The Secret Team

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]

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 loses the legitimate point."^[5]

• Brought to Light
• Business Plot
• Conspiracy theory
• Military-industrial complex
• The Power Elite