
For me, Baker has accomplished this mission! This book does, in fact, simulate the pleasure of eating a life sandwich. I would not, however, recommend eating a non-metaphorical sandwich while reading b/c there are many, many stomach-turning accounts of extreme cruelty against people (e.g. experiments on various populations of prisoners) and animals (e.g. air-dropping disease-filled bombs onto fields of guinea pigs, dogs, etc.).
Both offer dark and disturbing perspectives on the CIA during the Cold War. They feature some of the same big players: Frank Wisner, the Dulles brothers, Truman. They also cover some of the same events (e.g. PBSUCCESS, the CIA-engineered coup in Guatemala). That's where the similarities end, though. Baseless covers a wider span of years, focuses primarily on the question of whether or not the US used biological/chemical weapons during the Korean War, and is as much a record of what it feels like to write a history of an organization that would prefer its actions not be remembered as it is a history of that organization.
That cliche thing people sometimes say about a book, that it contains "more questions than answers," really does apply here. Here's Baker near the end of the book:
Let me just blurt out what I think what I think happened with germs and insects and during the Korean war. You may not be convinced, but that's okay. My aim is to open the files, not necessarily to convince.
Baker isn't just raising questions about what happened but also about why the CIA is so invested in people not having access to the records that contain the answers. He writes:
Amnesia is the CIA's ideal--and the Air Force's ideal. That's what I'm understanding. By controlling their own records, and purging them, and cutting all the interesting parts out of them, they are forcing a state of amnesia on a whole country--on us--so that we don't know what we as a purportedly self-governing nation did. We can't remember what we did ... Really secrecy is about mind control. It's about deliberately imposed historical amnesia. If you can suppress all knowledge of something like Operation Sphinx [a plan to murder/debilitate more than ten million Japanese citizens by air-dropping tons of poisonous gas], you allow the myth of American decency and goodness to endure. By the time the truth comes out, the shock is muffled. The outrage response is inhibited.
I can understand why some might find Baker's approach frustrating, if not outright misleading in the way it offers provocations/suggestions without proof. A NYTimes reviewer writes:
At times, the book is framed as a deliberate challenge to the intelligence community: “I could be completely wrong. The only way to prove me wrong is by declassifying the entire document.” But this is not how a historian proceeds.
But that's the whole project. He doesn't claim to be a capital-H historian writing some kind of definitive tome; he's just a writer disturbed by the bits of evidence (and gaps in evidence) that he's able to piece together from heavily redacted or still-classified records, records that are at this point many decades old. He doesn't claim to know anything he doesn't know that he knows--he conjectures about what may be behind redactions, but allows that he could be totally wrong. This book's most useful effect may be to spark a desire in its readers for access to the truth, for an end to the CIA's well-documented resistance to FOIA requests and the like.
I can also imagine some readers finding the book's format a bit grating. It is structured as a daily diary that Baker kept from March to May of 2019. That is really the only chronology/structure happening here. He jumps between years and focuses and people within and between his entries. In that sense the book feels a bit unprocessed, more like a collection of notes than a journey from point A to point B.
Every entry follows the same structure and produces a sort of hypnotic (sometimes verging on boring) effect: Baker describes some details of his environment ("a big, clangingly, smilingly, enigmatically empty Maine sky," steam escaping from boiling potatoes, seeing his dog's paw amidst the covers on his bed) and then 10-ish pages of "content," sometimes pure history, sometimes conjecture, sometimes overly detailed descriptions of wheat-rust experiments, sometimes notes on his FOIA fellow-travelers like MuckRock. Sometimes an interleaving of all of it:
In bed I thumbed through lots of old photographs on my phone. Daughter, son, wife, father, mother, stepmother, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, sister, sister's partner, daughter, son, wife, wife, wife, son, daughter. Wife. I was smiling in the dark. Then every so often I'd come across a screen capture I'd made of a document or an old newspaper article. A mysterious Q fever epidemic hits eighty men in Italy in 1950. A trained hog-cholera vaccine kills thousands of midwestern pigs in 1949....The biowar blowback epoch of American history has injected itself into my life, the photo-stream record of my life. Meals eaten, bowls of bean soup sipped, group selfies, airports where we've picked up loved ones--and then suddenly a clump of a thousand snapshotted Air Force documents from the National Archives in which men talk about how much progress is being made titrating diseased bits of glop, injecting them into animals, freeze-drying the purulent exudate, and dropping it from airplanes.
This diary style worked for me, I really love the way Baker writes and thinks. Consider:
Upstairs, I thought, What do I really want from a book? I want truth in every paragraph. I want surprises. I want a sense that everything is not hopeless. That we can do better. I want a sense that life is a complicated mixture of emotions and inconsistencies. Life is a sandwich. I wan to include, or simulate, the pleasure of eating a sandwich.
For me, Baker has accomplished this mission! This book does, in fact, simulate the pleasure of eating a life sandwich. I would not, however, recommend eating a non-metaphorical sandwich while reading b/c there are many, many stomach-turning accounts of extreme cruelty against people (e.g. experiments on various populations of prisoners) and animals (e.g. air-dropping disease-filled bombs onto fields of guinea pigs, dogs, etc.).
October 10, 2024
This is an unusual book.
I'm not quite sure what Baker is trying for.
The format is that of a diary in the spring of 2019. Each chapter begins with the date followed by some simple observations about what Baker is up to that day. He usually includes some mention of his whereabouts, what the dogs are doing if he's home in Maine, about the weather and advancing spring. Then he gets into the subject matter, specifically Nicholson Baker is trying to establish whether the United States used biological weapons during the Korean War. This topic greatly interests Baker but it is used almost as a case study for his criticism of the systematic undermining of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) of 1967. He explains how this well-intentioned law has been routinely ignored by the CIA and armed forces even with regard to documents which are 70 years old.
My main complaint is that this work is fundamentally self-indulgent.
I sympathize almost 100% with the overall arc of Baker's argument. The U.S. government should never secretly engage in anti-democratic, sometimes inhuman activities in our nation's supposed best interests. Violently deposing democratically elected leaders in Colombia, Guatemala, and Iran because those poor brutes don't know any better is not what I want from my government. Employing the skills of German and Japanese war criminals in the name of protecting American democracy had to be done in secret because the actual American democracy wouldn't have allowed it. I agree with Senator Moynihan that we'd be better off with no CIA, dividing its legitimate duties between the historically more sane departments of State and Defense.
But Baker carries it further. I understand that he's a pacifist to the extent he objects to American involvement in WWII (an, errr, minority view). But his self-righteousness devolves into irreality when he describes our WWII generals as "mass murderers." Where I part company with Baker is where he minimizes the threat to civilization posed by the Axis and then later the Communist Chinese and Soviets.
