HELMS, CIA THE COLD WAR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200050007-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 17, 2004
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: November 4, 1979
• Content Type: NSPR

ARTICLE AP EAl pproved For 9149 UMM l3 : CIA-R
ON PAGH -/' 4 NOVEMBER 1979
BOOK REYlEW`-"
The Man Who Kept the Secrets:
Richard Helms and the CIA. By
...Thomas Powers.. Knopf. 393 pages.
$12.95.. ,
By Priscilla Johnson
McMillan
Helms, CIA
: h e Cold War
Thomas Powers has.nsed the ca-
reer of Richard Helms, former
CIA director and a U.S. intelli-
gence official for 30 years, as )the
peg on which to hang a history of
the CIA- In so doing, Powers has
given us a secret-history of the
It would take someone' with a
tremendous sense of irony, a. feel.
ing for the way;opposites meet, to
write a truly fine. book on intelli-:-
gence, and'Thomas Powers has
succeeded.' He has used inter-
views with 'nearly 50-former CIA
officials and other sources in and -
out of government to build his
Story ieyer upon layer. It has
composed it with Inonumrntal
fairness, sTubborn integrity of
judgment and a limpid vision that.
enables us to see., right through to
the- ambiguity at`the' bottom of
human affairs:
His book, like every good book;:
Is ambitious, and the question;:
that lies behind it like a shadow is
this. Can a societyremain free
that has a powerful secret society
year=old-boy who lived next door
to Helms in Chevy Chase and who
started in 1947 trying to figure out
what Helms did. He learned that
Helms was a spy; sometimes late
at night he heard the tap-tapping
of Helms' typewriter coming from
a screened-in porch, accompanied by
the tinkling of wind chimes blowing
in the summer breeze. The tinkling
Helms as Skeptic
So it happened that as plans de-
veloped in 1959 for a secret, CIA-
backed invasion by Cuban exiles at
the Bay of Pigs, Bissell, the man in
charge, ran enthusiastically with
the idea-while the more skeptical
Helms" listened carefully, inspect-
ing his fingernails."
of those chimes was the echo 01 our I-. elected president after a series of
innocence. elevised debates in which, ' he
The boy did not learn much about : .;promised to be tougher on Fidel Cas-
Helms, who had gone to work for the
OSS in 1943 and for the CIA at its
founding in 1947. He was already an
invisible man. He was committed to
secrets, so much so that the keeping
of them had become for him the bed-
rock of personality. He had a reputa-
tion within the CIA as a classic espio-
nage man, one for. whom the
gathering of secrets, the recruiting
.and handling of agents, was the
heart-of intelligence work. Spy-run-
ning was in Helms' blood, and, he -
was one of the: best.,_
But Helms'-caution and restraint
made-him an anomaly in 'Allen
Dulles' CIA. Dulles had attracted
from the beginning Ivy League patri-
tro than his opponent. Richard
Nixon. When in April 1961 the Bay of
'Pigs landing failed,. Kennedy was
publicly magnanimous. Privately he
was furious. For the Kennedys of
those days, John and Robert, had
.been trained not to lose. When they
did, they "didn't get mad, they got
even. Thus the. two brothers re-
solved to get even with Castro; who
They decided on "Operation Mon.
goose,':-?a- bizarre, super-secret,
scheme to overthrow Castro-by stag
Cuban economy and "getting rid of
Castro himself:_This time-.thel man? `t
charge was not
who was placed in
.
clans, men with-names like Roose-
I Richard Bissell but Richard Helms.
velt and Bissell and. Barnes, -who ; Helms often met in private with Rob- ;
were outgoing..-risk-taking men, ert Kennedy and he received in~lta
Kung-ho on covert operations. Mel, bent telephone calls form-the attor- i
.who had been together since Yale ney general demanding to know
h
'
h
ot
er
and Groton and knew eac
s whether,- agents had, ~,.landed
reflexes found it. easier to trust one blowup the,, Matahambre.;; copper
another, and this was a good thing. It,,
" Helms lamented to
mines "My Goa
,
made for cohesiveness at the agency afriend,,:"these Kennedys keep the
when the CIA: came under the cold pressure'on about Castra '
glare of Joe McCarthy. The question, as- it was argued
This was one of the ways in which later with:; theological intensity by
a man like Richard Bissell. survived. the Church committee of the Senate,
Tall, courteous, a product of Groton was: Did John F. Kennedy person-
and Yale, Bissell had a daring, imagi- ally order the assassination of Fidel
at its heart? native mind; he used it to develop
Powers seems to think it can-first. the spectacular U-2 airplane
yet his story is a tragicone sug and then the. spy-satellite program.
gesting the-'opposite,. ` It Is a '.:Yet in spite of these huge successes,
tragedy not, of Richard Helms and , people at the CIA were surprised in
the CIA only, but of the American.; _.1958 when Allen Dulles chose Bissell
people., For we lived in ,a world of + to, be deputy director of plans, or
illusions, that. we were. not like-" covert operations, over Helms.. But
them, the Russians,-while the. CIA = there was logic in the choice, for Bis-
lived in a much crueler world in' - sell believed in "dirty tricks,",while
which we were, indeed, rather j-- Helms tried to prune them and cut
opened between-the two worlds. It'
was not long before the mentality,
of that hard CIA world required.
for the Cold War perhaps crept';
over and poisoned our world and,.
ended by corrupting the Ameri-',
''can political process itself., -
Powers says that we Americans
grew up with a child's view of`
history, and he. opens appropri-
ately- with a child's view of Riche
and Helms. They child was a 14-y
Castro? For the Kennedys.and the
CIA had along-standing habit in -
common = they- never put anything
explosive down on -paper.' So to this
day no piece of paper has ever been
discovered to prove that the. presi-
dent even knew..
