Books like Secret Empire by Philip Taubman

In the height of the Cold War, a coalition of scientists, engineers, businessmen, and officials rewrote the rules of reconnaissance. From the secret test sites in Nevada to Lockheed’s Skunk Works in Burbank, they designed and launched the U‑2 and SR‑71 spy planes and the first Corona reconnaissance satellites. These high‑altitude and orbital platforms proved the myth of a Soviet missile gap and provided unprecedented data that shaped arms‑control agreements and modern warfare tactics. Philip Taubman traces the journey from the White House and the CIA to the Pentagon and clandestine assembly facilities in Palo Alto, revealing how ambition, technical hurdles, and inter‑agency rivalries were overcome. The book also examines how reliance on these powerful machines contributed to a decline in human intelligence, a factor implicated in the failure to foresee the September 11 attacks. Today, the lessons of the 1950s converge on the current fight against terrorism, underscoring the need for both space‑based surveillance and ground‑level human intelligence.

First publish date: 2000