Nial Fergusson argued that the historical nadir of value assigned to human life was not during the Middle Ages, or the assaults of the Mongolian hordes, or the chattel slavery of Africans in the new world. It was on the Eastern Front of of WWII in 1944. I would argue that we can best understand the American response to the beginning of the Cold War if we set it against the backdrop of the mentality that led us to pursue bombing of civilian centers in WWII. The sense of peril that led us to fire-bomb Dresden and Tokyo granted us the moral license to allow some ill-considered projects in order to "protect our interests" as the Cold War began. Of course, the tragedy of early Cold War US policy is that we should have aligned with democratic forces throughout the world and saved not only democracy in the developing world but our own national soul and reputation.
So I say self-indulgent because I think Baker allows his own self-righteousness to infect his interpretation. He repeatedly emphasizes how kind he is to his dogs and writes off the Cold Warriors as evil misanthropes. The use of biological weapons in Korea was wrong. That means the American leaders who promoted their use were wrong. It doesn't mean Nicholson Baker is a better man than they were.
Also self-indulgent is the style of the book. Theses topics deserve, in my opinion, more systemtatic and respectful analysis. Baker mixes solid reasoning with rank speculation.
Lastly, I couldn't agree more with Baker in his outrage that the FOIA has been reduced to an unenforced law. If we can't, as a nation, come to terms with decisions made by our grandfathers and great-grandfathers before the television era maybe we should just rescind the law and admit it.
I'm not quite sure what Baker is trying for.
The format is that of a diary in the spring of 2019. Each chapter begins with the date followed by some simple observations about what Baker is up to that day. He usually includes some mention of his whereabouts, what the dogs are doing if he's home in Maine, about the weather and advancing spring. Then he gets into the subject matter, specifically Nicholson Baker is trying to establish whether the United States used biological weapons during the Korean War. This topic greatly interests Baker but it is used almost as a case study for his criticism of the systematic undermining of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) of 1967. He explains how this well-intentioned law has been routinely ignored by the CIA and armed forces even with regard to documents which are 70 years old.
My main complaint is that this work is fundamentally self-indulgent.
I sympathize almost 100% with the overall arc of Baker's argument. The U.S. government should never secretly engage in anti-democratic, sometimes inhuman activities in our nation's supposed best interests. Violently deposing democratically elected leaders in Colombia, Guatemala, and Iran because those poor brutes don't know any better is not what I want from my government. Employing the skills of German and Japanese war criminals in the name of protecting American democracy had to be done in secret because the actual American democracy wouldn't have allowed it. I agree with Senator Moynihan that we'd be better off with no CIA, dividing its legitimate duties between the historically more sane departments of State and Defense.
But Baker carries it further. I understand that he's a pacifist to the extent he objects to American involvement in WWII (an, errr, minority view). But his self-righteousness devolves into irreality when he describes our WWII generals as "mass murderers." Where I part company with Baker is where he minimizes the threat to civilization posed by the Axis and then later the Communist Chinese and Soviets.
Nial Fergusson argued that the historical nadir of value assigned to human life was not during the Middle Ages, or the assaults of the Mongolian hordes, or the chattel slavery of Africans in the new world. It was on the Eastern Front of of WWII in 1944. I would argue that we can best understand the American response to the beginning of the Cold War if we set it against the backdrop of the mentality that led us to pursue bombing of civilian centers in WWII. The sense of peril that led us to fire-bomb Dresden and Tokyo granted us the moral license to allow some ill-considered projects in order to "protect our interests" as the Cold War began. Of course, the tragedy of early Cold War US policy is that we should have aligned with democratic forces throughout the world and saved not only democracy in the developing world but our own national soul and reputation.
So I say self-indulgent because I think Baker allows his own self-righteousness to infect his interpretation. He repeatedly emphasizes how kind he is to his dogs and writes off the Cold Warriors as evil misanthropes. The use of biological weapons in Korea was wrong. That means the American leaders who promoted their use were wrong. It doesn't mean Nicholson Baker is a better man than they were.
Also self-indulgent is the style of the book. Theses topics deserve, in my opinion, more systemtatic and respectful analysis. Baker mixes solid reasoning with rank speculation.
Lastly, I couldn't agree more with Baker in his outrage that the FOIA has been reduced to an unenforced law. If we can't, as a nation, come to terms with decisions made by our grandfathers and great-grandfathers before the television era maybe we should just rescind the law and admit it.
November 23, 2020
Nicholson Baker might be my favorite writer. He seems like a funny, gentle man who happens to be fascinated by dark and twisted things, some finally innocuous (like certain fetishes) and others really, truly horrible (like atomic weapons). He might not be the first person you'd think to ask for four hundred pages about the CIA, but over the course of "Baseless" he demonstrates that candor, clarity, and an eye for detail go a long way when it comes to writing a narrative about government secrets. A man who could author a compelling novel about a toilet brush ends up being PRECISELY the kind of person you'd want sifting CREST for horrifying covert-ops "gold."
The main question Baker wants to answer here is simple: did the U.S. use biological weapons during the Korean War? The problem with answering this question is that, well, everything is fucking behind closed doors and redacted. The Freedom of Information Act is an amazing tool for writers and researchers that, tragically, has been gutted again and again, and is frequently ignored outright. For a detail-crazy guy like Baker, the obstacles to complete understanding are especially frustrating; he occasionally finds himself resorting to all-caps, italicized rants to express his annoyance. The form "Baseless" takes-- a several month-long journal, peppered with deep dives into history as well as descriptions of what Baker's dogs have been up to-- both acknowledges these gaps in knowledge and makes something totally new and fascinating out of them. This is autofiction/memoir as a true truth-telling tool; the lack of a single cohesive narrative arc gives Baker the chance to expound willy-nilly on all kinds of CIA dirt. There are passages here, probably at least one on every page, that deserve to be chanted out loud to everyone in earshot:
"Dr. Harry Blair, of the University of Rochester's radiation-injury project, said he was sending agents out on scouting missions, paying $35.00 for each do and $3.50 for each cat. Dr. Howard J. Curtis, of Brookhaven National Laboratory, said it was terrible that dogs were being gassed at animal shelters when they could be experimented on. 'If you asked a man whether he wanted to be gassed, or used for an experiment with a 50 per cent chance of recovery, there is little doubt which he'd choose,' Dr. Curtis said. 'Why not give animals the same chance?"
