Anne Jacobsen, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base (New York: Little, Brown, 2011) ("This book is about government projects and operations that have been hidden for decades, some for good reason, other for arguably terrible ones, and one that should never have happened at all. These operations took place in the name of national security and they all involved cutting-edge science. The last published words of Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, were 'Science is not everything. But science is very beautiful.' After reading this book, readers can decide what they think about what Oppenheimer said." "This is a book about black operations, government projects that are secret from Congress and secret from the people who make up the United States. To understand how black projects began, and how they continue to function today, one must start with the creation of the atomic bomb. The men who ran the Manhattan Project wrote the rules about black operations. The atomic bomb was the mother of all black projects and it is the parent from which all black operations have sprung." Id. at xii.).
Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (New York: Little, Brown, 2014) ("The army's herbicidal warfare program during the Vietnam War started in August 1961 and lasted until February 1971. More than 11.4 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed over approximately 24 percent of South Vietnam, destroying 5 million acres of uplands and forests and 500,000 acres of food crops--an area about eh size of the state of Massachusetts. An additional 8 million gallons of other anti crop agents, code-named Agents White, Blue, Purple, Pink, and Green, were also sprayed, mostly from C-123 cargo planes. Fritz Hoffmann was one of the earliest known U.S. Army Chemical Corps scientists to research the toxic effects of dioxin--possibly in the mid 1950s but for certain in 1959--as indicated in what has become known as the Hoffmann Trip Report. This document is used in almost every legal record pertaining to litigation by U.S. military veterans against the U.S. government and chemical manufacturers for its usage of herbicides and defoliants in the Vietnam War." "It is the long-term effects of the Agent Orange program that Gabriella Hoffmann believes would have ruined her father, had he known. 'Agent Orange turned out not only to defoliate trees but to cause great harm in children, ' Gabriella Hoffmann says. 'Dad was dead by then and I remember thinking, Thank God. It would have killed him to learn that. He was a gentle man. He wouldn't hurt a fly." Id. at 388.).
Annie Jacobsen, The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top Secret Military Research Agency (New York: Little, Brown, 2015) ("The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA as it is known, is the most powerful and most productive military science agency in the world. It is also one of the most secretive and . . . the least investigated. Its mission is to create revolutions in military since and to maintain technological dominance over the rest of the world." Id at 5. "One of the first insect cyborgs was unveiled in 2009. Inside a DARPA-funded laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor Michael Maharbiz and his colleagues coupled a green June beetle with a machine. The scientists implanted electrodes into the brain and wings of a 2-centimeter-long beetle and sewed a radio receiver onto its back. By remotely delivering electrical pulses to the beetle's brain, they were able to start and stop the beating of the beetle's wings, thereby steering and controlling the insect flight." "In 2014, DARPA scientists working at North Carolina State University again broke new ground, this time with the Manduca sexta moth, or goliath worm, an insect with a metamorphic life cycle that lasts forty days. During the late pupa stage, DARPA scientist Dr, Alper Bozkurt and his team surgically inserted an electrode in the dorsal thorax of the moth, between its neck and abdomen. 'The tissue develops around the implanted electrodes and secures their attachment to the insect's body over the course of a few days,' explains team member Alexander Verderber. 'The electrodes emerges as a part of the insect body in the final adult stage as a moth.' By 'taking advantage of the rebuilding of the insect's entire tissue system during metaporphic development,' says Verderber, the scientists were able to create a steerable cyborg, part insect, part machine. 'One use of the biohybrid would be for use in applications such as search and rescue operations,' Bozkurt days. DARPA scientists working on such cyborg programs invariably describe the programs as designed to help society. Certainly subjects like free will, ethics, and the consequences of manufacturing cyborgs are worthy of and ripe for discussion. Another question: What are DARPA's plans for augmenting humans with machines?" Id at 412-413.).
Annie Jacobsen, Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis (New York: Little, Brown, 2017) (See Dick Teresi, "Weird Vibrations,"NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/30/2017.).
