Political Science : Conspiracy

The adventurous, insightful, and often chilling story of a young geographer’s road trip through the underworld of U.S. military and CIA “black ops” sites. Trevor Paglen is a scholar in geography, an artist, and a provocateur. His research into areas that officially “don’t exist” leads him on a globe-trotting adventure into a vast, undemocratic, and uncontrolled black empire—the unmarked spots on a map, where our military conducts its most clandestine operations. Run by an amorphous group of government agencies and private companies, this empire’s annual budget is over $40 billion, yet almost no one knows how it works or what it does. Paglen spies on the covert site at Groom Lake, Nevada, taking photos from a mountain top thirty miles away. He visits the widow of Walter Kazra, who, while working construction at Groom Lake, was poisoned by the toxic garbage pits there. The U.S. Air Force defense to his estate’s suit? The base does not exist. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case. Whether it’s from a hotel room in Vegas, secret prisons in Kabul, buried CIA aircraft in Central American jungles, Washington, D.C., suburbs, or a trailer in Shoshone Indian territory, Paglen’s reporting is impassioned, rigorous, relentless—and eye-opening. Blank Spots on the Map is an exposé of a world that, officially, isn’t even there. more...

Price: $25.95

In the tradition of A Civil Action and Gideon's Trumpet , Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Barry Siegel unfolds the shocking true story behind the Supreme Court case that forever changed the balance of power in America. On October 6, 1948, a trio of civilian engineers joined a U.S. Air Force crew on a B-29 Superfortress, whose mission was to test secret navigational equipment. Shortly after takeoff the plane crashed, killing all three engineers and six others. In June 1949, the widows of the engineers filed suit against the government. What had happened to their men? they asked. Why had these civilians been aboard an Air Force plane in the first place?. But the Air Force, at the dawn of the Cold War, refused to hand over the accident reports and witness statements, claiming the documents contained classified information that would threaten national security. The case made its way up to the Supreme Court, which in 1953 sided with the Air Force in United States v. Reynolds . This landmark decision formally recognized the "state secrets" privilege, a legal precedent that has since been used to conceal conduct, withhold documents, block troublesome litigation, and, most recently, detain terror suspects without due-process protections. Even with the case closed, the families of those who died in the crash never stopped wondering what had happened in that B-29. They finally had their answer a half century later: In 2000 they learned that the government was now making available the top-secret information the families had sought long ago, in vain. The documents, it turned out, contained no national security secrets but rather a shocking chronicle of negligence. Equal parts history, legal drama, and exposé, Claim of Privilege tells the story of this shameful incident, its impact on our nation, and a courageous fight to right a wrong from the past. Placing the story within the context of the time, Siegel draws clear connections between the apocalyptic fear more...

Price: $12.99

This complete and up-to-date synopsis of the assassination of JFK (the actors, witnesses and investigators) weighs the different theories and looks at the drama as both a detective story and a defining moment in American mass psychology. more...

Price: $44.00

Ever since 9/11, investigative reporter Peter Lance has been leading the fight to expose the intelligence gaps that led to 9/11. Now, in the follow-up to his bestselling 1000 Years for Revenge , he returns with devastating new evidence that the government has been covering up its own counterterror failures since the mid-1990s -- and continues today. In Cover Up , Lance shows how the government chose again and again to sacrifice America's national security for personal motives and political conve more...

Price: $13.99

A gripping account of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln more...

Price: $17.55