Though the book is extensively documented (Baker, again, is interested in CANDOR), the sheer amount of counterintelligence insanity and cruelty that "Baseless" uncovers/reaffirms (Ex-Nazi operatives (Operation Paperclip)! Poisoned potato bugs! A whole season of wheat crop destroyed by a biological weapons test gone wrong! Jorge Gaitan assassinated by American operatives! The military hiring Japanese torture experts! A plan to gas 5 million Japanese after Hiroshima (Operation Sphinx)! Coups! Plagues! Mass murder of guinea pigs!) makes it seem likely that at least a few of the stories are not totally true. "Fine," Baker seems to say to the government, "Prove me wrong." He ends his diary with a request he offers throughout the book: "Every U.S. government document that's more than fifty years old should be released in full, right now. No redactions. As a first step." "A first step," because the idea that motivates books like these, and writers like Baker who are courageous enough to write them, is that properly told history will force us to reflect on what we are doing in the present, and hopefully help us reconsider certain delusions we have about our country, and maybe even allow the world to live in greater peace.
The main question Baker wants to answer here is simple: did the U.S. use biological weapons during the Korean War? The problem with answering this question is that, well, everything is fucking behind closed doors and redacted. The Freedom of Information Act is an amazing tool for writers and researchers that, tragically, has been gutted again and again, and is frequently ignored outright. For a detail-crazy guy like Baker, the obstacles to complete understanding are especially frustrating; he occasionally finds himself resorting to all-caps, italicized rants to express his annoyance. The form "Baseless" takes-- a several month-long journal, peppered with deep dives into history as well as descriptions of what Baker's dogs have been up to-- both acknowledges these gaps in knowledge and makes something totally new and fascinating out of them. This is autofiction/memoir as a true truth-telling tool; the lack of a single cohesive narrative arc gives Baker the chance to expound willy-nilly on all kinds of CIA dirt. There are passages here, probably at least one on every page, that deserve to be chanted out loud to everyone in earshot:
"Dr. Harry Blair, of the University of Rochester's radiation-injury project, said he was sending agents out on scouting missions, paying $35.00 for each do and $3.50 for each cat. Dr. Howard J. Curtis, of Brookhaven National Laboratory, said it was terrible that dogs were being gassed at animal shelters when they could be experimented on. 'If you asked a man whether he wanted to be gassed, or used for an experiment with a 50 per cent chance of recovery, there is little doubt which he'd choose,' Dr. Curtis said. 'Why not give animals the same chance?"
Though the book is extensively documented (Baker, again, is interested in CANDOR), the sheer amount of counterintelligence insanity and cruelty that "Baseless" uncovers/reaffirms (Ex-Nazi operatives (Operation Paperclip)! Poisoned potato bugs! A whole season of wheat crop destroyed by a biological weapons test gone wrong! Jorge Gaitan assassinated by American operatives! The military hiring Japanese torture experts! A plan to gas 5 million Japanese after Hiroshima (Operation Sphinx)! Coups! Plagues! Mass murder of guinea pigs!) makes it seem likely that at least a few of the stories are not totally true. "Fine," Baker seems to say to the government, "Prove me wrong." He ends his diary with a request he offers throughout the book: "Every U.S. government document that's more than fifty years old should be released in full, right now. No redactions. As a first step." "A first step," because the idea that motivates books like these, and writers like Baker who are courageous enough to write them, is that properly told history will force us to reflect on what we are doing in the present, and hopefully help us reconsider certain delusions we have about our country, and maybe even allow the world to live in greater peace.
July 27, 2020
Nicholson Baker has shifted from an eccentric who pursued the joys of the quotidian in a way that allowed us to see the world with new eyes to this regrettably permanent position as a lazy, narcissistic, and insufferable writer. "Never trust a reviewer who uses the word 'shoddy.'" On the contrary, never trust a writer who pads out a book with banal observations because he doesn't have a solid evidential foundation. There's more care to tedious passages of Baker eating potatoes than there is to the vital question of possible American involvement with biochemical warfare, for which Baker only has assumptions. That's tedious and unacceptable scholarship. It worked for HUMAN SMOKE, which gave the reader room to consider the alternative approach to thinking about World War II. But it didn't work for this book and it certainly didn't work for the equally awful SUBSTITUTE. Because Baker, under a phony guise of a polite curiosity seeker, demands that you ONLY subscribe to his viewpoint. He's incapable of comprehending other perspectives. This is a tedious book on an important subject. And Baker should be ashamed of himself for his narcissism. But of course narcissists never are.
February 18, 2022
This diary is charming for a little while, and then you realize he has nothing to say except that some conspiracy theories about the CIA are probably true. Made it 108 pages and that s more than enough. His theories about lab leaks of germ warfare seem entirely plausible, though not relevant at all to the Wuhan lab leak, which was almost certainly due to an effort to make viruses less lethal by making them stronger. The worth of that project should be debated! The worth of the CIA should not—-it’s terrible, and as he says, the intelligence part should be integrated into the state department, and the paramilitary part should be remembered as awful and utterly destroyed. Neither of these things will happen.
October 16, 2020
This is an important book, appropriately read by the author in a calm, ponderous voice. I abandoned the book approximately 5 hours in because my blood pressure could no longer cope with the litany of stories of animal torture and biological warfare perpetrated by the war-mongering United States military in the name of “civil defense”. Knowing my tax dollars are used in this way without my permission makes me all the angrier.
July 13, 2022
nicholson baker has requested documents from the government via the freedom of imformation act and read them,so you don't have to. i 'read' this in audio form,narrated by the author. his reading is excellent and precise. the actual content is amazing and quite sobering. it is about biological and chemical warfare during the korean war,and other related things. i am interested in that,and enjoyed this book,though enjoy might not be quite the correct term,but i enjoy learning and i certainly did here. he tells about the contents of a lot of those documents,and also shares theories about what actually happened,though he doesn't claim to know all. a lot of the documents are heavily redacted,so there's that.
i hope to read more of his nonfiction works.
i hope to read more of his nonfiction works.
September 30, 2020
Foiled in his attempt to collect enough evidence to prove conclusively that the U.S. was engaged in biological warfare during the 1950s, Baker writes a different book, focused on his abortive research project itself. Laid out as diary entries, Baker tells us about his newly adopted dachshunds and April snow in Maine. In between, he lays out what he knows and how he got there, about the dropping of cholera-laden feathers over Korea, the spreading of wheat rust over Soviet fields, and the dispersal of cadmium dust over U.S. cities in order to study the dispersal patterns. In some cases, there is enough clear documentation for Baker to say yes, this happened. But in most cases, he can’t get all the way to yes. If he has the document, its redactions prevent him from making sense of it. Or he’s asked for the document, and tells us about his wait for it, still pending after years.
This is a book about truth, written in the maddening situation where it’s impossible to determine it. The military men (almost exclusively men) Baker interacts with have no interest in truth. It doesn’t compute for them. While evidence piled up about bug-infested and disease-laden feathers, dropped by plane or dispersed by hand over Korea and China during the Korean war, the U.S. reaction was always to pile ridicule on the accusers, and claim it was outrageous Communist propaganda. Baker lays out how bio-warfare (BW) campaigns came with their own cover stories, designed to obfuscate. And the official reaction to revelations about BW was often prescribed as “flat, indignant denial.”
