John Prados
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Articles by John Prados
Guns Versus Torpedoes: The Battle of Kula Gulf
Leonard Heinz Mr. Heinz is the coauthor (with Vincent O'Hara) of Clash of Fleets: Naval Battles of the Great War, 1914–1918 and Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars. More recently, he contributed a chapter to Fighting in the Dark: Naval Combat at Night, 1904–1944. All three books are published by the Naval Institute Press. He holds a history degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Para Superbigote. El imperio es dueño de la república cooperativa de Guyana, desde antes de su creación(161)
(Traductor) SUPERBIGOTE, esta vez voy a utilizar el dicho de Diosdado: "Seré breve: El Que Tenga Ojos Que LEA".
In Memoriam: John Prados, 1951-2022
Dr. Prados, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, was the author of numerous books related to intelligence and military history, including Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II (Random House: 1995)and Storm Over Leyte: The Philippine Invasion and the Destruction of the Japanese Navy (Dutton, 2016).
Poor William Westmoreland. No one understood him. General Westmoreland’s forces and their South Vietnamese allies had fended off the attacks of National Liberation Front and North Vietnamese forces at the Vietnamese new year, Tet. He claimed victory. Alluding to Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II, Westmoreland had compared the enemy at Tet to the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge. He considered the Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese on the ropes, and headed for defeat.
Give Credit Where It’s Due
1. Charlie Rowland letter to William F. Surgi, 9 September 1995, copy courtesy of Jane Smith-Hutton. 2. Naval Cryptologic Veterans Association, “The Pacific War through the Eyes of Forrest R. ‘Tex’ Biard,” Cryptolog 10, no. 2 (Winter 1989): 9. 3. Department of the Navy, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, “Japanese Naval Activities, Summary as of 0800, April 18, 1942 (hereafter cited as “Japanese Naval Activities”), 1, Franklin D.
Timeless Battle, Evolving Interpretations
“FOE RETIRES FROM MIDWAY; Battle Continuing.” This was part of the rather judicious headline from The New York Times on Saturday, 6 June 1942—the first day in which the Battle of Midway got a headline of its own, and at a time when the true scope of the U.S. victory there was not entirely clear. This was reasonable enough, given that combat was still underway.
Pearl Harbor at 80
Sources: Harry E. Barnes, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1953). Charles A. Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of War, 1941 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1948). David Bergamini, Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1971). Robert J. C. Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961). VADM George C. Dyer, USN (Ret.), On the Treadmill to Pearl Harbor: The Memoirs of Admiral James O.
Bleak December
In December 1941, the U.S. Navy’s largest concentration of modern submarines was in the Philippines, with 29 based in Manila and assigned to Admiral Thomas Hart’s Asiatic Fleet.1 Hart, himself a submariner, had high expectations that they would be the primary striking element of his small fleet.
The Second-Wave Attack on Battleship Row
The second wave of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor included 78 D3A Val dive bombers assigned to attack the warships below. The Vals were to complete the incapacitation of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet begun so promisingly by the B5N Kate bombers of the first wave. Instead, the Vals’ attack can be considered at best a disappointment—more critically, an utter failure. None of their assigned objectives was achieved. No strategically significant damage was inflicted.
Naval History Magazine - June 2021 Volume 35, Number 3
NH Armaments & Innovations Anchors Aweigh A look at the history and evolution of anchors. Philip K. Allan, author, Sea of Wolves May 2021 NH Featured Article Forgotten Victor By Vincent P. O’Hara and Stephen McLaughlin June 2021 The Red Navy entered World War II as an underdog, yet it proved vital to the Soviet Union’s triumph. NH Featured Article Black Saturday Declassified During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world stood on the brink of an unthinkable nuclear scenario.
Intelligence and Vietnam (II): Return of The Top Secret 1969 State Department Study
Washington, DC, December 27, 2020—The National Security Archive is today posting an update to a 2004 E-book featuring a landmark but still relatively little-known State Department study of the Vietnam War from 1969. Commissioned by Thomas L. Hughes, the head of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, it was a more modest account of the war than its more famous cousin, the Pentagon Papers.
Che Guevara and the CIA in the Mountains of Bolivia
Washington, DC, October 9, 2020 – Fifty-three years ago, at 1:15 p.m. on October 9, 1967, Argentine-born revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara was executed in the hills of Bolivia after being captured by a U.S.-trained Bolivian military battalion. A CIA operative, Felix Rodriguez, was present. U.S. officials had been tracking Guevara’s whereabouts ever since he disappeared from public view in Cuba in 1965.
