Customer Reviews

I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When I first saw this book being offered to pre-order, I signed up immediately. I had read his previous book "Terror Taxi" about the U.S. Government's clandestine rendering program for terrorists and found it to be fascinating. I also am an enthusiast and fan of a lot of the U.S. military's aerospace "black projects"-especially black aircraft develpoment. I'm also into the patch insignia that a lot of these military organzations/units use to indirectly show the project they represent or support.

I think he has done a great job of research and packaging this project- from the cool patch emblazoned on the cover to the color pictures of each
patch described in the inside. A lot of effort went into this cool book!

Very tasty reading if you enjoy that sort of thing-which I do!

This is a truly unique book. You know this, to start, when you see that the cover has an actual embroidered patch embedded in it. The inscription around it, which forms the title of the book, is actually a translation of a Latin inscription on one of the patches in the book, strangely worded and of course rather obscure. When you open the book, you discover that the majority of what's here is a series of patches, all from the Air Force, that personnel involved in various "black" (secret) operations have worn on duty. The author bills himself an expert in this sort of thing, and he does seem to have some expertise. It's hard to know how much, though, because of course the Air Force won't confirm much of what he writes.

This is an interesting little book for the buff interested in this sort of thing. I would expect pretty much everyone else to be momentarily interested, then bored.

If you are at all interested in the military, insignias, secret projects, or just good conversational pieces, buy this book. Then take it for what it's intended. The author doesn't promise a comprehensive or even consistent summary of military patches or black ops; he's picked some of the more interesting emblems and thrown a few program tidbits in where he could. It's surface level insight into the secret world of black ops, and if we all knew about it, it wouldn't be very secret or black, would it? The photos are great, the back stories are interesting, and we enjoyed it so much I'm buying more as gifts for my the history/military buffs in my family (i.e., all the guys.)

Written by one of the co-authors of Torture Taxi (on the practice of extraordinary rendition), this strange little book might seem fun and slightly ridiculous with its tactile cover and small size, yet it is also fascinating and frightening, because it hints at the deadly serious operations and undertakings of a vast, top-secret military infrastructure - our own.

Paglen has tracked down and documented the badges/symbols that the Pentagon creates for its classified "black budget" programs. They represent a strange cornucopia of projects with peculiar names and unknown purposes. Their operatives collect and display these badges, behaving like a bizarre cross between Boy Scouts and gang members.

This is a nicely bound book with a patch embedded into the front cover. On the inside, it's mostly pictures with light commentary, so it's mostly a one-time read with little reference potential. The content is mostly speculative, and the patches aren't organized by symbology. I would have liked to see some patches from less secretive units using the same symbology for comparison.

It's a nice conversation starter, though.

The book itself is alright, the patches which are supposed to represent "black op" projects are well presented and each has a story to go along with them. The problem is that there is no way independently verify the stories.
I recently had the opportunity to listen to a presentation by the author, it was based on this book but also covered his other books (which IMHO are much more interesting and easier to independently verify) which were written on government rendition programs and secret bases.
The book overall is good but the stories sound more like vet stories you would hear in the VFW over a couple of pints.

It is a good book, but limited to Air Force only. Was expecting more of an all services review and even agencies. Most of the patches where simply Air Force RDT&E test pilot products. Again intresting, but very limitied.

No plot but a lot of pictures that were very entertaining if you are into those things, and I happen to be.

Trevor Paglen started out trying to write about classified air and space programs. Always an interesting area, especially when it results in amusing silliness. This book reminds me of the stealth aircraft model kit that was released by Testor in 1986, two years before the F 117 was declassified. The Air Force pressured the company to stop selling the model, but every time the company ask "Why?" the Air Force would start stumbling and mumbling. You can't coerce someone about something that "doesn't exist".

And so with these patches. They could be complete fabrications, and they could be directly off military uniforms, nobody can say one way or the other. Paglen does present the case for the patches' authenticity very well and includes a brief history of military patches (too brief for my tastes, but appropriate to this work).

And then there are the 60+ patches. Generally, Paglen does a good job describing the patches and his assessment of the significance of the symbolism. Some folks feel that any military symbolism is sinister, and that symbolism for secret military things is infinitely more sinister and disturbing. I found this collection of patches to be very diverse, with some humorous, some baffling, and one or two that I found fairly sinister (this from a Clive Barker fan...) The skunk with the WW I leather flyers cap was funny, even though it was alleged to be from a program more classified than the F-117. The smiley face with sunglasses and a zipper for a mouth was also worth a chuckle. Under the 'sinister' category, two stood out. One designated 'Minotaur', with a bull's skull with green eyes and wings was a little unsettling, and moreso for the absense of any text. The other was just two red eyes againd a black background with the caption "USAF Special Projects". That could be anything.

I didn't always agree with Paglen's interpretation of the iconics, and sometimes he didn't address what seem to be fairly obvious symbols. On one patch, the unit nickname was "Goat Suckers" and he launched into a discussion of a family of birds that included of that name, without considering the Chupacabra (goatsucker) of Puerto Rico that is described as looking like a creature from outer space. On another, the central figure was bracketed by Roman numerals "IX" and "XI", what seems like a reference to 9/11, but Paglen chose not to comment on this. Also the Space Warfare Center's Special Projects Division patch had some obvious symbols like the USAF Space Operations logo, but it also had the old "Flying Tigers" logo from the CBI theater of WWII, a suggestive icon and confusing in the context of space operations.

This book is great fun and will have conspiracy theorists in tailspins for years. I hope another volume is in the pipeline!

E.M. Van Court

I would agree with the author that this book is not complete. It is an excellent primer for a layman or even the experienced collector to learn the nuances of insignia design. Some of this is directly related to heraldry-or put another way, taken from the lineage of the patch or related to the mission of the unit it represents. In these cases, there is more information about areas 51 and 52, and at least some idea of their purposes. I was able to use the information in the book to give me an idea of what units might have worn patches I had thusfar been unable to identify. Thanks for writing it and I hope there are some followup volumes as more is learned.