I found this book both fascinating and baffling, hard to pinpoint why it isn't more hard-hitting. It may be that truth isn't what's important with the issue of BW or any other government atrocities--what's important is power. Getting unredacted versions of his documents and thus proving his contentions won't fundamentally change Baker's world, I fear. Within his world, he's angry, frustrated, but ultimately quite comfortable. The power to change the situation he wants to change has to lie elsewhere, and he doesn't venture to commit to a radical matriarchy, or any other solution out of range of his middle-class existence. Ultimately an absorbing and important book that's made me think very hard about where solutions might be found.
This is a book about truth, written in the maddening situation where it’s impossible to determine it. The military men (almost exclusively men) Baker interacts with have no interest in truth. It doesn’t compute for them. While evidence piled up about bug-infested and disease-laden feathers, dropped by plane or dispersed by hand over Korea and China during the Korean war, the U.S. reaction was always to pile ridicule on the accusers, and claim it was outrageous Communist propaganda. Baker lays out how bio-warfare (BW) campaigns came with their own cover stories, designed to obfuscate. And the official reaction to revelations about BW was often prescribed as “flat, indignant denial.”
I found this book both fascinating and baffling, hard to pinpoint why it isn't more hard-hitting. It may be that truth isn't what's important with the issue of BW or any other government atrocities--what's important is power. Getting unredacted versions of his documents and thus proving his contentions won't fundamentally change Baker's world, I fear. Within his world, he's angry, frustrated, but ultimately quite comfortable. The power to change the situation he wants to change has to lie elsewhere, and he doesn't venture to commit to a radical matriarchy, or any other solution out of range of his middle-class existence. Ultimately an absorbing and important book that's made me think very hard about where solutions might be found.
September 6, 2020
What Nicholson Baker really wanted to write was a book on the use of chemical and biological warfare by the United States in the Korean War, but despite tons of evidence alleging that use, he was never able to find the documentation he needed to clearly show it because U.S. agencies (mostly the CIA and the Air Force) never fully responded to his Freedom of Information Act requests. So, instead, he wrote this pseudo-diary, where each day he covers what he attempts to do (mail in requests, cross reference information, try to figure out what redacted text really says) and fills in the reader on what he knows.
So, as a history of the possible uses of chemical and biological agents by the United States government, the book is a bit of a mess. Baker from day to day will jump from topic to topic, and it is thus easy to get lost in the names and programs. And, understandably, there is a lot of missing information.
But, as documentation of how US agencies (and particularly the CIA) attempt to hide what they have done, even for events fifty years ago or older, the book absolutely succeeds. What Baker attempts to describe is both the frightening prospects of the military use of biological agents and the attempts by the CIA to use equally disturbing methods to destabilize foreign governments. None of it makes the US look good, and Baker documents the many, many ways agencies ignore, delay, and refuse requests to access government documents (in contravention of the Freedom of Information Act).
You may disagree with Baker's view of the role of the United States in foreign and military policy in the late twentieth century, but I think it's hard to argue that the documents of that era still need to be hidden away.
A few short notes:
1) This is the book where I learned that Baker goes to Quaker meetings.
2) Of Baker's work, I had only read The Mezzanine before (and loved it). You can see the same focus on detail here, but the prose is simpler here (which I think is needed for non-fiction).
3) The Mueller report came out while Baker was writing this book, and here are some of his reactions to the redactions contained therein: "The garbage bag of ignorance stretched tight over paragraphs and pages of national torment." "It's time to rage against redaction! Rage against the malign succotash of self-blinkered ignorance!"
So, as a history of the possible uses of chemical and biological agents by the United States government, the book is a bit of a mess. Baker from day to day will jump from topic to topic, and it is thus easy to get lost in the names and programs. And, understandably, there is a lot of missing information.
But, as documentation of how US agencies (and particularly the CIA) attempt to hide what they have done, even for events fifty years ago or older, the book absolutely succeeds. What Baker attempts to describe is both the frightening prospects of the military use of biological agents and the attempts by the CIA to use equally disturbing methods to destabilize foreign governments. None of it makes the US look good, and Baker documents the many, many ways agencies ignore, delay, and refuse requests to access government documents (in contravention of the Freedom of Information Act).
You may disagree with Baker's view of the role of the United States in foreign and military policy in the late twentieth century, but I think it's hard to argue that the documents of that era still need to be hidden away.
A few short notes:
1) This is the book where I learned that Baker goes to Quaker meetings.
2) Of Baker's work, I had only read The Mezzanine before (and loved it). You can see the same focus on detail here, but the prose is simpler here (which I think is needed for non-fiction).
3) The Mueller report came out while Baker was writing this book, and here are some of his reactions to the redactions contained therein: "The garbage bag of ignorance stretched tight over paragraphs and pages of national torment." "It's time to rage against redaction! Rage against the malign succotash of self-blinkered ignorance!"
October 24, 2020
This was a very strange format for approaching the topic, but it was really nice and meditative throughout.
The title and the cover make it clear that the book will be "about" the Freedom of Information Act, but they don't really get across the idea that the book really addresses historical questions of chemical and biological weapons and their use during the Korean War, a topic on which Baker is apparently deeply knowledgeable. The book is presented as a daily diary for several months, and in each day's entry he provides some background on what he's already learned and how he's learned it, and gives some updates on his attempts to learn more through the Freedom of Information Act.
The thing is, you don't actually learn anything using the Freedom of Information Act most days, and the time scale at which that law operates is cartoonishly longer than day-by-day. (Despite the fact that the law requires responses in just a few weeks, he describes numerous requests that stretched out over many years... unfortunately, not that uncommon.)
So it ends up being an informative daily check-in with a very invested and passionate researcher who is working on the margins of a large body of knowledge. Not necessarily the way I'd choose to learn about either germ warfare or transparency law, but all in all a fascinating read.
The title and the cover make it clear that the book will be "about" the Freedom of Information Act, but they don't really get across the idea that the book really addresses historical questions of chemical and biological weapons and their use during the Korean War, a topic on which Baker is apparently deeply knowledgeable. The book is presented as a daily diary for several months, and in each day's entry he provides some background on what he's already learned and how he's learned it, and gives some updates on his attempts to learn more through the Freedom of Information Act.
The thing is, you don't actually learn anything using the Freedom of Information Act most days, and the time scale at which that law operates is cartoonishly longer than day-by-day. (Despite the fact that the law requires responses in just a few weeks, he describes numerous requests that stretched out over many years... unfortunately, not that uncommon.)
