73 Facts About Richard Helms

Richard McGarrah Helms was an American government official and diplomat who served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973.

Richard Helms understood the bounds of the agency role as being able to express strong opinions over a decision under review yet working as a team player once a course was set by the administration.

In 1977, as a result of earlier covert operations in Chile, Richard Helms became the only DCI convicted of misleading Congress.

Besides this Richard Helms was a key witness before the Senate during its investigation of the CIA by the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, 1975 being called the "Year of Intelligence".

Back in Washington, Richard Helms continued similar intelligence work as part of the Strategic Services Unit, later called the Office of Special Operations.

Under the DDP Richard Helms was specifically tasked in the defense of the agency against the threatened attack by Senator Joseph McCarthy, and in the development of "truth serum" and other "mind control" drugs per the CIA's controversial Project MKUltra.

Richard Helms was assigned to manage the CIA's role in Kennedy's multi-agency effort to dislodge Castro.

Richard Helms eventually worked to manage the CIA's complicated response during its subsequent investigation by the Warren Commission.

In June 1966, Richard Helms was appointed director of Central Intelligence.

Johnson chose Richard Helms to serve as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence.

Raborn and Richard Helms soon journeyed to the LBJ Ranch in Texas.

At CIA Richard Helms was its first Director to 'rise through the ranks'.

Richard Helms didn't get to see him enough, and he didn't feel that he had any impact.

Richard Helms then served as DDP and thus directed the overall effort.

At a May 1967 NSC meeting Richard Helms voiced praise for Israel's military preparedness, and argued that from the captured MiG-21 the Israelis "had learned their lessons well".

Richard Helms remembered the "visceral physical reaction" to the strategic tension, similar to the emotions of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Richard Helms soon took a place at the table where the president's top advisors discussed foreign policy issues: the regular Tuesday luncheons with LBJ.

Thereafter in the Johnson administration, Richard Helms functioned in proximity to high-level policymaking, with continual access to America's top political leadership.

In CIA interviews long after the war ended, Richard Helms recalled the role played in policy discussions.

From his perch Richard Helms marveled at the learned way President Johnson employed the primary contradictions in his personality to direct those around him, and forcefully manage the atmosphere of discourse.

Richard Helms saw himself as struggling to best serve his view of America and his forceful superior, the President.

Richard Helms himself was evidently sceptical, yet Johnson never asked for his personal opinion.

In early 1968, DCI Richard Helms had agreed to allow William Colby to take a temporary leave of absence from the CIA in order to go to Vietnam and lead CORDS, a position with ambassadorial rank.

Recently Richard Helms had promoted Colby to a top CIA post: head of the Soviet Division.

Richard Helms then goes on to recount the Phoenix program's progressive slide into corruption and counterproductive violence, which came to nullify its early success.

Richard Helms expressed his assent that the DCI was a non-partisan position.

When Nixon attended NSC meetings, he would often direct his personal animosity and ire directly at Richard Helms, who led an agency Nixon considered overrated, whose proffered intelligence Nixon thought of little use or value, and which had a history of aiding his political enemies, according to Nixon.

Richard Helms found it difficult to establish a cordial working relationship with the new President.

When in 1967 he instructed Richard Helms to investigate, Richard Helms remarked that such activity would involve some risk, as his agency generally was not permitted to conduct such surveillance activity within the national borders.

Richard Helms understood the reasons for the president's orders, and the assumed foreign connection.

Richard Helms kept the operation hidden, from nearly all agency personnel, in Angleton's counterintelligence office.

When Richard Helms reported these findings to the President, the reaction was hostile.

Accordingly, Johnson instructed Richard Helms to continue the search with increased diligence.

Lawrence Houston, the CIA general counsel, became involved, and Richard Helms wrote an office memorandum to justify the Chaos operation to CIA officers and agents.

Richard Helms increased the heavy bombing of Vietnam, of Laos and Cambodia, and widened the scope of the conflict by invading Cambodia.

The 1973 Paris Peace Accords came after Richard Helms had left the CIA.

