The Secret Team - Shadow Government

Summary

"The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World" (1973) by Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty exposes the covert power structure that operates outside democratic oversight. Prouty, who served as the Focal Point officer for CIA-Department of Defense coordination from 1955-1964, provides insider testimony about how secret intelligence operations have usurped legitimate government authority.

About the Author

Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty

• U.S. Air Force Colonel (Retired)
• Focal Point officer between Pentagon and CIA (1955-1963)
• Coordinated operations between military and intelligence
• Briefed at highest levels including Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles
• Worked with multiple Secretaries of Defense and Chairmen of Joint Chiefs
• Traveled to more than 60 countries
• Observed CIA offices and covert activities worldwide

Unique Position

For nine consecutive, long years during those crucial days from 1955 through January 1, 1964, I was one of those briefing officers. I had the unique assignment of being the "Focal Point" officer for contacts between the CIA and the Department of Defense on matters pertaining to the military support of the Special Operations of that Agency.

Core Thesis

The Invisible Government

The most remarkable development in the management of 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.

The Team Concept

For the purposes of this historical study, the choice of the word "Team" is most significant. It is well known that the members of a team, as in baseball or football, are skilled professionals under the direct control of someone higher up. They do not create their own game plan. They work for their coach and their owner.

Structure of the Secret Team

Inner Core

At the heart of the Team:

• Top executives of the CIA
• National Security Council (NSC) officials
• Chief White House adviser on foreign policy

Inner Ring

• Presidential officials
• Pentagon civilians and military
• Career intelligence professionals

Outer Network

• Government officials with security expertise
• "Think Tank" analysts
• Business travelers with useful connections
• Academic experts
• Intelligence community alumni ("no unconditional resignations")

Power Sources

Infrastructure

The power of the 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.

Global Reach

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 influence governments almost anywhere in the world.

CIA's Real Mission

Intelligence as Cover

The CIA's most important "Cover Story" is that of an "intelligence" agency. Of course, the CIA does make use of "intelligence" and its assumed role of "intelligence gathering," but that is largely a front for its primary interest, "Fun and Games"... as the "Old Boys" or "Jedburghs" of the WWII period Office of Strategic Services (OSS) called it.

Covert Operations

The CIA is the center of a vast, and amorphous mechanism that specializes in Covert Operations... or as Allen Dulles always called it, "Peacetime Operations."

Higher Authority

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 instrumentalities of the government, certain cells of the business and professional world and, almost always, foreign participation.

Denial of Sovereignty

Core Principle

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.

Historical Context

Cold War Costs

The Cold War was the most expensive war in history.

Buckminster Fuller's classification:

• World War I: "The million dollar war"
• World War II: "The billion dollar war"
• World War III (Cold War): "The trillion dollar war"

Post-War Transformation

After World War II, atomic weapons completely changed warfare concepts:

• No peacetime relaxation possible
• No resting upon fruits of victory
• Required constant readiness for nuclear exchange
• Led to emphasis on covert operations and counterinsurgency

Vietnam as Case Study

CIA Control

From 1945 through 1964, almost everything that was done in South Vietnam, including even a strong role in the selection of generals and ambassadors, was the action of the DCIA, with the DOD playing a supporting role and the Department of State almost in total eclipse.

CIA Created Structures

• Diem's first elite bodyguard
• Special Forces of Vietnamese troops
• Tens of thousands of paramilitary forces
• All under tight CIA control

The New Religion

Cult Characteristics

In many ways and by many criteria the Secret Team is the inner sanctum of a new religious order.

Attributes:

• Has its secrets
• Has divine and unquestioned rights
• Has self-righteous power over life and death
• Believes in nothing
• Values nothing
• Is utterly ruthless
• Moves by pressure, not principle
• Is blind, meaningless, senseless

Anti-Communist Zealotry

It will do anything in the name of anti-Communism. Yet in its greatest anti-Communist war (Vietnam) it sees no inconsistency in the killing of one of its most anti-Communist creations - Ngo Dinh Diem.

Modern Applications

From Anti-Communism to Anti-Terrorism

After the fall of Soviet communism, "terrorism" replaced "communism" as the principal justification for:

• Secret Team covert activities
• Domestic surveillance programs
• Targeting of citizens
• Expansion of security state

Targeting of Citizens

The clandestine activities of the CIA were redirected... to seek the sources of subversive insurgency within this country itself.

The 1997 Update

One World Reality

Like it or not, we now live in a new age of "One World." This is the age of global companies, of global communications and transport, of global food supply and finance.

Loss of Sovereignty

It is time to face the fact that true national sovereignty no longer exists. We live in a world of big business, big lawyers, big bankers, even bigger money-men and big politicians. It is the world of "The Secret Team" and its masters.

Dependence

We are now, despite common mythology to the contrary, the most dependent society that has ever lived.

Control Mechanism

Cybernetic Machine

Like a haunting, terrorizing nightmare, the sinister machine pervades every aspect of the government today - and affects all of us, our way of life, and the welfare of the entire world.

Not Overestimating

It would be wrong to grant this cybernetic, automatic-control machine more wisdom, more power, more sense than it really possesses. The worst possible mistake would be to overestimate it.

Matrix Nature

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.

Solution

Exposure Required

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.

Congressional Action

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.

Public Awareness

Before it is too late, we Americans must realize that this great cancer exists. We must expose it for pro-American reasons; not as a work of anti-Communism.

Key Quotes

George Hunter White (CIA MKULTRA Project Manager)

Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest.

Presidents' Dilemma

Can any President ever be strong enough to really rule?

~ Justice William O. Douglas

Relevance to Targeted Individuals

Same Infrastructure

The Secret Team infrastructure described by Prouty is the same infrastructure used to:

• Target individuals domestically
• Conduct surveillance operations
• Coordinate harassment campaigns
• Deploy advanced technologies
• Maintain plausible deniability

Same Methods

• Denial of sovereignty (target has no rights)
• Covert operations against citizens
• Psychological warfare
• Economic warfare
• Information control

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