John Prados, Master of Uncovering Government Secrets, Dies at 71 (original) (raw)
Books|John Prados, Master of Uncovering Government Secrets, Dies at 71
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/books/john-prados-dead.html
Advertisement
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
An “archives rat,” he was expert at digging through declassified materials to tell new stories about America’s military history.
The historian John Prados in 2007 with documents released by the Central Intelligence Agency. He believed that democracy hinged on the public’s access to government secrets.Credit...Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press
Published Dec. 3, 2022Updated Dec. 12, 2022
John Prados, a military historian whose dogged pursuit of classified government material led him to write dozens of books upsetting accepted truths about the Cold War, Vietnam and the American intelligence community, while also achieving renown as an award-winning board-game designer, died on Tuesday in Silver Spring, Md. He was 71.
His partner, Ellen Pinzur, said the cause of death, at a hospital, was cancer.
A self-described product of the 1960s who, with his ropy ponytail and bushy mustache, certainly looked the part, Dr. Prados was both a scholar and an activist.
As a historian, he wrote thick, deeply researched books on subjects as varied as the Battle of Leyte Gulf during World War II, the success of the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War, and the White House’s maneuverings before the 2003 Iraq war.
Running through all his work was the contention that records of intelligence and covert activities represented a sort of historical dark matter: a vast amount of material that, while invisible in conventional narratives, could, if revealed, radically shift our understanding of the past.
Across several books about the Pacific Theater in World War II, for example, he demonstrated that the American command of everyday intelligence — where Japanese forces were, where they were going — was just as important as the sheer firepower the United States brought to the fight.
His goal, he wrote in “Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II” (1995), was to “reassess the outcomes of battles and campaigns in terms not just of troops or ships but of how the secret war played out.”
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Advertisement