So it ends up being an informative daily check-in with a very invested and passionate researcher who is working on the margins of a large body of knowledge. Not necessarily the way I'd choose to learn about either germ warfare or transparency law, but all in all a fascinating read.
September 24, 2022
Baseless by Nicholson Baker is a chronology of the author’s three-month attempt to extract information (largely) regarding the U.S. government’s experimentation with biological weapons, primarily in the 1940’s and 1950’s, by making requests via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) – attempts which were often indefinitely delayed, when the requested information might uncover inexplicable or unethical actions. From page two:
“Isn’t it against the law for government agencies to delay their responses to FOIA requests? Yes, it is: the mandated response time in the law is twenty days, not including Saturday’s, Sunday’s, and holidays, and if one agency must consult with another agency before releasing a given document, the consultation must “happen with all practicable speed.” And yet there is no speed. There is, on the contrary, deliberate Pleistocenian ponderousness. Some responses, especially from intelligence agencies, come back after a ten year wait. The National Archives has pending at least one FOIA request that is twenty-five years old. “Old enough to rent a car,” said the National Security Archive, a group at George Washington University that works to get documents declassified.”
Twenty-five years is somewhat longer than twenty days and strains the interpretation of “all practicable speed.” This isn’t stated specifically, but they just don’t want to respond. There is implied fear that so doing will reveal actions taken against individuals, communities, or countries that the various agencies would prefer not be exposed. One can understand this fear: such information could lead to protracted (and expensive) lawsuits or to war. But then one wonders: why implement and maintain the FOIA at all?
There is also the issue of redaction. Yes, some material is released, though so severely censored as to leave it semantically null. At one point, Baker explains, “In most cases, the redactions were done to protect the Department of Energy and the Atomic Energy Commission from embarrassment… And of course, embarrassment is not covered by the Freedom of Information Act.”
The author later sums up his frustrations: “I wonder if I’ll be able to read this document without blacked out lines before I die.���
The information Baker seeks is – there’s no other word for it – terrifying. In context of COVID-19, this treatise makes one wonder if the disease itself was concocted somewhere (even in the U.S.), potentially as a weapon that somehow got away from its creators.
Reading about the thoroughness of destruction and death contemplated by military branches in the aftermath of World War II and during the Korean and Viet Nam wars, one wonders how the human race has existed this long. We now endure COVID and will to a degree do so forever, unless some later-created or enhanced pathogen wipes us all out first. These are not pleasant outcomes. How have we survived this sort of irrational-war lunacy this long?
The saving graces of this volume – that is, those of the book itself, not of the clandestine biological-warfare schemes – are the personal, family tidbits the author drops in at the front of each chapter. How are the kids? The pets? What’s the wife up to? How’s the weather? What’s for dinner? These snippets help to anchor the reader, to prevent him or her from being swept up and drowned in the torrent of heinousness.
Nicholson Baker is an excellent writer. His uncomplicated and direct signature style offers highly readable fiction and non-fiction alike, no matter the tale or the subject matter. That said, Baseless, the true story of his (and others’) struggles in exercising the FOIA is as chilling a description of behind-the-scenes government as one can imagine. He pieces together the deeds of various scientists, politicians, universities, and entities (including the Library of Congress) in creating biological weapons and covertly testing them on the crops, livestock, and people of other countries and our own.
Terms including “government” and “military” and “insanity” repeatedly come to mind in reading about this research, particularly following dozens of pages of BW (biological warfare) material detailing testing done on U.S. cities under the guise of “hiding” the metropolises under “fog” in case of war. How many were sickened or killed by this testing, their families and the general populations having been lied to about the chemicals sprayed into the air. This opens a colossal can of worms, regarding secret endeavors. Again: terrifying.
Lastly, Baker loves libraries. He laments the wartime takeover of portions of the Library of Congress for use in research regarding how best to destroy foreign cities. To make room for all the needed staff, they microfilmed much of the existing printed material then destroyed it. An enormous cultural loss.
In the end, he states: “Every U.S. government document that’s more than fifty years old should be released in full, right now. No redactions. As a first step.” One can only wonder what the repercussions would be. And we all know: nice try, but it ain’t gonna happen.
“Isn’t it against the law for government agencies to delay their responses to FOIA requests? Yes, it is: the mandated response time in the law is twenty days, not including Saturday’s, Sunday’s, and holidays, and if one agency must consult with another agency before releasing a given document, the consultation must “happen with all practicable speed.” And yet there is no speed. There is, on the contrary, deliberate Pleistocenian ponderousness. Some responses, especially from intelligence agencies, come back after a ten year wait. The National Archives has pending at least one FOIA request that is twenty-five years old. “Old enough to rent a car,” said the National Security Archive, a group at George Washington University that works to get documents declassified.”
Twenty-five years is somewhat longer than twenty days and strains the interpretation of “all practicable speed.” This isn’t stated specifically, but they just don’t want to respond. There is implied fear that so doing will reveal actions taken against individuals, communities, or countries that the various agencies would prefer not be exposed. One can understand this fear: such information could lead to protracted (and expensive) lawsuits or to war. But then one wonders: why implement and maintain the FOIA at all?
There is also the issue of redaction. Yes, some material is released, though so severely censored as to leave it semantically null. At one point, Baker explains, “In most cases, the redactions were done to protect the Department of Energy and the Atomic Energy Commission from embarrassment… And of course, embarrassment is not covered by the Freedom of Information Act.”
The author later sums up his frustrations: “I wonder if I’ll be able to read this document without blacked out lines before I die.���
The information Baker seeks is – there’s no other word for it – terrifying. In context of COVID-19, this treatise makes one wonder if the disease itself was concocted somewhere (even in the U.S.), potentially as a weapon that somehow got away from its creators.
Reading about the thoroughness of destruction and death contemplated by military branches in the aftermath of World War II and during the Korean and Viet Nam wars, one wonders how the human race has existed this long. We now endure COVID and will to a degree do so forever, unless some later-created or enhanced pathogen wipes us all out first. These are not pleasant outcomes. How have we survived this sort of irrational-war lunacy this long?
The saving graces of this volume – that is, those of the book itself, not of the clandestine biological-warfare schemes – are the personal, family tidbits the author drops in at the front of each chapter. How are the kids? The pets? What’s the wife up to? How’s the weather? What’s for dinner? These snippets help to anchor the reader, to prevent him or her from being swept up and drowned in the torrent of heinousness.
Nicholson Baker is an excellent writer. His uncomplicated and direct signature style offers highly readable fiction and non-fiction alike, no matter the tale or the subject matter. That said, Baseless, the true story of his (and others’) struggles in exercising the FOIA is as chilling a description of behind-the-scenes government as one can imagine. He pieces together the deeds of various scientists, politicians, universities, and entities (including the Library of Congress) in creating biological weapons and covertly testing them on the crops, livestock, and people of other countries and our own.
