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OBITUARY: Richard Helms, R.I.P.(Obituary)
Some time after my first novel (Saving the Queen) was published, I had a handwritten note from Richard Helms. He had read the book, he said, and enjoyed it. I replied and, subsequently, we had one or two visits at lunch.
I was especially pleased inasmuch as he had been Director of Central Intelligence and would have been put off by any spytime solecisms he'd bumped into. And he might have found a number of these, inasmuch as my protagonist, Blackford Oakes, was inducted into the CIA as an undergraduate, trained, and deployed in Great Britain where -- as one might put it, in a trade in which one divulges nothing more than necessary -- Oakes took on more than the CIA gave him to chew.
But what obviously caught the Director's eye was the predicament my protagonist was caught up in: He was asked to testify before a congressional committee about activity he had engaged in, and declined to answer questions.
The Senate committee asked Helms, in 1973, to disclose what he knew about the derailment of the Salvador Allende regime in Chile. Helms dissimulated. He had already left the CIA, Richard Nixon having replaced him when Helms refused to block the FBI's inquiry into Watergate. Nixon sent him off as ambassador to Iran, which was a shelter of sorts, but in 1976 he came home to Washington to face the music, pleading no contest to charges that he had lied to a congressional committee. He tried to explain his problem to the judge, as Blackford Oakes had tried to explain his silence to his own senatorial inquisitors. "I found myself," Helms told the court, "in a position of conflict. I had sworn my oath to protect certain secrets. I didn't want to lie, I didn't want to mislead the Senate. I was simply trying to find my way through a very difficult situation in which I found myself."
The ...
- Former CIA chief Richard Helms dies.
- News wire article from: United Press International October 23, 2002 700+ words
...International via COMTEX) Richard Helms, director of the CIA during the country's Vietnam...of death was not given. A CIA spokesman told United Press...of the death of Ambassador Richard Helms," present CIA Director George Tenet said...
- The art of flattery: letters from a CIA director to a president.(Richard Helms;...
- Magazine article from: Washington Monthly Komisar, Lucy April 1, 1996 700+ words
...genre. They were written by then CIA Director Richard Helms to President Richard Nixon. Many...administration. He'd been invited, as CIA chief, to attend Johnson administration...was far from satisfied with his CIA chief. By 1970, Nixon was blaming...
- `A Look Over My Shoulder,' by Richard Helms with William Hood; Random...
- Newspaper article from: Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service Raphael, Lev July 30, 2003 700+ words
...life of privilege helped lead Richard Helms into a life of espionage. The former director of the CIA, a Williams College graduate...at the OSS, precursor to the CIA, in Berlin at the end of World...author, William Hood, a former CIA agent who has previously written...
- Man who kept the secrets; Richard Helms and world of intelligence he...
- Newspaper article from: The Washington Times April 13, 2003 700+ words
...anonymity of a George Smiley for Richard Helms, a dominant figure in America...intelligence. Consider the CIA "culture." When clean-broom...zealots talk about "reforming" CIA, they usually speak of getting...writes: "Of course, there is a CIA culture. Any circumscribed...
- TRANSITION.(deaths of Richard Helms, Adolph Green and Richard Harris)(Brief...
- Magazine article from: Newsweek Thomas, Evan November 4, 2002 700+ words
Byline: -Evan Thomas RICHARD HELMS, 89 Helms was "the man who...memorably called the former CIA director (1966-73). Urbane...favorite of the old boys at the CIA, in part because of his tight...with lying to Congress about CIA covert operations, Helms pleaded...
- Richard Helms and the C.I.A. choices amongst conflicting duties.(United States...
- Magazine article from: National Observer - Australia and World Affairs Spry, I.C.F. June 22, 2003 700+ words
Richard McGarrack Helms, who died on 22 October 2002, was perhaps the most controversial, and certainly one of the most important directors of the Central Intelligence Agency. He was the director of the C.I.A. from 1966 to 1973, during one of the most critical parts of the Cold War, when the Soviet
- The agency: the rise and decline of the CIA.
- Magazine article from: Washington Monthly Wise, David July 1, 1986 700+ words
...to Congress when the CIA's malfeasances began to unravel in public, and Richard Helms is a hero because he...life of their own. The CIA did indeed say no...to handle. Earlier, CIA director Richard Helms wrote a complaisant memo...
- Cold Warrior: The CIA's Master Spy Hunter.
- Magazine article from: National Review Szamuely, George July 29, 1991 700+ words
...That it took the CIA so many years to recognize...evident, and that Richard Helms has not yet done so...Angleton, chief of the CIA's Counterintelligence...ever uncovered is for Richard Helms, at least, proof that the CIA was not penetrated...