THE MAN WHO KEPT THE SECRETS: RICHARD HELMS AND THE CIA BY THOMAS POWERS

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CREST

Collection:

General CIA Records

Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):

CIA-RDP88-01350R000200050008-1

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RIPPUB

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Document Creation Date:

December 16, 2016

Document Release Date:

September 17, 2004

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Publication Date:

November 3, 1979

Content Type:

NSPR

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CIA-RDP88-01350R000200050008-1.pdf	262.27 KB

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Affil CLE- : 'Y q'+yeA For Releasergp04tw/jl;apl. I1 DP88-01350 1979 OI PAGE 3 November The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA. by Thomas Powers (Knopf; $12.95) In his 26 years in the CIA, Richard M. Helms was a busy fellow. It was Helms who personally proposed MKULTRA, the CIA's notorious program of mind- control and drug testing, which led, among other things, to the death of Dr. Frank Olson, a civilian employee of the Army. When the CIA finally suspended the program 10 years later in 1963--not for moral considerations, but in fear that the secret experiments might become known-it was Helms who kept pushing for renewed testing of drugs on un- suspecting people. The agency had been administering LSD to American citizens - who were lured out of bars by prostitutes in New York and San Francisco. Helms argued that the people drugged by the CIA must be "unwitting" or the results would be unreliable, creating only a "false sense of ac- complishment." Helms was, of course, deeply involved in the CIA's assassination plots. As the deputy director, for-- Plans (now Operations), he was personally in charge of the effort in 1962 to hire the Mafia to poison Fidel Castro. A hazar- dous business: in 1976, the mobster in question, Johnny Rosselli, was found dead, stuffed inside a 55-gallon oil drum floating in the ocean near Miami. Helms approved the transfer of sniper rifles to the Dominicans plotting to kill Trujillo. He helped arrange for the CIA to open first class mail for 20 years in violation of the laws of the United States. He spied on American students for presidents Johnson.. and. Nixon, : delivering.. one .report. to Henry Kissinger with an explicit warning that it was "extremely sensitive," since the CIA had no legal authority to prepare it `He presided over Operation CHAOS, the CIA's illegal program of domestic spying on the antiwar movement, which collected 3C0,000 names in its files in the CIA basement. He helped the Nixon White House smear Daniel Ellsberg by ordering the CIA's chief headshrinker to prepare a' psychological profile on the man who~ leaked the Pentagon Papers. He authorized the agency to provide Howard Hunt with technical assistance, including. his famous red wig, then ordered the CIA to cover up its help to Nixon's Plumbers when the govern- ment's prosecutors were investigating Watergate. Until the potato became too hot to handle, he. complaisantly assisted tell the story of the CIA since World War II by tracing the career of the senior clandestine official with the longest record for survival, Richard Helms. But somewhere along the line, Powers 1 became enamored of his subject, and the result is a book that is defensive, semi- adulatory (as its title suggests), and often querulous.in tone. It is easy to see how this occurred. Richard Helms is 'a man of marked personal charm. It was not by acting the curmudgeon that he cultivated a wide circle of influential friends within the press corps in -Washington, in the foreign policy establishment, and among the most vowerful grandees on Capitol Watergate burglary itself. He ordered Hill. These friends put- a great deal of ir th k the CIA's drug-testing files destroyed, and destroyed his own files during Watergate. He tried to block Salvador Allende's election as president of Chile, later followed Nixon 's secret orders to try to overthrow him, and then lied about it to the United States Senate. For this-he-was convicted, fined $2000, and sentenced to two years in jail. (The d h ) A d d e n . e prison sentence was suspen agreed with the observation of his ! were rewarded for their-loyal years of ' 1 d t' a service by being' forced to s in distinguished mouthpiece, Edward Bennett Williams, that he would bear the conviction as "a badge of honor." A man who was able to accomplish this much can't be all bad, and Thomas Powers had doggedly set out to find his good side. It is an effort that evokes the- little girl who, given a pile of manure for. Christmas,. cheerfully digs in, exclaim- 4 a pony in here Alas, it is a task foredoomed to failure, and Powers; a. reporter of not incon- siderable talents,'soon finds himself mired dowry::: and hip-deep, trying valiantly ' to -interpret the distorted images in the fun house mirrors of the. CIA. Along the way, he discovers some previously hidden - passageways, some new anecdotes, and some fresh perspec- tives on old tales- But the pony eludes him., It was never there. e eep I pressure on Griffin.. Bell to friend Dick out of the stammer, where Bell had no stomach for sending him in the first place--7, 7 In researching this book, Powers talked at. length with Helms, who devoted "four long mornings" to inter- views. And he talked to everybody else, , can e walk the plank by Admiral Turner, who had, unfortunately, gone to Annapolis instead of Groton. He talked to?Johnny Bross, and Richard Bissell, and Frank Lindsay, and Tom Parrott, and Jack Maury, and a lot of other retired "black" operators. And to his credit, he read everything, steeping himself in the growing literature about intelligence; and the CIA, familiarizing himself with 1 the minutiae of past . intelligence