New Book Shows Symbols From a Secret World

The U.S. Department of Defense goes to great lengths to keep its secrets. It has built a complex barrier of "classified" stamps, passwords, biometric scanners and other security regimes to make sure the nation’s secrets do not slip out. But the patches on the uniforms of the men and women who work on the programs can contain some secrets of their own, San Francisco Bay area graduate student and art professor Trevor Paglen discovered. And you can find them, as he did, in the collections of the people who once worked in the field, and collect them the way others collect postage stamps or campaign buttons. In conversations with former workers from top-secret projects, Paglen told ABC News, he found out that the insignia patches for programs to develop pilotless drones, spy satellites and other high-tech wizardry are largely unclassified, despite the fact that some tell details their wearers could be punished for discussing publicly, according to Paglen. In a new book, "I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me," Paglen shows off an impressive collection of patches that appear to belong to a slew of secretive intelligence programs from the past 25 years.  Their imagery is sometimes cryptic, sometimes quite literal, and often humorous. In one, the hilt of a sword represented the design of a top secret aircraft designed by contractor Boeing’s "Phantom Works," whose appearance had never been made public. That project, known as the Bird of Prey, was declassified in 2002, projects identified by other patches in the book are still secret, Paglen asserted in an interview with ABC News. For example, he cited the patch for a program called "Desert Prowler." The imagery – a demonic genie rising from inside a book, a crow on its right shoulder and the roman numbers for "9" and "11" on either side – is cryptic. The stars – five on top and one on the bottom – may indicate the project is taking place in Area 51, according to Paglen, who said the project was for an unmanned plane being developed by Lockheed Martin. A spokesman for Lockheed Martin said he had no information on the program. The Pentagon referred questions to the Army’s Institute of Heraldry, which said that it could not discuss insignia relating to organizations considered top secret, and noted that some units create their own "unauthorized" designs. Humor is in evidence in the patches. One example, which Paglen says came from an Air Force Special Projects office that managed the F-117A stealth fighter program, bears a picture of a mushroom. The motto around it, "Semper en Obscurus," translates to "Always in the Dark." (Some Latin scholars may quibble that the motto’s correct spelling is "Semper in obscuris.") Some are even more direct: One black patch sports a question mark in the center beneath a crescent moon, and the letters "NOYFB" below.  Paglen notes that is the acronym for "None of Your F—ing Business." According to Paglen, the patch was used by a California flight squadron, which replaced their usual heraldry with it when flying classified missions to pick up secret aircraft for testing. The book is Paglen’s second.  In his first, "Torture Taxi," he and co-author A.C. Thompson revealed details about the CIA’s secretive "rendition" programs which kidnapped terrorist suspects and flew them to secret locations. Coincidentally, Paglen grew up around top secret projects – his father was an Air Force doctor who worked with test pilots for spy planes.  But if anything, Paglen said, his childhood experiences inured him to the classified world.  "One day we drove a friend’s dad to work," whom he later learned was employed by a classified government organization.  "We drove him to the middle of a cornfield, he got out and walked into the corn," he said. "You just don’t realize it when you’re around it." Click Here for Full Blotter Coverage.