Richard Helms engaged in efforts to block the socialist programs of Salvador Allende of Chile, actions done at President Nixon's behest.

Richard Helms left office at the CIA on February 2,1973, seven months before the coup d'etat in Chile.

Only later did Richard Helms conclude that "the leaks were coming directly from the White House" and that "President Nixon was personally manipulating the administration's efforts to contain the scandal".

Richard Helms did not consider his position at CIA to be a political job, which was the traditional view within the Agency, and so did not resign as DCI.

Previously, on election day Richard Helms had lunch with General Alexander Haig, a top Nixon security advisor; Haig didn't know Nixon's mind on the future at CIA.

Richard Helms was informed by Nixon that his services in the new administration would not be required.

Richard Helms enjoyed an elite student experience which he shared with the Shah, as circa 1930, both had attended Le Rosey, a French-language prep school in Switzerland.

Richard Helms was a strong leader, a reformer who appreciated the needs of his people and who had a vision of a developed, pro-Western, anti-Communist, prosperous Iran.

Richard Helms found himself satisfied with his "as much as might be asked for" dealings with the Shah.

Yet Richard Helms describes lively conversations with "polite give-and-take" in which the shah never forgot his majesty; these discussions could end with an agreement to disagree.

Immediately, Richard Helms made requests to the shah regarding fueling favors for the United States Navy near Bandar Abbas.

In March 1975, Richard Helms learned the shah alone had negotiated a major agreement with Saddam Hussein of Iraq while in Algiers at an OPEC meeting.

Richard Helms articulated several understandings, derived from his working knowledge and experiences as ambassador in Iran.

Richard Helms agreed to Helms' plan to resign as ambassador before the Presidential election.

Richard Helms testified in appearances before Congress many times during his long career.

In testifying before Congress, both former DCIs John McCone and Richard Helms were informed beforehand by a CIA officer as to what documents Congress had been given and hence the probable contours of its knowledge.

Richard Helms parted ways with Colby as a result, and especially regarding Colby's delicate role in the perjury allegations against him.

Later that year, Richard Helms pled nolo contendere to two lesser, misdemeanor charges that he had not "fully, completely and accurately" testified to Congress.

Richard Helms received a two-year suspended sentence and a $2,000 fine.

Richard Helms, nonetheless, continued to enjoy the support of many in the CIA, both active officers and retired veterans, including James Angleton.

Williams added that Helms would "wear this conviction like a badge of honor, like a banner", a sentiment later seconded by James R Schlesinger, who had followed Helms as DCI in 1973.

Richard Helms resigned from his post in Iran to face allegations brought by Carter's Justice Department that he had earlier misled Congress.

Always guarded, Richard Helms spoke for the record with British television personality David Frost in 1978.

In 1969 and 1981, Richard Helms had participated in the Oral History Interviews for the Johnson Library in Austin.

Richard Helms was back to doing familiar work on the phone.

That year, Richard Helms served as a member of the President's Commission on National Security.

Also in 1983, Richard Helms gave a prepared speech on intelligence issues, before dignitaries and five hundred invited guests gathered at a Washington awards banquet held in his honor.

Richard Helms died at the age of 89 of multiple myeloma on October 23,2002.

Richard Helms was interred at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

Apparently the edginess of Richard Helms was not nervousness, but indicated an exquisite awareness of his surroundings, wrote the investigative reporter.

Yet Richard Helms steered an informed course and kept his own counsel concerning the tides of political affairs, according to journalist Woodward.

In 1939 Richard Helms had married Julia Bretzman Shields, a sculptor six years his senior.

Richard Helms would write two books, both of which included her public experiences during their long marriage.

Yet 20 years later, Richard Helms included books by le Carre among "the better spy novels" in his memoirs.

Richard Helms dated the letter "V-E Day", the day Germany surrendered.

Sixty-six years later, Dennis Richard Helms delivered the letter to the CIA; it arrived on May 3,2011, the day after the death of Osama bin Laden.

Richard Helms was not related to the late-US Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina.