excerpts from the book
The Secret Team
The CIA and its Allies in Control
of the United States and the World
by L. Fletcher Prouty
Skyhorse Publishing, 2008, paperback
[originally published in 1973]
Preface 1972
pxvii
From President to Ambassador, Cabinet
Officer to Commanding General, and from Senator to executive assistant
- all these men have their sources of information and guidance.
Most of this information and guidance is the result of carefully
laid schemes and ploys of pressure groups.
pxvii
Leaders of government and of the great
power centers regularly leak information of all kinds to columnists,
television and radio commentators, and to other media masters
with the hope that the material will surface and thus influence
the President, the Secretary, the Congress, and the public.
pxviii
It cannot be expected that a John Kennedy,
Lyndon Johnson, a Richard Nixon, or a following President will
have experienced and learned all the things that may arise to
confront him during his busy official life in the White House.
It cannot be expected that a Robert McNamara or a Melvin Laird,
a Dean Rusk or a William Rogers, etc. comes filly equipped to
high office, aware of all matters pertaining to what they will
encounter in their relationship with the Congo or Cuba, Vietnam
or Pakistan, and China or Russia and the emerging new nations.
These men learn about these places and the many things that face
them from day to day from an endless and unceasing procession
of briefing officers.
pxviii
Special Operations is a name given in
most cases, but not always, to any clandestine, covert, undercover,
or secret operations by the government or by someone, US. citizen
or a foreign national ... even in special cases a stateless professional,
U.S. or foreign activity or organization. It is usually secret
and highly classified.
pxxix
True national sovereignty no longer exists.
We live in a world of big business, big lawyers, big bankers,
even bigger moneymen and big politicians. It is the world of "The
Secret Team."
In such a world, the Secret Team is a dominant power. It is neither
military nor police. It is covert, and the best (or worst) of
both. It gets the job done whether it has political authorization
and direction, or not. It is independent. It is lawless.
[The Secret Team is] the real CIA and its allies around the world.
pxxxi
President Nixon and his Secretary of the
Treasury, George Schultz, established a Russian/ American organization
called the "USA-USSR Trade and Economic Council" in
1972. Its objective was to bring about a union of the Fortune
500 Chief Executive Officers of this country ... with their counterparts
in the Soviet Union. This important relationship [was] sponsored
by David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan Bank.
pxxxvii
The CIA is the center of a vast, and amorphous
mechanism that specializes in Covert Operations ... the CIA is
the willing tool of a higher level High Cabal, that may include
representatives and highly skilled agents of the CIA and other
instrumentality's of the government, certain cells of the business
and professional world and, almost always, foreign participation.
... At the heart of Covert Operations is the denial by the "operator,"
i.e. the U.S. Government, of the existence of national sovereignty.
The covert operator can, and does, make the world his playground...
including the U.S.A..
pxxxvii
Today ... the most important events of
this century are taking place with the ending of the "Cold
War" era, and the beginning of the new age of "One World"
under the control of businessmen and their lawyers, rather than
under the threat of military power and ideological differences.
p1
The most remarkable development in the
management America's relations with other countries during the
quarter-century since the end of World War II has been the assumption
of more and more control over military, financial and diplomatic
operations at home and abroad by men whose activities are secret,
whose budget is secret, whose very identities as often as not
are secret - in short, by a Secret Team whose actions only those
implicated in them are in a position to monitor and to understand.
p3
The Secret Team consists of security-cleared
individuals in and out of government who receive secret intelligence
data gathered by the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA)
and who react to those data, when it seems appropriate to them,
with paramilitary plans and activities.
... The power of the [Secret] Team derives from its vast intragovernmental
undercover infrastructure and its direct relationship with great
private industries, mutual funds and investment houses, universities,
and the news media, including foreign and domestic publishing
houses The Secret Team has very close affiliations with elements
of power in more than three-score foreign countries and is able
when it chooses to topple governments, to create governments,
and to influence governments almost anywhere in the world.
p3
Whether or not the Secret Team had anything
whatsoever to do with the deaths of Rafael Trujillo, Ngo Dinh
Diem, Ngo Dinh Nhu, Dag Hammarskjöld, John F. Kennedy, Robert
F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and others may never be revealed,
but what is known is that the power of the Team is enhanced by
the "cult of the gun" and by its sometimes brutal and
always arbitrary anti-Communist flag waving, even when real Communism
had nothing to do with the matter at hand.
p4
At the heart of the [Secret] Team are
a handful of top executives of the CIA and of the National Security
Council (NSC), most notably the chief White House adviser to the
President on foreign policy affairs. Around them revolves a sort
of inner ring of Presidential officials, civilians, and military
men from the Pentagon, and career professionals of the intelligence
community.
