Annie Jacobsen: The Devil is in the Details

Mushroom clouds of global nuclear war.

Listen to my Starzology episode on Annie Jacobsen's chart.

One of my favorite authors is Annie Jacobsen. For anyone who doesn't know her work, she's an American investigative journalist and author as well as a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist and television writer. She was recently interviewed by Joe Rogan about her latest book, Nuclear War: A Scenario. She was previously interviewed on his show in 2019 about her other books, and she has also appeared on the Lex Fridman podcast as well as many others.

Her most recent book lays out a hypothetical but fact-based scenario for nuclear war, describing the minute-by-minute timeline of a first strike (in this case by North Korea), followed by a full-scale retaliation. The US has a "launch on warning" policy that guarantees retaliation within minutes of an enemy missile launch being detected. A full nuclear exchange would culminate within 72 minutes, with catastrophic effects including the immediate deaths of 600 million people worldwide, with billions more to follow as a result of environmental devastation, making the earth nearly uninhabitable for tens of thousands of years.

She has published a series of wildly successful works of nonfiction, beginning with her most well-known book, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base, published in 2011.

The Books

Area 51 was a massive bestseller, largely due to the long-standing theory that a UFO crash landed in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, which was said to have been stored ever since at the top secret military base colloquially known as Area 51. In researching the book, she interviewed more than 70 people connected to military bases in Nevada and New Mexico, including pilots who tested top secret weapons and experimental aircraft in the 1940s and 50s, and one source who spoke on condition of anonymity about some of the most controversial elements of the book, hideous human experiments involving disabled children.

In the final pages of the book, Jacobsen describes her conversations with the anonymous source who tells her the truth behind the alien theory, that it was part of a Soviet plot to induce hysteria in the US populace and discredit the American government by dropping a fake alien craft in the desert. This forced the US government to cover it up, and then to launch their own campaign of disinformation, secret weapons programs, human experimentation including the infamous MKULTRA program of testing illegal drugs on unsuspecting American citizens, and so on.

Area 51 ended up becoming the definitive work, not so much debunking but rather providing an equally compelling narrative to the alien theories, while also bringing forth evidence about what the military and CIA have actually been doing in the skies over the desert for the last several decades. The book was so well researched and thorough that it changed a lot of people's minds, probably even some fervent conspiracy adherents. Not everyone believed it, of course. Some die-hards speculated that Annie Jacobsen was a dupe for the military, or worse. But Area 51 was only the beginning.

Area 51 as imagined by AI.

Her subsequent books take similar investigative deep dives into the worlds of conspiracy, military research, state secrets, weapons of war and many of the darkest chapters of American history, including Operation Paperclip, about the previously top secret plan to recruit Nazi scientists into the US after WWII, and The Pentagon's Brain, about the history of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).

In another book called Phenomena, she explores the secret history of the US government's use of psychics, experiments in the use of extra sensory perception, psychokinesis and remote viewing, which covered some of the same territory as The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson, which was made into a movie of the same name starring George Clooney.

Annie Jacobsen's birth chart.

The Astrology

All of these topics are personally fascinating to me, so naturally I was curious what kind of person is attracted to investigating these subjects and what kind of chart might be behind so many of my favorite nonfiction books.

Annie Jacobson was born in Middletown, Connecticut USA on June 28, 1967. We don't have her birth time so I've cast a noon chart which gives a rising sign of 24° Virgo and puts her Pluto-Uranus conjunction very close to the ascendant. In this chart the Moon and Chiron are very nearly conjunct the descendant at 24° Pisces but we're not going to consider anything to do with the ascendant, descendant or house placements because those are completely dependent on an accurate birth time.

What immediately jumps out at me is that she has the generational marker of the late 60s, the Pluto-Uranus conjunction in Virgo within two degrees of each other. That conjunction is opposite her Moon and loosely opposite Chiron. The Moon and Chiron are both in Pisces. She has the sun and Mercury in Cancer but not conjunct each other.

The combination of the Sun in Cancer and the Moon in Pisces highlights her sensitivity and emotionality, and suggests a deeply perceptive and highly receptive person. It could also suggest impressionability to outside influences or at the very least deep empathy for other people's feelings and stories, which definitely comes across in her writing. She's clearly very sensitive, emotional, even patriotic, and as she has always said in interviews, what interests her most in telling these stories is the perspective of the individuals involved. She is far less interested in nation states and policies than in the compelling personal narratives of the men and women involved in these deeply secretive and political topics.

Modalities and elements

Looking at the balance of modalities in her chart, we see that she has four planets in the mutable signs: Uranus, Pluto, the Moon and Chiron. Three planets are in fixed signs: Venus, Jupiter and Neptune; and four are in cardinal signs; Saturn, Mars, the Sun and Mercury.

