Baseless

April 1, 2020
The versatile author of fiction and nonfiction chronicles his "not entirely successful efforts to squeeze germs of truth from the sanitized documentary record of the U.S. government." In his latest, Baker, a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, among others, writes about his work from March 9, 2019 through May 19, 2019. During those months, he intensively explored mountains of documents to determine whether the government deployed illegal biological weapons during the Korean War. To search for truth about the biological weapons, Baker sent Freedom of Information Act requests to numerous government agencies, and he received radio silence. The daily diary pings between the flaws in the FIA--a 1966 law meant to encourage transparency by federal agencies--and the substance of what the author gleaned about biological warfare. To lighten a relentlessly downbeat narrative, Baker, ever articulate and witty, also introduces readers to his Maine home, which he shares with his wife and dogs, as well as the local weather, walks in the nearby wilderness, and other elements of his daily life. For readers who care about government openness, the narrative will be simultaneously illuminating and profoundly depressing. Because Congress failed to include enforcement mechanisms other than the possibility of time-consuming, expensive lawsuits, government agencies subject to the FIA violate it with impunity and suffer no penalties as a result. The custodians of the records often treat the documents as personal property rather than information financed, and thus owned, by taxpayers. The leading villains in Baker's saga, which he aptly describes as "a sort of case study, or diary, or daily meditation, on the pathology of government secrecy," are the Air Force, Army, and CIA, and his disclosures are rarely banal but rather consistently provocative and disturbing. Using both direct and circumstantial evidence, the author suggests that illegal weapons have been used against North Korea and perhaps against so-called enemy forces in other nations. Readers should be impressed by Baker's persistence, and most will end up charmed, however obliquely, by his obsessions.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from May 11, 2020
America’s biological warfare programs are the focus of epic struggles for transparency in this mordant exposé. Novelist and historian Baker (Substitute) recounts his years-long investigation into U.S. Air Force, Army, and CIA projects during the 1940s and 1950s, including efforts to weaponize bubonic plague– and yellow fever–infected mosquitoes; feather bombs that dispersed turkey plumage dusted with crop-ruining plant pathogens; and a germ-warfare experiment that fogged San Francisco with bacteria. Controversially, he argues that biological weapons were used by the U.S. in the Korean War to spread lethal Korean hemorrhagic fever to Communist soldiers. Baker documents his quest to prove that thesis by obtaining military and intelligence documents through Freedom of Information Act requests, which proves a Kafkaesque ordeal of endless waiting for heavily censored reports. (There’s no smoking gun, but his supporting evidence is substantial.) Written with bemused fascination and occasional outrage (“What a pointless horror,” Baker observes of a study that infected guinea pigs with brucellosis), this lucid yet freewheeling narrative unearths much queasy detail about biological weapons and their promoters. The result is a colorful, engrossing recreation of a sinister history—and a convincing case for opening government archives to public scrutiny. Agent: Melanie Jackson, the Melanie Jackson Agency.

Starred review from June 1, 2020
The seed of this book was planted more than 10 years ago, and its mission was to uncover the truth about Project Baseless, the U.S. program to, purportedly, deploy biological and chemical weapons in Korea in the early 1950s. The intrepid Baker's (Substitute, 2016) voluminous reading and tireless research turned into an obsession as he followed myriad forking paths of government subterfuge, secret meetings, code names, and other calling cards of Cold War spycraft. The nature of the project shifted as Baker submitted Freedom of Information Act requests, only to be repeatedly stymied by indefinite waiting periods for documents that have been redacted into indecipherability. Baker's effort to share his extensive knowledge has resulted in an awe-inspiring quest that reads like an adventure, a war story, and a scientific mystery of psychological suspense rolled into one. He uses a diary format, with daily entries from March 9 through May 18, 2019, that typically begin with brief asides about Baker's beloved dogs or the mundane household chores he undertakes before launching, once again, into the world of biological warfare and his country's ongoing attempts to hide its secrets. This approach proves to be an inspired choice as Baker's formidable narrative skill and tenacity provide for a thoroughly riveting account and powerful testimony to the need for truth.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

May 1, 2020

Baker (Substitute) challenges what he views as government interference in his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that would have assisted his research on United States bacterial and chemical warfare during the Korean War. This gripping, but at times rambling, narrative describes U.S. Air Force experiments at Fort Detrick, MD during the Korean War, when untold numbers of animals, and perhaps some humans, were killed in efforts to find more efficient ways to destroy crops, including the deliberate spread of Lyme disease. Although Baker emphasizes Project Baseless, he discusses similar projects during World War II and the Vietnam War. The book, based on a decade of research, is presented in diary form from March-May 2019 that includes anecdotes of Baker's life in Bangor, Maine with his wife and dogs, which provide a jarring contrast to stories of plagues and starvation. He holds the CIA and State Department accountable for ignoring or heavily redacting his requests, and calls for all government records more than 50 years old to be released unabridged. VERDICT This flowing account reveals the dark side of wartime strategies clouded by denials of FOIA requests. It will fascinate Cold War-era historians and readers concerned about access to government information.--Karl Helicher, formerly with Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2020

Researching a book on the possible U.S. deployment of biological weapons during the Korean War, Baker (Vox, Double Fold) found himself repeatedly waylaid by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), often waiting for years to receive material so heavily redacted that it might be unreadable. So instead he wrote a book about the process itself, condemning the limitations of FOIA and revealing dangerous programs he did discover.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.