p7
President Kennedy felt that he had the
option to bring the [Vietnam] war to a close on his own terms
or to continue pressure with covert activities such as had been
under way for many years.
p7
General Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara,
in a report to President Kennedy, October 2, 1963
It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by
that time [the end of 1965].
p11
former President Harry S. Truman in the
Washington Post, December 21, 1963
For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been
diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational
and at times a policy-making arm of the government .... I never
had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected
into peacetime cloak-and-dagger operations. Some of the complications
and embarrassment that I think we have experienced are in part
attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the
President has been so removed from its intended role that it is
being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign
intrigue and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.
p34
By 1961, the non-intelligence, the clandestine,
and the support sectors of the Agency [CIA] had become so large
and so predominant that they far outnumbered the professional
band of intelligence specialists ... both at home and abroad.
By 1961, it had become apparent that the CIA played a split- personality
role to suit its own purposes. It would speak of CIA reports which
said one thing, when it would be doing exactly the opposite with
its undercover, covert sections/
p34
Arnold Toynbee, the British historian
in The New York Times, May 7, 1970
To most Europeans, America now looks like the most dangerous country
in the world. Since America is unquestionably / the most powerful
country, the transformation of America's image within the last
thirty years is very frightening for Europeans. It is probably
still more frightening for the great majority of the human race
who are neither Europeans nor North Americans, but are Latin Americans,
Asians and Africans. They, I imagine, feel even more insecure
than we feel. They feel that, at any moment, America may intervene
in their internal affairs with the same appalling consequences
as have followed from American intervention in Southeast Asia.
p34
For the world as a whole, the CIA has
become the bogey that Communism has been for America. Wherever
there is trouble, violence, suffering, tragedy, the rest of us
are now quick to suspect the CIA had a hand in it... In fact,
the roles of America and Russia have been reversed in the world's
eyes. Today America has become the world's nightmare.
p35
When an uncontrolled and perhaps uncontrollable team [Secret Team/CIA]
can flaunt the historic and traditional codes of civilization
by disregarding the honor and sovereignty of other countries large
and small, by intervening in the internal affairs of other countries
for reasons real and contrived, the rest of the world does fear
for its own welfare and for the future of this country.
p65
Tens of thousands of people who have contributed
to Radio Free Europe and to CARE on the assumption that they were
private organizations have learned that the CIA was using them
for its own devices.
p103
The CIA maintains hundreds of U.S. military
units for its own purposes... The CIA also maintains countless
paramilitary and pseudobusiness organizations that weave in and
out of legitimacy and do business much as their civilian counterparts
would.
p147
The early Truman Administration was trying
to provide leadership for the one world defined by Secretary of
State James Byrnes and to keep the world from being torn into
armed camps again so shortly after the war. In spite of their
efforts, the resounding warning issued by the great wartime orator,
Winston Churchill, took its toll, and within one year after he
had delivered his "Iron Curtain" speech, lines had been
drawn, and the issue became one of Communism versus anti-Communism.
p147
General Donovan, Allen Dulles, and others
... spoke publicly and privately of the need, as they saw it,
for an agency with special "operations" powers. To confirm
this need and to inflame the public with this issue, the supporters
of the clandestine operations proposition [for the CIA] became
the greatest firebrands of the anti-Communism theme. It was this
same group that picked up the banner hurled by Winston Churchill
and that saw Communists under every rock. It was during these
crucial days that the opposition, no matter who the opposition
was, was painted pink or red with the label of Communist. A beginning
of this form of public and political blackmail was made during
these debates, and it reached its zenith less than a decade later
in the infamous days of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
... What began perhaps as an honest effort to alert this country
to the fact that the Soviet Government did in fact have the potential
to unleash the secrets of the atom and thus to build atomic bombs,
gradually became a powerful tool in the hands of the irresponsible
and the agitators. All opposition for whatever reason was branded
as Communist or pro-Communist. Gradually, this dogma of anti-Communism
was extended into the entire world, and by the time of the publication
of the Truman Doctrine, the entire world had been divided into
Communist and anti-Communist.
p480
As late as the end of 1963, every U.S.
