The title Baseless is drawn from “Project Baseless,” an early 1950s plan to achieve “a large-scale Air Force–wide ‘practical capability’ in biological weapons at the earliest possible date, to be used against Russia and China in a total war.” Baker uses the word “baseless” throughout the book, in different contexts. The official position of the federal government during the 1950s was that “allegations of biological weapons use in the Korean War” were baseless. Baker deems baseless the arguments presented by the U.S. government for denying many of his FOIA requests and heavily redacting the most useful parts of documents he did receive. At the end of the book, he suggests that without question all U.S. government documents that are “more than fifty years old should be released in full, [with] no redactions.”

Historical review: Although the primary focus of the book is U.S. government activity during the Korean War, Baker’s story often goes outside that period. He explains early in the book:

Readers find their journey takes side trips to topics such as aerosol bug bombs and the plan to starve the Japanese into unconditional surrender, both of which happened during World War II.

Baseless does not have a typical table of contents with individual chapter titles and page numbers. Rather, it offers a list of sequential dates in early 2019, when Baker was writing the book. He could have chosen to begin his story near the end of World War II and then trace the development of the chemical and biological warfare tools through the Korean War and beyond. But he presents his story in a diaristic format, sequential only in the sense that it traces his daily thoughts from March 9, 2019 to May 18, 2019. As a result, readers do not get a clear sense of the historical development of these weapons over time but rather follow the scattered path of how Baker’s mind moved between different aspects of the history of weapons development, wherever his research (and his state of mind at the time) led him.

He intertwines his two primary storylines: the author’s unearthing of the covert biological and chemical weapons efforts of the U.S. government, and his coterminous efforts to extract that detail through FOIA requests that he and others filed. Of the two storylines, I am particularly interested in the FOIA one, as I have relied on the act to discover unique details for my own research. He and I agree that the Freedom of Information Act, although named with high expectations of making government more transparent, is a less-than-perfect tool. Baker’s stories about document denials and redactions are not surprising coming from a government that does not want itself seen in a negative light or have its activities scrutinized. But as he emphasizes throughout the book, these events happened 65–75 years ago and no one in the federal government today can be directly implicated in any alleged horrible acts.

Baker notes that some FOIA requests by his colleagues took up to 15 years to receive a response. One such request was made in 1996 and in 2012 a specialist at the National Archives had the gall to ask of the requester, “Please contact this office if you are still interested in pursuing this FOIA … request.” I agree with Baker’s question about the delays: what is the government hiding?

The record is exposed (or is it)?: His description of the testing and deployment of biological weapons is not for the faint of heart. Fort Detrick in Frederick, MD, was once the home of the U.S. biological weapons program. The base had an inventory of “mosquitoes infected with yellow fever, malaria and dengue” and “fleas infected with plague,” ready to be deployed against an enemy. So, were the weapons ever used?

One weapon was the “feather bomb,” which was designed to use feathers as a dispensing agent for biological weapons. A 1951 document explains that the bomb was intended to be used against enemy oat fields, particularly to ruin Soviet agricultural viability. It is unclear whether the weapon was ever produced and tested; Baker concludes, “It’s remotely possible, though perhaps eternally unprovable, that some of the anti-crop field tests … actually happened.”

Then there is Operation Green, a series of experiments in the early 1950s “aimed at infecting pigs with hog cholera.” In this case, Baker thinks the weapon may not only have been deployed, but used, “not in China in 1952 but in East Germany in 1953 and 1954.” He also summarizes seemingly senseless weapons tests and tallies the deaths of thousands of guinea pigs, mice, monkeys, dogs, and rabbits.

A problem with Baseless is that it never gives a sense of perspective on those activities. Readers are bombarded with examples of weapons ideas over hundreds of pages, some of which apparently never moved beyond the planning stage, others of which went much further. Baker often speculates about whether or not specific plans were ever implemented, frustrated by the extreme lengths the government has gone to hide precious details. After I read the book, I remembered certain of the details, but it was difficult to discern the most advanced and threatening of all of them in his hodgepodge of examples.

There are a number of topics that clearly raise Baker’s ire. On the FOIA side there are redactions and destruction of records by the government. “Redaction” refers to the scourge of all FOIA requesters: cases where the government either whites-out or blacks-out sections of key documents, in many cases targeting the most important information. Baker writes, “Redaction [is] a form of psychological warfare directed against historians, a way of wearing people down and making them go away.” As for records destruction, he gives the example of “Jose Rodriguez…, former director of the National Clandestine Service…, [who] destroyed ninety-two ‘enhanced interrogation’ tapes” during the George W. Bush administration. Although this is a more contemporary example, one wonders how many cases throughout history there are of the government destroying records, which in some cases is allowed by the Federal Records Act.

Baker is also appalled by the actions of the Central Intelligence Agency, not only in its covert approach to warfare, but also in its efforts to avoid disclosure of decades-old activities. His harshest words are reserved for those he refers to as “the germ-warfare people.” He writes:

I agree with much of Baker’s narrative, but there are a few obvious flaws. Although it is apparent from his research that the U.S. government took some absolutely awful actions regarding these weapons during the era under scrutiny, he readily accepts the narrative of governments like Cuba and China. As someone who is familiar with the FOIA request process and the option of appealing the government denials through the courts, I am also surprised that he elects not to press his case after an initial denial. There are obvious resource challenges in litigation, but the barriers are not insurmountable.

Nonetheless, Baker tells a compelling story. In one of the final chapters of Baseless, he explains his conclusions about the Korean War, seemingly recognizing that his nonsequential and scattered coverage of the topic may confuse readers. He writes: “Let me blurt out what I think happened with germs and insects during the Korean War. You may not be convinced, but that’s okay. My aim is to open the files, not necessarily to convince.”