The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World is a book by L. Fletcher Prouty, a former colonel in the US Air Force, first published by Prentice-Hall in 1973.

The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World
Cover of the 1973 Prentice-Hall first edition.
AuthorL. Fletcher Prouty
LanguageEnglish
GenreHistory
PublisherPrentice-Hall
Publication date
1973
Publication placeUnited States
Media typebook
Pages496
ISBN978-0137981731
OCLC869053900
TextThe Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World at Internet Archive

Publication history

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After initial publication in 1973, Prentice-Hall republished The Secret Team in 1992 and 1997. The book was published again in 2008 and 2011 by Skyhorse Publishing, the latter edition including an introduction by Jesse Ventura.[1]

The book was offered for sale by the Church of Scientology through their Freedom magazine, during the time when Prouty was a senior editor of the magazine.[2]

Reception

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In Studies in Intelligence, an official journal and flagship publication of the Central Intelligence Agency, Walter Pforzheimer described reading the book as "like trying to push a penny with one's nose through molten fudge."[3] Despite what he grants as Prouty's "considerable background and knowledge," he says the book is punctuated by "faulty recollections" and "unwarranted conclusions."[3] In a later issue, a staff writer provides a retrospective of books reviewed in Studies in Intelligence and wonders aloud "whether word ever got back to [Prouty]."[3]

Washington Monthly magazine noted that "marvelous anecdotes about the CIA's dirty-trick department are accompanied by a troubling overstatement best suggested by the subtitle, "The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World."[4]

Assassination researcher and former Office of Strategic Services officer Harold Weisberg was less than enthusiastic about Prouty’s book. He was particularly turned off by the claim that Daniel Ellsberg was a CIA agent: "He hemmed and hawed a bit on this when confronted with an unequivocal denial made by E. to Fred Graham and to Prouty by phone. Thus he looses the legitimate point."[5]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ The Secret Team. Simon & Schuster.
  2. ^ "Masthead of Freedom Magazine" (PDF). Freedom. Vol. 18, no. 4. Church of Scientology. p. 3. Retrieved June 15, 2023.
  3. ^ a b c Staff writer. "Book Reviews in Studies: Intelligent Literature About Intelligence Literature." Studies in Intelligence, vol. 49, no. 4, Special Issue: Fifty Years of Studies in Intelligence (2005), p. 4. Published by the Central Intelligence Agency.
  4. ^ Staff writer. "Political Book Notes." Review of The Secret Team by L. Fletcher Prouty. Washington Monthly (April 1973), p. 64.
  5. ^ Weisberg, Harold. Review of The Secret Team by L. Fletcher Prouty. Harold Weisberg Collection, Hood College (April 2, 1973)
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Further reading

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