When we look at the elements, there are five major placements in water, the Sun and Mercury in Cancer, Neptune in Scorpio, the Moon and Chiron in Pisces. In earth, she has only the Uranus and Pluto conjunction in Virgo; in air, she only has Mars in Libra and in fire she has Venus and Jupiter in Leo.

As far as aspects go, the only conjunctions are between Uranus and Pluto in Virgo, and the Moon and Chiron in Pisces. The rest of her planets are fairly evenly distributed.

The power of water

People with a preponderance of water in their charts often set others at ease because they have such a profound sense of the other person's emotions. But others can sometimes be put off by the almost psychic intensity of water, and may be immediately put on guard. They may not trust anyone who looks at them with too much intensity or understanding. This is more common with Scorpio placements to be sure but Pisces is the most psychic and intensely watery of all the water signs, and the moon in Pisces can be all the more so. So it's very appropriate that she chose a career in investigative journalism where that empathy and profound curiosity can be put to work.

She has Venus in Leo and Mars in Libra, so Mars is in its detriment, but Jupiter is also in Leo which is a much more auspicious placement and this speaks to her being comfortable going into places of power and typically male-dominated industries like the military industrial complex and getting people to reveal their previously undisclosed secrets to her.

One major aspect we find in her chart is a very close square between Mercury and Mars, which speaks to her interest in military matters, war, violence and the history of conflict and bringing those secrets to light. Another very close aspect is Venus square Neptune, which speaks to an almost mystical idealism, which probably keeps her from being overwhelmed with the negativity and darkness of the topics she writes about. She also has Mercury sextile Uranus which speaks to her writing ability and her ability to craft compelling and exciting nonfiction that reads like the most well-crafted spy novels around.

Another interesting aspect is the grand Trine between Neptune in Scorpio, Mercury in Cancer and her moon in Pisces. It's an almost exact Grand Trine with Neptune at 21°, Mercury at 21° and the moon at 24. And actually since we don't know her exact birth time it's possible the moon could be even closer in the exact trine. This just reinforces the extreme wateriness of her chart. Anyone who thinks water is a pushover, just think of tsunamis, flash floods, melting ice caps, and the powerful rivers that carve out canyons and fjords over millennia.

The devil is in the details

By far the most powerful aspect in her chart is the Uranus-Pluto conjunction in Virgo opposite her Moon in Pisces. This conjunction is a generational aspect, a marker of Generation X and the counterculture movement and political upheavals of the mid-60s. She has the conjunction in close opposition to a very watery Pisces Moon, which suggests to me that she is someone who was essentially born to bring these secrets and generational traumas to light for the good of humanity.

Major aspect patterns

Another major aspect is the kite between Mercury, the moon, Pluto and Uranus (a kite occurs when three planets form a Grand Trine and a fourth planet is opposite (180°) one of those planets, forming a sextile aspect (60°) to the other two Grand Trine planets). While Grand Trines are often thought of as "nice to have" without any other aspects to offset them, the kite gives power and focus to the flowing energy of the Grand Trine. It's therefore seen as a very charmed aspect, which can lead to amazing creative output and a sense of being in the right place at the right time to bring forth your message. The Uranus-Pluto conjunction is at the focal point of the kite, meaning that's where the energy of the kite is pointing, so the focus of all that energy is the Pluto-Uranus conjunction. She is truly a voice of a generation, unearthing and detailing the secrets and hidden stories for the good of the people. She's speaking out for every generation that's lived under the shadow of these terrible weapons and dark conspiracies during her lifetime.

Finally, there's a yod pattern, also known as the finger of god, with Venus, Mars and the Moon. The yod is considered a marker of creativity, initiative and fortitude, symbolizing the strength and tenacity to triumph over limitations and adversity. The focal point of the yod is her Moon in Pisces, which suggests that she's tapping into deep emotions and painful traumas to get to the bottom of what has been hidden, and to bring those things to light, because secrecy is by it's very nature, dangerous.

Annie Jacobsen told Joe Rogan that what she cares most about is telling people's stories and the potential that bringing these secrets to light will help improve the world. Her main goal in revealing these often terrible truths is not to cause fear or increase the public's distrust of the government but because "sunlight is the best disinfectant."

When she talks about her latest book, Nuclear War, she expresses the hope that once world leaders and the public have read it and understand just how precarious our situation is under the "Sword of Damocles" that these world killing weapons represent, she hopes they will not be able to go on treating them with anything less than the reverence and utmost care they deserve.