John Prados pried reams of classified documents from government vaults, publishing his findings in more than two dozens books that broadened and sometimes challenged the known history of World War II, the Vietnam War, the Cold War and the CIA.
<p>"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."</p>
Prados was a military historian whose pursuit of classified government material led him to write dozens of books upsetting accepted truths about the Cold War, Vietnam and the U.S. intelligence community. (He also was a renowned board game designer.)