“I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me,”

Ichingcarpenter

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Mon Jan-31-11 02:19 PM
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“I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me,”

Inside the Black Budget

The book offers a glimpse of this dark world through a revealing lens — patches — the kind worn on military uniforms.“It’s a fresh approach to secret government,” Steven Aftergood, a security expert at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, said in an interview. “It shows that these secret programs have their own culture, vocabulary

.Military officials and experts said the patches are real if often unofficial efforts at building team spirit.

The classified budget of the Defense Department, concealed from the public in all but outline, has nearly doubled in the Bush years, to $32 billion. That is more than the combined budgets of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Those billions have expanded a secret world of advanced science and technology in which military units and federal contractors push back the frontiers of warfare.

The 75 patches he has assembled reveal a bizarre mix of high and low culture where Latin and Greek mottos frame images of spooky demons and sexy warriors, of dragons dropping bombs and skunks firing laser beams.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01patc.html

The Book and all the patches can be seen at The Nader Library..
Here are a few I picked out but there is 75 patches and the author
has found even more which help trace 'Black Ops money'

Nader Library Link: http://www.naderlibrary.com/icouldtellyou.patches.htm

One of the more recent patches from the "Ghost Squadron" based at Groom Lake. The design of the skull's helmet indicates that "Ghost" is a helicopter unit. The footprints on the helmet mark the trace of the "Jolly Green Giant," a symbol that represents helicopter search and rescue missions. This patch also seems to indicate that "G.H.O.S.T." is an acronym for the unit. The meaning of the acronym is unclear.

A LIFETIME OF SILENCE BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR

The origins and purpose of this patch remain obscure. The green figure holding the sword (or dagger) wears the cloak-and dagger garb often associated with black projects. There is a star in the northern hemisphere under the letter "S" and another red star in the American Southwest. The red star might refer to an operating location, but the patch provides no real clue as to where it might be. The Southwest is home to numerous classified units. Air Force Space Command in Colorado; Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico; White Sands, New Mexico; Groom Lake, Nevada; and the Tonopah Test Range are all possibilities, and there are many more.

The words "A Lifetime of Silence" no doubt refer to the fact that members of this unit or project cannot speak about what they do. The image of a "Green Door" is also obscure. Military intelligence officers have a tradition of working behind locked green vault doors, but the symbol is widely used in popular culture to designate an inaccessible place.

MINOTAUR

Minotaur is a still-classified program undertaken by Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs division, the Skunk Works. Although Minotaur remains obscure, rumor holds that the airframe shares a "family resemblance" with another Skunk Works program called Minion and may have served as a technology demonstrator for that program.

I posted about this book years ago on DU..