In-the most maddening, fascinat-
ing chapter of his book,-Powers
argues the question backwards,. for-
wards and upside down and.. by the
counterintelligence. method of trian-
secrecy, too. To Bissell,. secret gulation; he demonstrates, to_ my
meant that. you kept an, operation. se-. mind convincingly, that;the presi-
cret from the New York Times, at dent both knew and.gave the order.
least. until it was successfully com
while to Helms;;"secret' For example, on being introduced
pleted, for the, first time to Tad Szulc, a re-
meant secret from inception to eter -New York, -Times,
nity porter for ;the
r i `.>sF ~i{,stf~r .Kennedy; actually- asked,; "What
?would you think if l ordered-Castro
ito be assassinated ?:
CONTILU. D
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 Approved For Release 2004/10/13 : CIA-RDP88-0135OR000200050007-2
Powers' rigor in thrashing out the
question is appropriate, for it is the
key to what happened. The sad truth
is that, beginning in 1960, the Ameri-
can people. elected three presidents
in a row who lost their heads over.
Communism and very nearly de.
stroyed. American democracy in the
process..
Thus the next president; Lyndon
Johnson,. lacked Kennedy's "per-
sonal fire and vindictiveness" about
.Castro - he transfered it instead to
Vietnam. His successor, Richard
Nixon, ordered the director of the
CIA, now Richard Helms, to prevent
the election and installation of a so.
cialist, Salvador Allende-; as presi
dent of Chile.
From using the. CIA to intervene
in the constitutional processes of sponsible. Throughout the black-
sovereign nations abroad, it was mailing moves and countermoves
only a short step to importing the Helms stubbornly, inch by inch, and
same methods back home.. It began in order to save his agency, refused..
under Johnson, really, with Opera- It cost him his job. tion Chaos, an investigation of stu- Nixon fired Helms and appointed
dent'protest movements against the, him ambassador to Iran. During con-
war in. Vietnam. It continued in the firmation hearings before the Sen-
Nixon era when a weary and compli- 'ate Foreign Relations Committee in
ant CIA found itself - in violation of February 1973, Helms testified
its charter - helping--to.-draw up a falsely that the CIA had not inter-
domestic intelligence program at. vened in the Chilean elections of
the direction of a White House aide,. 1970 and had not passed money to
Thomas Charles Huston.. "I . - `,opponents of Allender For these an-
It was not just the-CIA that had be., swers he was later subject to a three-
come compliant but also its director, year investigation by the Depart-
Richard Helms. He had never been ment of Justice on the question of
one to lie awake at night wondering perjury. Finally, in 1977, he was al
if CIA had a moral right to do as it lowed to plead "no contest" to two
i did "If we wanted to be in the Boy misdemeanor -counts of having
Scouts, we'd have joined the Boy failed to testify "fully, completely
Scouts," he, used to say. Helms was and accurately" and was given asus-
the president's servant, but he won- pended sentence ,,.a
dered sometimes,-especially when,., ,:;;To this., day, , despite pressures and.
as happened with, increasing fre- punishments.. Helms, has not be-
quency during the late 1960s and trayed a single, secret of the United
early '70s, the president's orders- States. He kept them not merely to
were in violation of American trade protect. himself; since ?he~was at the
tion, law and plain common sense heart-of so. many, and not merely to,
Nixon was the. biggest challenge, protect, the CIA, to which he had,
for. he hated the. C1 and' treated its given: his life. and. which he believes..,
director with contempt., But the con- the American, people., still, need. He: ;
tempt in. which Nixortiheld,Helms kept: them, Powers suggests, to pro-
and the CIA was of a piece .with his. tect;our innocence.For if the secrets
contempt for the American people to can be- kept,, then, in a wry, meta-
whorn he announced on'the day they -physical way, they have no existence
banded him his smashing re-elec and we Americans are- not likt- the
tion-Victory of 1972 that they were Russians after all $ 4:..
"like a child in the family ^ err ffi ,l: Reading. this superb and subtle
bookone sees with then clarity'of
.. y,.,rfr tragedy One=
Nison's:Test sees, whys the system It was Nixon who%at fast"p'ut~ther: hel'd,and why.the. men:?who-were'+
American people to the test. But first ';- shaped by it: kept faith.: Yet one-
he tested Richard Helms. Of the five wishes, it: had not happened that way
burglars who tried to break into, that..,the rigor. of things had .
Democratic headquarters-at the, broken and that: someone had told.
Watergate apartments on June-17, For had we been,trusted; with. the
1972, three had- some connection truth, had we been. allowed to forfeit
with the CIA, and one, Howard,Hunt, our innocence, and make our choices
was personally known. to Helms..,'.' for ourselves,,then the American:.
During the. months. that followed, people might have ,been spared:
Nixon tried first to link the CIA with and might have _spared. others:.
the break-in, for which it was not re. abuses like Vietnam: and Watergate,
sponsible-andof.which it had had-no ?~'which sup uredthe fabric of our
advance knowledge, and-, then to `' _ society ?and_ continue severely to
make ittaccept blame for-the, cover ?' compromisec;our. political system to.
up, for which Nixon himself was re : tOis day r#t.;
.. ~~~r3P;cat 9i??aii1~"k ~ '~~. , e~cyxaars~
'rrseiila Johnson McMillan, aii'
'f associate of Harvard c Russian Re-
search `center~,wrote` Marina and!:
i Lee,a.::bookabouttheOswald x- ?.
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