Army combat soldier in Vietnam ... was under t e operational control
and direction of the CIA.
p481
What happened in Vietnam is that the CIA
got in over its head, and the Army was sent in to attempt to bring
some order out of the chaos that existed there after the assassination
of President Diem.
p490
All the pieces were coming together, and
during this formative period a new special group was formed. This
was the Special Group (of the NSC), Counterinsurgency, better
known as the Special Group CI, or CI. This group presided over
the CIA, State and Defense Departments, and others, who hastily
put together a host of counterinsurgency nations. It was a watch
list, which varied from time to time as intelligence inputs rose
and fell with the tides of international events. The Special Group
CI list usually ran to about sixteen or seventeen countries, in
the order of how deep they were along the path to insurgency and
decay.
... As countries were added to the list their military aid programs
were hastily escalated, and literally hundreds and sometimes thousands
of American military personnel of all types descended upon them.
Sometimes they arrived in uniform and sometimes in civilian disguise.
They went to work immediately in support of the new political-social-economic
doctrine, and before long new schools were being built-by the
army; new hospitals were being built-by the army; new farming
techniques were under way-by the army; irrigation and water purification
projects were under way,-again by the army. Underlying all of
the paramilitary and sometimes real military work was the CIA,
working with the host government to weed out, to identify, and
to categorize all of the subversive insurgents. In countries where
the word Communism had never been applied to bandits, beggars,
and rebels before, all of a sudden all opposition was given the
name "Communist." All the problems were attributed to
Communists, and the counterinsurgency action was under way.
... It was pretty bitter medicine for many countries, where hatred
and fear of the army had been traditional, to find the Americans
coming in with a program designed to make the army into local
heroes.
p491
reporter Mary McGrory
President Kennedy ... told [Senator Mike] Mansfield privately,
after a White House leadership meeting, that he agreed with him
"on a need for a complete withdrawal from Vietnam, but I
can't do it until 1965 after I get re-elected."
p491
The strongest support for the Vietnamese
war has always come from the national defense industries, which
benefited tremendously by this windfall.
p497
President John Kennedy told Kenny O'Donnell
If I tried to pull out [of Vietnam] completely now, we would have
another Joe McCarthy Red scare on our hands.
p491
Early in October 1963 ... [Defense Secretary
Robert] McNamara and Maxwell Taylor reported to the President
that it looked to them, after their visit to Saigon, as though
things could be put under control and that we would be able to
withdraw all personnel by the end of 1965... They all knew, that!
he planned to announce a pullout once he had been re-elected.
... Less than one month after that date, President Kennedy himself
had been shot dead in Dallas... McNamara and Taylor, returned
again from Saigon and reported to a new President that conditions
were bad in South Vietnam and we would have to make a major effort,
including American combat troops and a vast "sophisticated"
clandestine program, against the North Vietnamese.
... While the echo of those shots in Dallas were still ringing,
the ST [Secret Team] moved to take over the whole direction of
the war and to dominate the activity of the United States of America.
p500
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
Can the President of the United States ever be strong enough to
really rule these two powerful agencies [CIA and Pentagon]? Can
any President learn about, comprehend, and then believe what
he has learned about this whole covert and complex subject? Can
any President see in this vast mechanism, in which there is so
much that is untrue and hidden, the heart and core of the real
problem? Will any President be prepared to confront this staggering
realization when and if he does uncover it?
p500
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
"Can the President of the United States ever be strong enough
to really rule these two powerful agencies [CIA and Pentagon]?
Can any President learn about, comprehend, and then believe what
he has learned about this whole covert and complex subject? Can
any President see in this vast mechanism, in which there is so
much that is untrue and hidden, the heart and core of the real
problem? Will any President be prepared to confront this staggering
realization when and if he does uncover it?" Is this perhaps
the great discovery which President Kennedy made, or was about
to make? It is not just the CIA and the DOD that are involved.
It is also the FBI, the AEC, the DIA, elements of State and of
the Executive Office Building, NSA and the hidden pulse of secret
power coursing through almost every area of the body politic.
It extends beyond into governmental business, the academic world,
and certain very influential sectors of the press, radio, TV,
papers, magazines, and the publishing business. Before any President
can rule this covert automatic control system, he must find out
it is there ... and he must devise some means to discover its
concealed activity.
President Kennedy made a valiant attempt to effect control over
this system... as a result of the Bay of Pigs, the inquiry, and
the realization by 1963 of how, despite his great efforts, he
was still unable to wrest control from and to rule the ST [Secret
Team] machine...
