John Prados, pioneering intelligence researcher, dies.

The National Security Archive has announced the death of the leading intelligence scholar John Prados.

Among his 27 books, several of them translated into French, a highlight was his biography of William Colby, which argues that the CIA director’s accommodating approach to congressional investigations in the 1970s of Agency wrongdoing actually saved the CIA, in stark contrast to the CIA veteran community, which has been deeply critical of Colby for giving away the “family jewels.” John even argued that Colby didn't go nearly far enough but also said that saving the CIA wasn't necessarily a good thing for democracy anyway.

Such accountability as exists in relation to US intelligence is largely the achievement of those who built on the 1970s era of scrutiny in the face of persistent attempts at rollback. We all owe a great deal to Prados and his generation of scholars.

Not least of his accomplishments was the co-founding of the National Security Archive itself, which hosts much of his work. UK readers may find his 2020 piece on the 1964 CIA coup in British Guiana particularly interesting.