Invading North Vietnam
1. Thomas C. Thayer, War without Fronts: The American Experience in Vietnam (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1985), 114–17. 2. “FMFPAC Estimate of the Situation, DMZ Area, Vietnam, 5 April 1967,” 3, 7–8, 15; Folder 3; Box 141; Records of Units and Other Commands, 1953–1993, FMFPAC, Record Group 127, National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter NARA) II. 3. Gary L. Telfer, Lane Rogers, and V.
Spying on Americans: Infamous 1970s White House Plan for Protest Surveillance Released
Washington, DC, June 25, 2020 — Portions of a long-secret government blueprint for expansive surveillance of domestic protest movements during the Nixon presidency have just been released, more than 50 years after it was drafted. The notorious “Huston Plan” prepared by representatives of the White House and the U.S. intelligence community envisioned a smorgasbord of covert operations that made even FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover queasy.
CIA Covert Operations: The 1964 Overthrow of Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana
Washington, DC, April 6, 2020 – Cold War concerns about another Communist Cuba in Latin America drove President John F. Kennedy to approve a covert CIA political campaign to rig national elections in British Guiana, then a British colony but soon to be independent, according to declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive.
Tassafaronga: Night of the Long Lances
Bill Eaton was surprised to discover that his life really did flash before his eyes. It was dark, and the young sailor was struggling to stay afloat in the waters off Tassafaronga after his cruiser, Northampton, was hit by a Japanese torpedo just before midnight on Nov. 30, 1942. As he floated, Eaton remembered his childhood in Colorado and playing drums in the school band, which led to his enlistment in the Navy’s School of Music, then graduation on May 26, 1942.
Torpedo Junction: The South Pacific’s brutal underwater war
Seaman Robert Lee Shaw was asleep when mayhem struck. It was near midnight, July 25, 1942, and Shaw was serving with an American guard detachment on board the Dutch steamer Tjinegara. The ship had been homeported in Batavia — now Jakarta — until the Netherlands East Indies fell to Japanese invaders. Now the freighter’s owners, the Java-China-Japan Line, were leasing the 9,200-ton vessel to the U.S. Army as an animal transport.
Bay of Pigs: The Perfect Failure
By John Prados 6/7/2019 • MHQ Magazine Forty-five years later, it’s still unclear who deserves the blame for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, among the most notorious of Central Intelligence Agency operations, also ranks as one of its most avowedly military ventures, a full-scale invasion of a Caribbean nation with which the United States was at odds.
MHQ Book Review: Power at Sea
By John Prados 5/21/2019 • MHQ Magazine Power at Sea (three volumes), 1: The Age of Navalism, 1890-1918; 2: The Breaking Storm, 1919-1945; 3: A Violent Peace, 1946-2006 Lisle A. Rose, (University of Missouri Press, 2006), $49.95, $59.95, $49.95 ($19.95 each in paperback).
Understanding the CIA: How Covert (and Overt) Operations Were
Washington, DC, March 4, 2019 – The covert operations of the Central Intelligence Agency are one element of the forward edge of power in U.S. foreign policy. But the CIA is not a lone ranger, shooting up saloons on its own account. A senior interagency group within the United States government acts as the high command of the secret war.
MHQ Book Review: The United States Army in Vietnam- MACV
By John Prados 2/19/2019 • MHQ Magazine The United States Army in Vietnam: MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Escalation, 1962-1967. Graham A. Cosmas, Center of Military History, 2006, 524 pages. Available through the Government Printing Office, $53 clothbound, $50 paperback. American policy in Vietnam may have been inarticulate and devoid of practical goals, and U.S. strategy perhaps unimaginative and focused on the short term, but both were products of extensive and extended deliberation.
The Smaller Dragon Strikes
By John Prados 2/19/2019 • MHQ Magazine The battle between the French and Communists for control of Hanoi in 1946-1947 sparked Vietnam’s decades-long national nightmare. Everything was going to start at 8 P.M. sharp. At least that was what the French expected.
Church Committee, White House and CIA
Related Sources: The CIAs Family Jewels June 26, 2007 The Family Jewels: The CIA, Secrecy and Presidential Power by John Prados University of Texas Press ISBN: 978-0-292-76215-2 William Colby and the CIA: The Secret Wars of a Controversial Spymaster By John Prados University Press of Kansas ISBN 978-0-7006-1690-0 Washington, D.C., July 20, 2015 - Forty years ago this year, Congress’s first serious inquiry into CIA abuses faced many of the same political and bureaucratic obstructions as...
Inside the CIA Family Jewels
The Family Jewels (University of Texas Press, 2013) documents an era of illegal domestic surveillance and programs of detention, interrogation, and political spying conducted by the CIA. In 1974, a top-secret document, named “The Family Jewels” by insiders who understood its importance to the CIA, became ground zero in a political maelstrom that became known as the Year of Intelligence.
Complete Pentagon Papers at Last!
