Just as Americans began to question how much intelligence there was in the Central Intelligence Agency, and just as the memos, testimony and double-speak began to spook the nation, Richard Helms took the helm of the CIA. And though the agency gained a more sinister image on his watch, Helms always insisted on doing what he did best: He kept mum.
Helms died on Tuesday at age 89. He was a man with a mixed reputation. He will be best-remembered as the director fired by Richard Nixon for refusing to back away from a probe of the presidency — the bright side of the Helms legacy. On the dark side, he will also be remembered as the man who pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors for refusing to testify fully to Congress in 1977.
Unlike J. Edgar Hoover, whose image grows more grim and clouded with time, Helms is still hailed as a robust patriot. His tweedy style and stiff upper lip gave him the air of a British operative as much as an American spymaster. But then Helms was understated by nature. He once said,, "The American people want an effective, strong intelligence operation, they just don't want to hear too much about it."
The American people never heard much about Richard Helms or his agency. He tried to keep both beneath the radar.
For the most part he succeeded.
Helms served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, an organization that would evolve into the CIA. He was known as a classic Cold Warrior. Anti-Communism was his cause. In 1955 he supervised the digging of a 500-yard tunnel between East and West Berlin to eavesdrop on Communist plots. Almost 20 years later he supervised CIA complicity in the overthrow of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile. He felt just as convinced of the rightness of his action in the latter case as the former. He was also party to plans for assassinating Fidel Castro in Cuba and even gave the green light for surveillance of American journalists. He took pride in keeping such things under his hat. He never apologized.
Yet, taken as a whole, Helms' career does balance to the plus side. Later in life, as a private citizen, he worked with corporations looking to invest in foreign nations. He was a genius with languages. He also took to the lecture and party circuit, showing up at black tie affairs where society columnists would call him "urbane," and a man with "brooding good looks."
He was an athlete, a dancer and a popular cocktail guest.
In our current high-tech era, we will not see his ilk again. He was Hitchcockian. He was, in essence, the man in the gray flannel suit, with a pinch of 007 added as spice.