“House of Helicopters”: epigraph from Sarah Fox’s “Essay on My Memory,” published in The First Flag (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2013).
“A State of Permanent Visibility”: epigraph from “Panopticism,” from Michel Foucault’s Discipline & Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), p. 207.
“CIA Training Manual: Interrogation”: all words taken from the CIA training manual “KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation,” July 1963, Document 1A, pp. 65–66. Released in “Prisoner Abuse: Patterns from the Past,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 122 (http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122).
“CIA Training Manual: The Art of Deception”: all words taken from “Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception,” a CIA training manual written by well-known magician, John Mulholland, 1953, pp. 77–83, published in The Official C.I.A. Manual of Trickery and Deception, by H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace (New York: Harper Collins, 2009).
“CIA Training Manual: Theory of Coercion”: all words taken from the CIA training manual “KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation,” July 1963, Document 1B, pp. 82–85. Released in “Prisoner Abuse: Patterns from the Past,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 122 (http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122).
“Coin Toss at Dusk”: epigraph from “I Just Realized,” by Valerie Mejer Caso, trans. Torin Jensen, published in Make X: A Decade of Literary Art, eds. Daniel Borzutzky et al. (Chicago: Featherproof Books, 2016).
“CIA Training Manual: Non-coercive Interrogation Techniques”: all words taken from the CIA training manual “KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation,” July 1963, Document 1A, pp. 66–81. Released in “Prisioner Abuse: Patterns from the Past,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 122 (http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122).
“CIA Museum”: all words taken from the CIA Museum’s online collection of historical artifacts, “Experience the Collection,” located on the website of the CIA (https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-museum/experience-the-collection/#!/collection/show-all).
“Overthrow Install”: adapted from “A Timeline of CIA Atrocities,” by Steve Kangas, on Global Research, the website of the Centre for Research on Globalization (http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-timeline-of-cia-atrocities/5348804), and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, 3rd ed., by William Blum (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2000).
“Safe Houses I Have Known”: epigraph from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, by John le Carré (London: Paperview, 2004), pp. 264–65, which was originally published in 1974. I discovered this passage containing the phrase “safe houses I have known” many years after my father died and many years after he told me that if he ever wrote a memoir about his spy experiences, this phrase would be its title. I do know that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was one of his favorite books, but I don’t know if he was aware of borrowing the phrase or if he did so unintentionally.
“CIA Training Manual: A Study of Assassination”: all words taken from a CIA training manual related to the 1954 coup in Guatemala, excerpted by William Blum in Rogue State, pp. 56–57.
“The CIA Waterboards KSM at Least 183 Times; KSM’s Reporting Includes Significant Fabricated Information”: all words taken from the U.S. Senate report “Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program,” 2014, pp. 85–91 (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/US_Senate_Report_on_CIA_Detention_Interrogation_Program.pdf).
A number of poems in this book were informed by Tim Weiner’s work in Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Anchor Books, 2008).