Kennedy's battle was not all with the ST He was going through
the same pressures with other groups-not the least of which was
his quixotic contest within the immensely powerful and ruthless
professional education establishment and the equally powerful
parochial Catholic school hierarchy. For those who have been unable
to accept the one-man theory of the Warren Commission report of
the Kennedy assassination, there is in evidence more than enough
pressure from any one of several of these groups, or their more
radical subgroups, to support the germ of the idea that a sinister
conspiracy may have arisen from these pressures. For these groups
realized that Kennedy was gaining real knowledge, experience,
and political power and that he had to be removed from office
before winning the inevitable mandate from the U.S. public, which
was certain to be his in 1964.
p502
former President Harry Truman in December
1963 following the Kennedy assassination, said
For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been
' diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational
and at times a policy-making army of the government .... I never
had any thought that when I setup the CIA that it would be injected
Unto peacetime cloak and dagger operations.
p502
Two wise men, much experienced in the
terrible pressures of government, Harry S. Truman and William
O. Douglas, came up with similar conclusions, one after Kennedy's
searing lesson at the Bay of Pigs and the other after his tragic
death in Dallas. Both of them saw sinister intrigue and the extreme
power of these two groups, the CIA and the Pentagon. Both saw
the various insidious influences of the CIA and the Pentagon,
and both wondered as Douglas asked, "Can any President ever
he strong enough really to rule?"
p503
Any violent recrimination over the sudden
death of John F. Kennedy could well have been monstrous. The pressures,
the deep tragedy, and the popular unrest were all there. Even
though the Warren Report itself really satisfies few serious scholars
and investigators, it did serve to get this country through a
trying time.
p503
The ST [Secret Team] machine, always at
its most active and insidious best in adversity, surged forward
in the post-Kennedy void. The record shows that Lyndon Johnson
almost never said "No." The only mechanism in existence
designed to control the CIA and other members of the ST [Secret
Team] consisted of the provisions of the National Security Act
of 1947, along with other such legislation and directives. It
was designed to curtail, to deny, to stop the CIA's inevitable
appetite for self-generated activity. There was no curtailment,
no denial, and no strong hand to halt its mad rush into Vietnam.
Plans that had been directed toward getting out and home by 1965
were suddenly discarded and never mentioned again.
p504
The wild force of the cult of the gun,
resurrected Manifest Destiny, rampant anti-Communism - ran away
with events in Southeast Asia. Even the popular narrative history
of the slaughter and extermination of the American Indians and
the ruthless Westward Ho as related by Dee Brown in Bury My Heart
at Wounded Knee, is tame and more believable compared to the waste
and devastation brought about by the forces of savagery unleashed
upon the helpless people of Indochina.
Is the President, any President, really capable of ruling these
forces of insidious influence? Does he rule aid command, or is
there another power? Can the ST [Secret Team] be harnessed?
p507
Five Presidents have been responsible
for and have learned to live with the CIA. Five Presidents at
one time or another, under varying conditions and events, have
all suffered from this relationship.
p507
Like a terrible, haunting, terrorizing
nightmare, the sinister machine [Secret Team/CIA-Pentagon] pervades
every aspect of the government today - and affects all of us,
our way of life, and the welfare of the entire world.
... It is not just one finite team of individuals. It is a matrix
that changes with the gestation of each new operation. It is a
sinister device of opportunity and contrivance. What does exist
is the mechanism.
What exists is the automatic system, much like a nervous system
or an electrical system. More properly, what exists is like a
giant electronic data processing machine ... which has its own
power to grow, to reproduce, and to become more insidiously effective
and efficient as it operates. It is a great intra-governmental
infrastructure that is fed by inputs from all sources.
... It is big business, big government, big money, big pressure,
and headless-all operating in self-centered, utterly self-serving
security and secrecy.
p508
The ST [Secret Team] machine ... is the
evidence of a form of new religion. It has its secrets. It has
its divine and unquestioned rights and obligations. It has self-righteous
power over life and death. It does not believe in anything. It
does not value anything. It is utterly ruthless. Its greatest
motivating force and drive is entirely undefined, because it moves
by pressure. It reacts. It is therefore blind, meaningless, senseless.
... Any person or groups that know how to get to this infrastructure,
who have the clearances, who have the need-to-know, can make an
input into this ST [Secret Team], and as long as the desired action
is anti-Communist, the system will operate.
... There is but one way to control this massive ST structure.
It must be uncovered. It must be made known. It must be exposed
to the light. And then it must be told No. To be effective, this
means that Congress must cut its money off, not only at the central
source, but at all the hidden nerve centers.
Before it is too late, we Americans must realize that this great
cancer exists.
p509
This ST [Secret Team] must be exposed,
bared and silenced. Then a new and better way of life must be
created.
... The first twenty-five years of the CIA have given solid evidence
of how important the ideas of those legislators in 1947 were.
The CIA should be, must be, the "quiet intelligence arm of
the President. Not his nightmare. The CIA should be limited to
the function of intelligence - and not a bit more.
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