Emblems From Black Projects
Trevor Paglen spreads himself thin. The San Francisco area geologist is also an artist with an interest in black budget projects, a heritage from his father, who was an Air Force officer.
Paglen recently released a book entitled I Could Tell You, But Then You Would Have To Be Destroyed By Me, which is basically a small coffee table book filled with beautifully reproduced badges and patches from the world of black budget operations and military units. Some of them are so weird that I get the feeling that they are faked, but you can’t put it past the weird and mysterious people behind the scenes to create their own mystique, even beyond that which already exists.
Last week, I actually found one of the patches featured in the book for sale on ebay:
Paglen’s book describes this one as a commemoration of
…the August 17, 200 launch of a classified National Reconnaissance Office payload atop a Titan IV rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California. Clues in the patch’s imagery seem to indicate that the satellite in question was, in fact, an ONYX spy satellite..The triangular images on the patch represent ONYX satellites, all of which are in a reconnaissance orbit…Two of the filled-in symbols represent active ONYX satellites. The hollowed-out image represents “Lacrosse I,” which was de-orbited in 1997 after nine years in service (it was originally deployed form the Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-27.) The third solid shape represents that satellite being launched.
Paglen has also mounted art exhibits on secret CIA prisons and long-range photography of semi-secret military installations in the American Southwest. It would be interesting to get him on an edition of Radio Misterioso.
Incidentally, filmmaker Paul Kimball is in town and will be at least one of my guests on the program tomorrow night from 8-10PM PST at killradio.org (don’t forget the daylight savings time change!)
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Mar 08 2008 
March 9th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
This reminds me of a conversation with my coworker last week. “Drew you’re a science guy.” (pulls out his family photo notebook). NASA rockets with explosive warning signs in Alaska. I ask him if his dad knew any of the Nazi scientists. He said yes in Alabama — von Braun. I state so you know he supervised mass slave labor? Then I point out the U.S. brought in 1200 Nazi scientists, which surprised him.
This other dude I know collects Nazi coins and brazenly displays them to this homeless African-American lady with whom I’m friends. That really pissed her off but then I guess this U.S. black budget art work is “better.”
March 9th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
I think ol’ Trevor and some others are missing the concept of the “Friday patch” or “Morale patch.” Military unit patches are generally somber, serious and solemn (well, not _always_, but usually). Air Force, and probably Navy, policy allows aircrew to wear a less official patch on Fridays and sometimes while on TDY. Friday patches tend to be less sober, serious and solemn than the official version and incorporate sight gags, inside jokes, and parodies of the official patch. What you’ve got here, I think, isn’t the deep mystique of black ops but the military sense of humor (well, what the military thinks of as a sense of humor) at play. Oh, and there’s a whole article on those NRO patches at http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1033/1 that cites that same “devilish sense of humor.”
March 13th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Jimmy,
In the book, Paglen does in fact point out that these are unofficial emblems and patches.
I think that the patches do show a sense of humor, but you have to admit that a phrase like “We Own The Night” does suggest a inflated sense of self as well as a black (pun intended) sort of humor.
Thanks for the cool link!