Terms including “government” and “military” and “insanity” repeatedly come to mind in reading about this research, particularly following dozens of pages of BW (biological warfare) material detailing testing done on U.S. cities under the guise of “hiding” the metropolises under “fog” in case of war. How many were sickened or killed by this testing, their families and the general populations having been lied to about the chemicals sprayed into the air. This opens a colossal can of worms, regarding secret endeavors. Again: terrifying.
Lastly, Baker loves libraries. He laments the wartime takeover of portions of the Library of Congress for use in research regarding how best to destroy foreign cities. To make room for all the needed staff, they microfilmed much of the existing printed material then destroyed it. An enormous cultural loss.
In the end, he states: “Every U.S. government document that’s more than fifty years old should be released in full, right now. No redactions. As a first step.” One can only wonder what the repercussions would be. And we all know: nice try, but it ain’t gonna happen.
March 21, 2021
I seem to have become someone who reads Baker's non-fiction but not his fiction. There are some authors who split their efforts between fiction and non-fiction but I only read the non-fiction - well, OK, I'm thinking of one particular author, Paul Theroux. That is, at some point I did read their works of fiction but stopped. The non-fiction I continue to read.
Baker sought (and still seeks) conclusive indication of whether the United States (government) chose to use chemical and/or biological agents during the Korean War (1950-53) against the North Korean and Chinese armies and the North Korean people. It's quite clear (reading this) that we (or our government) developed the capacity to do so, but did we try it out? He does this via research in the National Archives and other institutions (including the Library of Congress) as well as via numerous FOIA requests submitted to the CIA, the Dept of State, and other federal agencies.
Baker's original plan seems to have been to publish a book of his findings organized in the usual way such an investigative book would be, but because of the endless delays from the FOIA process and the vast number of redactions in what is released to the public either via FOIA or other means, he switched to a diary of his work on this for several months in early 2019 (roughly two years ago), mixing together observations about the process of the work he was doing, summaries of what he learns cumulatively, and commentary on the failures of the present FOIA process and others that declassify information. At the end he brings what he has learned about his original question (did we or didn't we?) to a provisional conclusion and makes some final recommendations about decades old classified information, clearly a subject he has strong views on.
The book is slightly curious in that as a kind of diary Baker also mentions in most chapters (if not all of them) something about his dogs, his life in Maine, and his wife. I assume the idea is to remind the reader that this isn't the usual sort of book that it may sometimes seem to be.
There are several chapters that look at the post WWII Air Research Division of the Library of Congress from which I learned that I didn't know the history of LC as well as I thought I did. (Each chapter is for a particular day, but some are lengthy descriptions describing discoveries of what happened decades ago while others are only a few pages.) Baker makes some connections in this part of the book with some of his conclusions put forward in his book "Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper" (published almost 20 years ago) that is a criticism of the transition to microfilming of library materials, particularly (but not only) newspapers. I'm not so sure about his thinking on this topic but it is presented here in passing. Still, one is reminded he also has strong feelings on that topic.
There is much discussion of the decision-making to develop chemical and biological weapons and of the people who seem to have had the largest roles in leading these efforts. I was aware of the role of Vannevar Bush but not of the role of George Kennan. My view of George Kennan as a historical figure is now "under review" I guess. Another significant figure I had not even heard of before.
As it happens, I am familiar with one example of the US research done in support of chemical warfare during this period that has been declassified and put online in full. This book is about the technology and not the decision-making about whether to use such weapons and who they would be used against.
Military problems with aerosols and nonpersistant gases, United States. Office of Scientific Research and Development. National Defense Research Committee (issuing body) Publication date 1946.
Baker sought (and still seeks) conclusive indication of whether the United States (government) chose to use chemical and/or biological agents during the Korean War (1950-53) against the North Korean and Chinese armies and the North Korean people. It's quite clear (reading this) that we (or our government) developed the capacity to do so, but did we try it out? He does this via research in the National Archives and other institutions (including the Library of Congress) as well as via numerous FOIA requests submitted to the CIA, the Dept of State, and other federal agencies.
Baker's original plan seems to have been to publish a book of his findings organized in the usual way such an investigative book would be, but because of the endless delays from the FOIA process and the vast number of redactions in what is released to the public either via FOIA or other means, he switched to a diary of his work on this for several months in early 2019 (roughly two years ago), mixing together observations about the process of the work he was doing, summaries of what he learns cumulatively, and commentary on the failures of the present FOIA process and others that declassify information. At the end he brings what he has learned about his original question (did we or didn't we?) to a provisional conclusion and makes some final recommendations about decades old classified information, clearly a subject he has strong views on.
The book is slightly curious in that as a kind of diary Baker also mentions in most chapters (if not all of them) something about his dogs, his life in Maine, and his wife. I assume the idea is to remind the reader that this isn't the usual sort of book that it may sometimes seem to be.
There are several chapters that look at the post WWII Air Research Division of the Library of Congress from which I learned that I didn't know the history of LC as well as I thought I did. (Each chapter is for a particular day, but some are lengthy descriptions describing discoveries of what happened decades ago while others are only a few pages.) Baker makes some connections in this part of the book with some of his conclusions put forward in his book "Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper" (published almost 20 years ago) that is a criticism of the transition to microfilming of library materials, particularly (but not only) newspapers. I'm not so sure about his thinking on this topic but it is presented here in passing. Still, one is reminded he also has strong feelings on that topic.
There is much discussion of the decision-making to develop chemical and biological weapons and of the people who seem to have had the largest roles in leading these efforts. I was aware of the role of Vannevar Bush but not of the role of George Kennan. My view of George Kennan as a historical figure is now "under review" I guess. Another significant figure I had not even heard of before.
As it happens, I am familiar with one example of the US research done in support of chemical warfare during this period that has been declassified and put online in full. This book is about the technology and not the decision-making about whether to use such weapons and who they would be used against.
Military problems with aerosols and nonpersistant gases, United States. Office of Scientific Research and Development. National Defense Research Committee (issuing body) Publication date 1946.
June 9, 2025
Despite A Box of Matches being published 17 years earlier, the vignettes of Baker's everyday life in this book seemed to match the vibe of the former so well that all I can really say is "Wow, this man has a nice, boring life."
Not really being a fan of Baker's fiction, I was pleased to discover that, quotidian digressions aside, this book is fascinating. Frustratingly inconclusive in a way that will likely repel a lot of would-be readers, but true to life. Baker wanted to write a book about US usage of biological weapons in Korea and elsewhere, and he manages to despite the evidence he believes exists being maddeningly redacted and at the whims of bureaucracy.
