" In the August 7, 1971, issue of The New Republic, the Asian scholar Eugene G. Windchy says, “What steered the nation into Vietnam was a series of tiny but powerful cabals.” What he calls a sense of tiny but powerful conspiracies, this book puts all together as the actions of the Secret Team. That most valuable book by David Wise and Thomas B. Ross calls this power source “The Invisible Government,” and in the chapter on the various intelligence organizations in the United States they use the term “Secret Elite.” The CIA did not begin as a Secret Team, as a “series of tiny but powerful cabals,” as the “invisible government,” or as members of the “secret elite.” But before long it became a bit of all of these. President Truman was exactly right when he said that the CIA had been diverted from its original assignment. This diversion and the things that have happened as a result of it will be the subject of the remainder of this book. "