What Were the 11 Missing Words? Enter the National Security Archive’s Reader Contest! Washington, DC, September 16, 2011 - For the first time ever, all three major editions of the Pentagon Papers are being made available simultaneously online.
New Tet Documents? Not So Much.
In one of his last actions as Director of National Intelligence, in December 2016 James R. Clapper announced a new declassification review of secret intelligence records on the Tet Offensive, in Vietnam in 1968. I remember thinking at the time how odd it was that something that had been so extensively researched could be conceived of as either a contribution to current events, or to transparency for the intelligence community in the 21st Century.
In the Dark and Out of Luck
Modern American intelligence gathering, not yet a science, can still leave military forces lost in the fog of war. Out of a blinding snowstorm burst an unexpected host of panzer divisions, attacking a weakly held front in the last major German offensive of World War II. The Battle of the Bulge had begun, and the Allies were not prepared. Yet they might have been, because Allied intelligence was aware of most of the German units involved and even knew where they were gathered.
More fallout from SHAFR's decision to invite David Petraeus as keynote speaker
John Prados is a senior analyst with the National Security Archive in Washington DC. Read more about Gina Haspel and the torture story in his book The Ghosts of Langley (New Press), on the National Security Archive website, or at johnprados.com. HNN Editor: In this open letter to Amy Sayward, the executive director of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), John Prados says the group has shown poor judgment.
The John Walker Spy Ring and The U.S. Navy's Biggest Betrayal
US Naval Institute Photo Illustration Notorious spy John Walker died on Aug. 28, 2014. The following is a story outlining Walker’s spy ring from the June 2010 issue of U.S. Naval Institute’s Naval History Magazine with the original title: The Navy’s Biggest Betrayal. Twenty-five years ago the FBI finally shut off the biggest espionage leak in U.S. Navy history when it arrested former senior warrant officer John A. Walker.
CIA History of DCI William Colby
Washington, D.C., October 28, 2011 - CIA director William Colby rebuffed criticisms from senior Agency operators about disclosure of CIA misdeeds by describing the difference between "bad secrets," "non-secrets," "good secrets" and "lesser" secrets, according to a previously SECRET internal CIA history of the Colby tenure, published today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).
The Misleading Rationales for Gina Haspel's Nomination as CIA Director
John Prados is a senior analyst with the National Security Archive in Washington DC. Read more about Gina Haspel and the torture story in his book The Ghosts of Langley( The New Press), on the National Security Archive website, or at johnprados.com. This week the nomination of Gina Haspel to lead the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is expected to go to the Senate for a floor vote.
Gina Haspel’s CIA Torture File
Washington, D.C., April 26, 2018 – The Trump administration’s nominee to be CIA director, Gina Haspel, personally supervised the torture of a CIA detainee in 2002 leading to at least three waterboard sessions, subsequently drafted the cable that ordered destruction of the videotape evidence of torture, and served as a senior CIA official while the Agency was lying to itself, Presidents George W.
Laos: The Road to Vietnam
In 1959 the United States was drawn inexorably into a local conflict in a tiny Asian kingdom, relying on secret armies, Cold War tactics, and a vast underestimation of the enemy. Sound familiar? Almost 60,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War, along with untold numbers of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians. Much of their sacrifice went to support sides of a conflict forged in the foggy hills of Laos in the 1950s, before many Americans were paying any attention to Southeast Asia.
MHQ Book Review: Weller’s War
Weller’s War: A Legendary Foreign Correspondent’s Saga of World War II on Five Continents Though he won a Pulitzer Prize for his World War II reporting, George Weller of the Chicago Daily News is not well remembered today. Reading this book reminds us that fame is so very dependent on place and moment, sometimes more than quality.
The Emperor’s Tipping Point
Forget Waterloo: Napoleon’s decline was clearly signaled by his failures at the Battle of Eylau eight years earlier. Poland, February 8, 1807. In the midst of a blizzard, Napoleon I, emperor of France, stands in the steeple of a church in the little East Prussian village of Preussisch-Eylau, commonly called Eylau, straining to see what is happening as a desperate battle rages about him.
Vietnam Book Review History of an Unwinnable War
Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975 This is the book we’ve been waiting for. It has flaws, but this is the new standard. It really is as simple as that. For decades now veterans, historians and those with an abiding interest in the Vietnam War have been waiting for a book that they could feel comfortable in recommending as a single-source volume on the conflict.
Was There Even a Decision?
Print Version In the news "The Decision to Invade Iraq: History's second draft" The Economist October 1, 2010 "Reframing the Iraq War" By John Prados The Huffington Post October 4, 2010 Previously in this series THE IRAQ WAR -- PART I: The U.S. Prepares for Conflict, 2001 THE IRAQ WAR -- PART III: Shaping the Debate Related postings Saddam Hussein Talks to the FBI Twenty Interviews and Five Conversations with "High Value Detainee # 1" in 2004 PR Push for Iraq War Preceded Intelligence...
