Richard Helms

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Richard Helms, Director of Central Intelligence, 1966-1973

Richard McGarrah Helms (March 30, 1913 – October 23, 2002) was the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from 1966 to 1973. He was the only director to have been convicted of lying to Congress over Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) undercover activities. In 1977, he was sentenced to the maximum fine and received a suspended two-year prison sentence. Despite this, Helms remains a revered figure in the intelligence 0 profession. CIA Historian Keith Melton describes Helms as a professional who was always impeccably dressed and had a "low tolerance for fools."

Helms was born in Philadelphia in 1913. In 1936, a year after he graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, he was sent by the United Press to help cover the Berlin Olympic Games; he had spent two of his high school years at the prestigious Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland where he learned to speak German and French.

He joined the advertising department of the Indianapolis Times; within two years he was national advertising manager.

During World War II he served in the United States Navy. In 1943, he was posted to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) because of his ability to speak German. In the aftermath of the war, he was transferred to the newly formed Office of Special Operations (OSO), where at the age of 33 he was put in charge of intelligence and counter-intelligence operations in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

The OSO became a division of the CIA when that organization was created by the National Security Act of July 1947. Helms became Director of the OSO after the CIA's disastrous role in the attempted invasion of Cuba in 1961. After falling out with the Kennedys, he was sent off to Vietnam where he oversaw the coup to overthrow President Ngo Dinh Diem. Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Helms was made Deputy Director of the CIA under Admiral William Raborn. A year later, in 1966, he was appointed Director.

The ease of Helm's role under President Lyndon Johnson changed with the arrival of President Richard Nixon and Nixon's national security advisor Henry Kissinger. After the debacle of Watergate, from which Helms succeeded in distancing the CIA as far as possible, the Agency came under much tighter Congressional control.

In 1972, Helms ordered the destruction of most records from the huge MKULTRA project, over 150 CIA-funded research projects designed to explore any possibilities of mind control. The project became public knowledge two years later, after a New York Times report. Its full extent may never be known.

Nixon considered Helms to be disloyal and fired him as DCI in 1973. Helms then served from 1973 to 1976 as US ambassador to Iran in Tehran.

Richard Helms, in the White House Cabinet Room, March 27, 1968.

Helms' ultimate undoing was the CIA role in the subversion of Chilean democracy and the overthrow, under Nixon's orders, of that country's president Salvador Allende in 1973. Helms had reportedly opposed this operation.

Helms' answers to Congress on the CIA's role in the Chilean affair were proved to be false and he was prosecuted and convicted in 1977. He received a two-year suspended sentence and a $2,000 fine. He wore the conviction as a badge of honor; his fine was paid by friends from the CIA.

Helms testified, under oath, in 1979, that Clay Shaw, the only man ever put on trial for John F. Kennedy's assassination, had, from 1948 to 1956, been a part-time contact of the Domestic Contact Division of the CIA; a claim that has remained unproven from Shaw's trial.

In 1979 the House Select Committee on Assassinations, HSCA cited Helms for perjury in its final report. He had lied about his knowledge of the John F. Kennedy assassination. When testifying before the Warren Commission in 1964 Helms swore he never remembered hearing the name Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination.

"...I had all of our records searched to see if there had been any contacts at any time prior to President Kennedy's assassination by anyone in the Central Intelligence Agency with Lee Harvey Oswald. We checked our card files and our personnel files and all our records. Now, this check turned out to be negative. In addition I got in touch with those officers who were in positions of responsibility at the times in question to see if anybody had any recollection of any contact having even been suggested with this man. This also turned out to be negative, so there is no material in the Central Intelligence Agency, either in the records or in the mind of any of the individuals, that there was any contact had or even contemplated with him." (Warren Report volume V page 120)

However a declassified memo written by Helms on November 25, 1963, the day after Oswald’s murder states that, "As soon as I [blacked out] had heard Oswald's name," he recognized Oswald as a potential recruit. The name of the government agency, recruiter, and operation had been blacked out from the memo. (HSCA Report volume XI page 64.)

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan awarded Helms the National Security Medal.

Following his death in 2002, Richard Helms was interred in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

[edit] Trivia

Helms was portrayed by actor Sam Waterston in a memorable though deleted scene in the 1994 film Nixon.

The character Richard Hayes, portrayed by actor Lee Pace in the 2006 film The Good Shepherd , was loosely based on Helms.

[edit] External links

Preceded by Vice Adm. William Raborn	Director of Central Intelligence June 30, 1966 - February 2, 1973	Succeeded by James R. Schlesinger

Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency
Souers • Vandenberg • Hillenkoetter • Smith • Dulles • McCone • Raborn • Helms • Schlesinger • Colby • Bush • Turner • Casey • Webster • Gates • Woolsey • Deutch • Tenet • Goss • Hayden