The title suggests the book is about grappling with that bureaucracy, which it isn't really—the heart of the book is what Baker had wanted to write all along, and my not knowing much about the CIA or clandestine activity history, other than that Muse song and that Ted guy who loved trees or something, proved to be a benefit, as I learned an awful lot.
I doubt the general conceit of this book, that US intelligence services are deeply morally bankrupt and should have their secrets brought to light, is anything surprising to a would-be reader, and I do find Baker's general politics willfully naive—it's easy to agree with him, but nothing he says provokes much more than a sigh and a "what-can-you-do?"
I do wonder to myself where my moral responsibility begins and ends when it comes to being complicit or engaged in groups or organisations causing tangible and unacceptable harm. Am I a cog in a wheel of some infernal engine? Only in the sense that everyone is, if you are a devout environmentalist or anti capitalist. Since 'everyone' is as culpable, if not more, than I am, I don't feel any shame or guilt about how I live my life now. Lucky me. But how far am I willing to go?
I noticed one or two reviews of this book expressing indignation at Baker's juxtaposition of feeding his dogs and criticising people like Henry Kissinger and Vannevar Bush. The author is on a moral high horse, while the men he criticised made significant efforts to protect their country, or make their world more peaceful, or whatever. Baker isn't exactly calling for the hanging of Mike Pence with his requests to declassify these documents. I can't criticise a writer for not having that grand panacea to all of realpolitik's ills.
When I read about this stuff, I half wonder if there's any point in knowing, since I doubt I can do anything to better the world. The problem of evil. This review, too, is petering out into a meditative and unhappy silence.
Not really being a fan of Baker's fiction, I was pleased to discover that, quotidian digressions aside, this book is fascinating. Frustratingly inconclusive in a way that will likely repel a lot of would-be readers, but true to life. Baker wanted to write a book about US usage of biological weapons in Korea and elsewhere, and he manages to despite the evidence he believes exists being maddeningly redacted and at the whims of bureaucracy.
The title suggests the book is about grappling with that bureaucracy, which it isn't really—the heart of the book is what Baker had wanted to write all along, and my not knowing much about the CIA or clandestine activity history, other than that Muse song and that Ted guy who loved trees or something, proved to be a benefit, as I learned an awful lot.
I doubt the general conceit of this book, that US intelligence services are deeply morally bankrupt and should have their secrets brought to light, is anything surprising to a would-be reader, and I do find Baker's general politics willfully naive—it's easy to agree with him, but nothing he says provokes much more than a sigh and a "what-can-you-do?"
I do wonder to myself where my moral responsibility begins and ends when it comes to being complicit or engaged in groups or organisations causing tangible and unacceptable harm. Am I a cog in a wheel of some infernal engine? Only in the sense that everyone is, if you are a devout environmentalist or anti capitalist. Since 'everyone' is as culpable, if not more, than I am, I don't feel any shame or guilt about how I live my life now. Lucky me. But how far am I willing to go?
I noticed one or two reviews of this book expressing indignation at Baker's juxtaposition of feeding his dogs and criticising people like Henry Kissinger and Vannevar Bush. The author is on a moral high horse, while the men he criticised made significant efforts to protect their country, or make their world more peaceful, or whatever. Baker isn't exactly calling for the hanging of Mike Pence with his requests to declassify these documents. I can't criticise a writer for not having that grand panacea to all of realpolitik's ills.
When I read about this stuff, I half wonder if there's any point in knowing, since I doubt I can do anything to better the world. The problem of evil. This review, too, is petering out into a meditative and unhappy silence.
July 26, 2020
This book is written in a diary format. The author warned that the book is about the frustration of waiting (years) for documents from government agencies that should be made available to the public through the Freedom of Information Act. However, in an act of defiance, sentences, paragraphs and sometimes even pages are whited/blacked out under the guise of maintaining national security. The frustration kicked in around the 52% mark. I got really sick of the format and how the author would include documents with missing words. The author would reference books and interviews in an attempt to fill in the blanks. Then he would bring up the content of the document in another chapter/entry to compare it to another. It was as if he was saying, “look, I was right”, but it felt repetitive and unorganized.
I would have preferred it if the book was organized by topic, but the diary format made that impossible. I cannot get too upset because there was a warning at the start of the book. Also the author has been looking into the history of biological, chemical and radiation warfare since 2009 and requesting documents since 2012. I appreciate his effort and I learned a lot despite suffering through the last half of the book. For that reason I could not give it a rating below 3 stars.
I would have preferred it if the book was organized by topic, but the diary format made that impossible. I cannot get too upset because there was a warning at the start of the book. Also the author has been looking into the history of biological, chemical and radiation warfare since 2009 and requesting documents since 2012. I appreciate his effort and I learned a lot despite suffering through the last half of the book. For that reason I could not give it a rating below 3 stars.
October 14, 2020
An excellent meditation on conducting research as told through the author's journey through FOIA requests about the Korean War. Specifically, much of the book deals with the evidence of the U.S.'s chemical and biological weapon development in the years following World War II up through the Korean War. In trying to write that book, the author felt stymied by FOIA requests (especially to the Air Force and CIA) and so wrote instead about the process of conducting research through government records. So in addition to a detailed account of biological weapon testing, there's a history of the CIA, a history of the FOIA, and a few other things thrown in.
Overall, it's a great read, even if it's a little long and unfocused. (There are a lot of details and narrative threads, but the organization of the book is in the form of daily diary entries by the author, which go off in different directions. It's a fun change of pace from traditional history books, but the alternative structure does make it hard to focus at times.)
Baker is a wonderful and thoughtful writer and obviously put a lot of time and energy into crafting this book, and it shows.
Overall, it's a great read, even if it's a little long and unfocused. (There are a lot of details and narrative threads, but the organization of the book is in the form of daily diary entries by the author, which go off in different directions. It's a fun change of pace from traditional history books, but the alternative structure does make it hard to focus at times.)
Baker is a wonderful and thoughtful writer and obviously put a lot of time and energy into crafting this book, and it shows.
December 17, 2020
Subtitled “My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act”
As earnestly as the government has thwarted discovery of this material, what Baker did discover, through FOIA requests, is, in a word, horrifying. The atrocities we attributed to alien nations we did ourselves, to them: infected feathers dropped from planes, rice crops poisoned, diseases on the loose from labs.
Nicholson enumerates the professional men, inured to death and destruction by - what? - their WWII service? - who served in covert weapons development programs in the 1950s. I learned that an intellectual light of information science, Vannevar Bush, was also and mostly known as a big fan of germ warfare. Baker calls them out, angrily (he reads the audiobook), as smug frat boys, cavalier regarding the human costs of their programs.
The facts seem even more horrible than the atomic bombing of Japan and subsequent bomb testing in the South Pacific - because they were, and remain, secret and unacknowledged.