Opinion | Who Threw Westmoreland Under the Bus?
But the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Earle G. Wheeler, had different goals. He was less concerned about Westmoreland’s immediate priorities in Vietnam than with the state of America’s strategic reserves at home. The picture was indeed dire: By the time of Tet, apart from troops held for a Soviet attack in Europe, only the 82nd Airborne Division and parts of Marine divisions in the United States were left in reserve.
6 Myths About the CIA | History News Network
John Pradosis a senior fellow of the National Security Archive in Washington, DC. His current book is The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA’s Heart of Darkness .You can read more at his website johnprados.com. President Donald J. Trump views as “political hacks” a group of formerdirectors of intelligence agencies. He hastened to reassure Americans, saying he is satisfied with the agencies under the chiefs he appointed.
John Prados - Coast to Coast AM
John Prados is an author and analyst of national security based in Washington, DC. He is the author of about thirty books and many articles on topics of current importance, presidential studies, international security; and diplomatic, intelligence, or military history.
The Battle of Algiers, Torture, and Marcel Bigeard | HistoryNet
IN LATE 1956 FRENCH AUTHORITIES concluded they had to stop the protests and terrorist bombings in Algiers. The 10th Parachute Division assumed civil and military powers in the Algerian capital and its paras set about destroying the National Liberation Front (FLN) networks. The division included the 3rd Regiment of Colonial Parachutists, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Marcel Bigeard. The paras were elite shock troops, and Bigeard epitomized their toughness.
Secrecy And Leaks: When The U.S. Government Prosecuted The Chicago Tribune
Washington, D.C., October 25, 2017 – The U.S. government's most significant prosecution of an American media outlet prior to the Pentagon Papers fell through during World War II when a grand jury refused to indict the Chicago Tribune in 1942 for an article stating the U.S. Navy had advance knowledge of Japanese plans to attack Midway Island in June of that year.
Pike Committee and White House clashed over CIA secrets
Washington, D.C., June 2, 2017 – The Ford administration came close to igniting a constitutional showdown with Congress more than 40 years ago over demands by a House panel known as the Pike Committee for evidence of possible abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). At the height of congressional pushback against the “imperial presidency” in the mid-1970s, Representative Otis G.
The White House, the CIA and the Pike Committee, 1975
Washington, D.C., June 2, 2017 – The Ford administration came close to igniting a constitutional showdown with Congress more than 40 years ago over demands by a House panel known as the Pike Committee for evidence of possible abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). At the height of congressional pushback against the “imperial presidency” in the mid-1970s, Representative Otis G.
John Prados: The CIA, torture and Barack Obama
President Barack Obama must rue the day when he renounced initiating an inquiry on CIA behavior during the war on terror in favor of moving forward into the future. Had there been a truth commission back in 2009, all this would be in the past. Instead the scandals of the torture and the black prisons came back to bite — hard. And as for the future to which Obama aspired, that now appears dark indeed.
Gerald Ford White House Altered Rockefeller Commission Report in 1975; Removed Section on CIA Assassination Plots
Washington, DC, February 29, 2016 – The Gerald Ford White House significantly altered the final report of the supposedly independent 1975 Rockefeller Commission investigating CIA domestic activities, over the objections of senior Commission staff, according to internal White House and Commission documents posted today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).
Ford White House Altered Rockefeller Commission Report
Washington, DC, February 29, 2016 – The Gerald Ford White House significantly altered the final report of the supposedly independent 1975 Rockefeller Commission investigating CIA domestic activities, over the objections of senior Commission staff, according to internal White House and Commission documents posted today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).
The clues Islamic State left behind in the Paris attacks will cost it dearly
Were I a fundamentalist militant in Western Europe, or, indeed, in a number of other places, I would not be overjoyed at the success of the Nov. 13 suicide attacks in Paris. Worry would be the more appropriate response. The intelligence and security services of many European and other countries have already swung into action.
Freeing the President’s Daily Brief
September 16, 2015 – Today the big pooh-bahs of the security services–Fearful Leader Clapper, the Machiavellian Brennan, former SEAL chieftain Admiral McRaven, and a number of their predecessors, have gathered in Austin, Texas, at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library. Their purpose is to preside over an event at which the government agencies and the National Archives formally open for research the key intelligence reports for the ages.
President's Daily Briefs from Kennedy and Johnson Finally Released
Washington, D.C., September 16, 2015 - Today the CIA and the LBJ Library are releasing online a collection of 2,500 declassified President’s Daily Briefs (PDBs) from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
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