triumphs, failures, rivalries, internal wars, and ambiguities. or almost everybody, including a heavy sprinkling of the patrician Old Boys who Approved For Release 2004/10/13 :.CIA-RDP88-01350R000200050008-1 a result, the Ao rov Ford, ease 2004110/1 : CIA RI P8kY,~, Q 00200050008-1 As not er major con en n the names of John McMahon, the CIA's unintended value, not as an exculpation is that Nixon fired Helms and shipped deputy director for Operations; Joseph of Richard Helms, or as a history of the him off to Iran as ambassador because Burkholder Smith, the author of a book CIA, but for the detail, the fine I Helms had refused to cover up on the CIA; Admiral Noel Gayler, brushstrokes it adds to what is already i Watergate. While it is possible that former head of the National Securit ' known. For example, we learn a bit more Nixon may have felt that way, the facts y Agency; Manuel Ogarrio, the Mexican about the agency's assassination plots,. are that Helms, at Nixon's request, did lawyer who laundered the Watergate about Richard Nixon's relationship to attempt to cover up Watergate. To money; Robert Keuch, a deputy assis- the CIA, . about the scandalous perpetuate the myth that Helms did not, 11 willingness of the agency-and Helms which the Powers book does, is a taut attorney general; and the late Laurence Stern of the Washington Post. to cook its Vietnam estimates to please disservice to history. The facts are But these are minor lapses alongside the Johnson White House. And some of indisputable: Nixon, . through H. R. the central problem. At bottom, what Mr. Powers's character sketches Haldeman, asked Helms and his deputy, Powers seems to be telling us is that particularly his portrait of James Vernon Walters; to tell the FBI to Angleton-are very good indeed. confine their investigation to the Richard Helms is a patriot who lied for his country, lied because he was ex- On the other hand, the author goes to burglars already nabbed at the petted to by the establishment he served great lengths to persuade us that Helms, Watergate. Helms did exactly that for. the CIA's quintessential covert two crucial weeks. Not until the unfor- so well, but which abandoned him when operator, at heart did not approve of tunate Pat Gray, the acting FBI director, he was caught and permitted him to be covert operations. Which is rather like destroyed. There may be a case to be demanded that the CIA put its cover-up made here, but it is a weak. one at best. saying that the Beatles never really liked . request in writing did Helms back off. I prefer to remember the words of rock and roll and were secretly off in a And almost a full year went by before Judge Barrington Parker, whom Powers corner listening to Buxtehude when the CIA told the justice Department quotes- at the sentencing of Richard the Secrets is that Helms was something of one-of the difficulties faced by If public officials embark deliberately to an innocent, who often did not know powers, or anybody else writing about a disobey and ignore the laws of our land because what was going on. He even quotes secret agency, is that in some areas the . of some misguided and ill-conceived notion and Helms, at the time the number two man truth remains mercurial. For example, belief that there are earlier commitments and in the agency's dirty tricks division, as he offers us five versions of how the CIA considerations which they must observe, the saying in German,"Aber keiner sagt mir obtained Khrushchev's famous 1956 future of our country is in jeopardy. There are 'was!-No one tells me anything!" secret speech denouncing Stalin. Which those employed in the intelligence security Powers, who has a Pulitzer Prize to his is true? Who is to say? Similarly, he community of this country. who feel that credit (for his UPI reporting on Diana reports that the CIA - "managed to they have a. license to operate freely outside the Oughton, the Weatherperson terrorist), persuade Time's bureau " chief in dictates of four.. Public officials at every is too good a reporter to believe such a Washington to abandon plans for a level, whatever their position, like any other premise, which is soon laid threadbare cover story" on The Invisible Government, of, person, must respect and honor the Constitu- by his own evidence. Indeed, 31 pages ,:which I.was the co-author. I called John Lion and the laws of the United States. of operations Helms may have com the book was published, and asked him David Wise plained that no one ever told him any whether this was true. He said no one at thing, but in truth there cannot have CIA had asked him not to do a cover David Wise is a political writer based in been much that slipped entirely by him. story on the book, and that none had Washington. He is co-author of The Powers argued that the really big been planned. Who to believe? Invisible Government (Random House), the secret that Helms kept was that Presi ? .To defuse any possible criticism about first critical study of the CIA dent Kennedy and Robert Kennedy in his personal background, Powers tells us fact authorized the CIA to kill Castro. forthrightly in a chapter note that he While this may or may not be true, Powers offers no new evidence to support the indictment. He suggests that Helms and the CIA did not implicate the Kennedys in their testimony to the Church committee out of tradition and loyalty to the presidency. And because, he concedes, there was no proof. used to work for the Rome Daily American, which turned out to be a CIA front, and that his father, Joshua B. Powers, ran something called Editors Press Service, which the New York Times has identified. as a CIA propaganda service in Latin - America,. which the senior Mr. Powers denies. There are a number of`errors in 'the book:'for example,, the author misspells Approved For Release 2004/10/13 CIA-RDP88-0135OR000200050008-1