Truthdig’s James Harris and Josh Scheer speak with Harry Helms, author of “Top Secret Tourism: Your Travel Guide to Germ Warfare Laboratories, Clandestine Aircraft Bases and Other Places in the United States You’re Not Supposed to Know About,” which his critics have called a handbook for terrorists. Helms explains why his work doesn’t threaten national security and what it’s like to visit some of the most secret sites in America.
"...Harris: Why do you think that this is a good book for others to read? What’s the most important chronicle you think you wrote here?
Helms: I think the whole purpose of this book was not really so much the purpose of a travel guide, but to make some of these sites transparent. We pay for this top-secret government, sometimes with our taxes, sometimes with curtailment of our liberties. And for people who purchase this thing, and who are really the owners of it, we have the right to know just exactly what is being done in our name and for what purposes. I’m not one of these Pollyannas who thinks you can conduct an entirely open government in a dangerous world. No. Obviously there are some military secrets that have to be kept secret. But [what] I’ve discovered doing this book is that most of these secrets relate to things like mismanagement, failed projects, ineptitude, waste and in some cases possible dishonesty. That’s what I want to explore, and that’s one reason that I find that a lot of these claims about national security are less about the nation’s security and more about the security of some of the people conducting these projects and wasting our money...
...Scheer: It seems like—. Are you recommending this for me? So, say, I want to go to Plum Island or the Nevada Test Site; we should handle this with care, right?
Helms: As I said in the book, visiting these sites is like visiting an art museum. You can look all you want, but you can’t touch. You can go up to the border, you can drive by the border, you can sit and look over the border, but don’t put a foot over. These are very highly guarded sites. You will be nailed, and chances are you will be fined and perhaps subject to imprisonment.
Scheer: Well, not just imprisonment, but what you were saying just a second ago about ... deadly force [being] authorized; I’d be kind of nervous about getting shot.
Helms: There are things you have to realize is when you step over the border in some of these areas, it’s almost like you’ve entered a foreign country. Local police cannot enter these sites. The local civil law enforcement authorities have no power or authorization whatsoever on these sites. It’s really almost akin to the fact that since the end of World War II, large sections of the U.S., particularly in the West, have been controlled by this occupying power. What I call the top-secret government, the one that directs these classified activities. The normal rules and regulations, etc., the rest of us have to live by, those are totally gone..."