This book is so troubling, but so worth it if you seek to know what kind of weapons your country has used in your name.
As earnestly as the government has thwarted discovery of this material, what Baker did discover, through FOIA requests, is, in a word, horrifying. The atrocities we attributed to alien nations we did ourselves, to them: infected feathers dropped from planes, rice crops poisoned, diseases on the loose from labs.
Nicholson enumerates the professional men, inured to death and destruction by - what? - their WWII service? - who served in covert weapons development programs in the 1950s. I learned that an intellectual light of information science, Vannevar Bush, was also and mostly known as a big fan of germ warfare. Baker calls them out, angrily (he reads the audiobook), as smug frat boys, cavalier regarding the human costs of their programs.
The facts seem even more horrible than the atomic bombing of Japan and subsequent bomb testing in the South Pacific - because they were, and remain, secret and unacknowledged.
This book is so troubling, but so worth it if you seek to know what kind of weapons your country has used in your name.
Read
February 25, 2021Baker, intrepid investigator and archives hound, tries to answer the question 'did the US use biological warfare in the 1950s?' His search starts with tantalizing hints of it during the Korean War with Communist claims and American denials but deep in CIA files are hints of same. The more Baker searches the further afield the tale moves-from feather bombs and Q fever to hog cholera in East Germany and coffee tree sabotage in Guatemala and much more. Baker also has much to say about CIA vigilence over keeping secret 80 year old papers and indiscriminate redaction all in violation of the FOI Act. What is clear is that governments that can produce BW almost assuredly will and scientists are willing to lend a hand. Baker organizes this book as a diary and includes snippets of his peaceful life in Maine which makes the horrible means of war discussed here even more horrible.
November 2, 2021
A journal outlining frustration in obtaining information from the federal government, responses pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act being a waiting game. As in, the government appears to be waiting for the requester to get worn out and go away.
Interspersed with these laments are fragments of documents outlining government intelligence and biological weapons developments. All quite terrifying.
Whether any of the United States' efforts in this regard were of merit is a topic ripe for discussion in this time of uncertainty about how it came to pass that a deadly virus that swept the world emerged from China.
The writer does not conceal his agenda. That which has been classified must be de-classified, the better with which the people may know what those whom they elected have done.
Interspersed with these laments are fragments of documents outlining government intelligence and biological weapons developments. All quite terrifying.
Whether any of the United States' efforts in this regard were of merit is a topic ripe for discussion in this time of uncertainty about how it came to pass that a deadly virus that swept the world emerged from China.
The writer does not conceal his agenda. That which has been classified must be de-classified, the better with which the people may know what those whom they elected have done.
January 4, 2022
I think it would do some good here in the U.S. if more people read this book. Many actions taken by the government, supposedly on behalf of the American people, as outlined here, shock & horrify. Baker ought to be commended for taking on this project. As the book hints at, I imagine the psychological stress of reviewing CIA files about preparations for germ warfare and other insidious, morally reprehensible activities such as the coup in Guatemala would be significant. As an American I'm deeply discouraged by what I learned from this book but encouraged by Baker's courageous attempt to tell this story as well as he might, given the amount of redaction plaguing the documents he had to work with.
April 7, 2025
Nick’s goal here is to make the case that FOIA have the teeth it was intended and that government secrecy in the US be diminished and that documents more than 50 years old be released in unredacted condition. In pursuit of his case study, he outlines his pursuit of documents related to biological warfare, especially during the Korean War, and the resistance he has encountered using the Freedom of Information Act in the US.
In the course of his book he casts his suspicions on the role of the CIA throughout its history and hints at a stark hypocrisy that haunts America and ought to cause people to regard it with closer scrutiny.
In the course of his book he casts his suspicions on the role of the CIA throughout its history and hints at a stark hypocrisy that haunts America and ought to cause people to regard it with closer scrutiny.
October 10, 2022
This was tough to rate. The content about what the US did during the Korean War and Cold War is both fascinating and repugnant.
However, it's one of those books where it's interesting, and yet, boring.
I thought I'd find the insight into the FOIA process insightful and fun to learn about, but Baker doesn't dive into this much deeper than expressing how long it takes to have a request processed. Overall I felt it would have been best excluded all together.
If I could give it 2 and 1/2 stars, I would.
However, it's one of those books where it's interesting, and yet, boring.
I thought I'd find the insight into the FOIA process insightful and fun to learn about, but Baker doesn't dive into this much deeper than expressing how long it takes to have a request processed. Overall I felt it would have been best excluded all together.
If I could give it 2 and 1/2 stars, I would.
March 21, 2021
In this engaging, lucid, and often freewheeling mix of history, journalism, and memoir, recounts his frustration and disillusionment in his attempts to research a book about the possibility that the United States had used biological weapons in the Korean War. Baker was forced to wait years in some cases, while other requests through the Freedom of Information Act have been answered only with documents rendered inscrutable, or even illegible, by copious redaction.
April 10, 2021
I give up. Baker offers a spectrum of love to indifference to repulsed fascination for me. This one fell in the indifference camp, and I admit I failed this book. The Anthologist is one of my my favorite books ever, and I find House of Holes ridiculous.
Bring on the next one! I love the uncertainty and courageous risk-taking.
Bring on the next one! I love the uncertainty and courageous risk-taking.
May 15, 2021
I may be the rare reader who was more interested in the FOIA requests than biological warfare. Initially, I thought the author may be tending toward conspiracy theory, but he slowly convinced me with the preponderance of facts and governmental obfuscation. The journal format has its pros and cons. I had high expectations for this book, and it met them.
October 24, 2021
Must read on the evils, banality of US Bio weapons program. Depressingly informative. With COVID's origins murky and the people around it even murkier, this book provides a thorough lens to understand and question the role of the corporate + government double speak.
Must read recommendation.
Must read recommendation.
February 3, 2022
5 stars for the amount of information and the investigative work.
And even though I expected to like the format (especially after reading Tim O'Neill's "Chaos", which was also partially autobiographical):
1 star for how the book is composed. I got lost very quickly. Maybe this should have been a series of articles? Or a few shorter more focused books? I'm not sure.
And even though I expected to like the format (especially after reading Tim O'Neill's "Chaos", which was also partially autobiographical):
1 star for how the book is composed. I got lost very quickly. Maybe this should have been a series of articles? Or a few shorter more focused books? I'm not sure.
October 2, 2023
Of course, anything that this author writes will be worth reading. To put it mildly. Mr. Baker is amazing. This book left a mark. With absolutely no drama added, the author tells the reader shocking revelation followed by even more shocking revelation. I've read maybe a thousand books in my lifetime, this might be the most important one. Please read and share. This is scary stuff.
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