Baseless. my search for secrets in the ruins of the Freedom of Information Act by Baker, Nicholson pub. by Penguin (Random House), NY - 2020 - - isbn 978-0735215757 - - - map of Lyme disease p.54 - images of redacted pages p.276-279 - Epilogue p. 377-379 -- Notes p. 381-434 -- index p.435-450 -- 450 pages. This book is about Bakers search for documentation on the USA Governments involvement with biological (germ) warfare and to a lesser extent chemical warfare, particularly during the Korean war in 1950-1952 and to a lesser extent other theatres of war - including the cold war as well as involvement in Central America, mostly Guatemala.

It is presented in a day by day fashion, each chapter headed by a date, starting in 9 March 2019 with the last one being 18 May 2019. Often the narrative includes some events from family life, enriching the feeling that this is a diary.

What Nicholson Baker finds, when he can puzzle out fact from the redactions, and other released documents is, to a person with normal sensibilities, horrifying and disgusting. After WWII the USA authorities saved Japanese germ scientists in their Unit 731 of the Japanese Army, which was the unit which did biological warfare. USA benefited from their horrible experiments during the war. Unit 731 did gruesome and lethal experiments on what are described as apes, but were in reality prisoners of war. Many died horrible deaths.

He used the newly established CREST website where the CIA posted redacted and declassified documents. Sometimes it was useful and sometimes frustrating. Baker also revealed that a large part of the Library of Congress was set aside for studying where the best targets for bombing and aerial operations would be most effective. Special people were hired to do this. Mostly after 1950 the biological warfare focused on ruining food stuff crops so that the target country had crop failures and could not sustain to conduct war. This was doubly hazardous in that blowback from the biological plant viruses and bugs could be accidentally released on the USA causing crop failures at home. Psychological warfare was also studied and used.

Baker reveals the names of people involved and decision makers high in government who signed off on the development and use of these weapons, including the US presidents. Vannevar Bush, George Kennan, Dean Rusk, Allen Dulles, Robert Nitze, James Forrestal, Dean Acheson, Richard Helms, Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, Cord Meyer, Caryl Haskins and specially Frank Wisner, who among other things hired crypto-Nazzis & former Hitlerjugend in Europe.

Baker also followed some of these people over time. Some continued to have distinguished careers, some went clinically crazy, and some committed sucide.

    Quote from page 114 - What is so clear to me, going through my hundreds of pages of notes from various declassified documents, is how wars introduce a red shift in human cruelty. It happens in battle, but also among civilians. Normally gentle people become somewhat cruel in wartime, and somewhat cruel people become monsters. You can see it in weapons development. Before a war, there's a lot of earnest talk of defensive research, but once the war begins, the fury builds and the idea of defense is replaced by the idea of killing as many human beings as possible. If you cant kill human beings, you kill experimental animals. Or you blow up miniture fake towns in the desert. - end quote.

Anthrax, Brucellosis, Tularemia, Q-fever (which got loose and infected some of the scientists), Plague, Clostridium botulinum, Stem Rust for cereal grains, and potato bugs were among the many evils tested. Also VKA or 2,4-D, what would later be called Agent Orange was also tested in Beaumont, TX & Terre Haute, IN.

Several methods were studied to distribute these unhealthy things, some bombs, some balloons, some even by birds.

Camp Detrick was home for a major lab, but other locations were in Beaumont, TX, Florida, Wisconsin, Anthrax was openly sprayed in the Dugway Proving ground in Utah. Many other places were used for labs and testing. Many of the people who worked in these places became sick and some died. Some tests using non-lethal aerosols for delivery systems testing were done on cities in USA, San Francisco, Minneapolis and a city on the US east coast.

Baker describes in some detail the process and what it is like requesting records at the Library of Congress, also how Freedom of Information Requests are made, processed and delayed. He also discusses the situations with others who are attempting to do historical research, much of it well over 50 years old and how their progress was often impeded.

What he seems to have missed is the depth of fear of the leadership in the USA of the communist threat after WWII. The warriors studied the numbers and came to realize that the armies of the West could be overrun by the communist armies and without an edge they would lose. Then there is the progression explored in the quote which heightens efforts.

~2021-07-26~

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