A Look Over My Shoulder

by Richard Helms

  A committee chaired by James Killian, Jr., head of the Pentagon’s Scientific Advisory Panel and president of MIT, and a subgroup headed by Edwin Land, president of the Polaroid Corporation, recommended the development of an aircraft that could fly high enough to avoid antiaircraft fire and Soviet fighter airplanes. The new plane would require sufficient fuel to fly a north-south route over the USSR and continue on to safe haven. Cameras with extraordinary high-definition lenses and new film would also have to be developed.

  The urgent demand for hard intelligence on Soviet military capabilities and the need for the highest level of security to protect every aspect of the new project governed Eisenhower’s decisions. Because the President was acutely aware of how long it might take to push even an urgent project through the prescribed Pentagon procedures, he ordered the program to be directed by CIA civilians, with strong Air Force support. Absolute security was essential—any leak would allow the USSR to prepare new defense measures. To ensure this level of security, Eisenhower decided not to seek congressional approval. At his direction, funds were allocated from the CIA budget. All knowledge of the project was restricted to an absolute “need to know.”

  On December 1, 1954, the Development Project Staff was established under the direction of Richard Bissell. The project was provided with its own communications system, and office space was established in Washington, several miles from the Agency headquarters. The staff included thirty security officers. In time, more than six hundred employees were stationed abroad.

  The tight security prevailed until May 1, 1960, when a U-2 aircraft was knocked down over the USSR. At President Eisenhower’s direction, no more U-2 flights over the Soviet Union were undertaken; a more capable aircraft was already in the works. The new vehicle was christened OXCART, rather a misnomer for a craft that flew 2000 miles an hour at 85,000 feet. At a secret air base in Nevada, I watched a midnight takeoff of this plane. The blast of flame that sent the black, insect-shaped projectile hurtling across the tarmac made me duck instinctively. It was as if the Devil himself were blasting his way straight from Hell. But OXCART was never used over the USSR; a “reconnaissance satellite” known as CORONA superseded it.

  CORONA was vastly more complicated than the manned aircraft flights. The photo-satellite was propelled into orbit by a rocket. With its cameras programmed to turn on and off over various areas of the USSR, the satellite had to remain stable and on course until it completed the photo mission. The flight continued until reaching the precise map coordinates above the Pacific Ocean and a rendezvous with a high-flying aircraft. The satellite then ejected the cameras and film. If timing and navigation were perfect, the ejected bundle would be intercepted before plunging into the ocean.

  I have never ceased to marvel at the amount of pure science, technical skill, imagination, initiative, and determination involved in achieving these results. CORONA ranks high in the history of American accomplishments. The fact that the project remained secret is in itself remarkable.

  A final irony. After thirteen nerve-wrenching failures, the first successful CORONA flight occurred on the day that Gary Powers, pilot of the fallen U-2, was sentenced to prison by a Moscow court. On this flight CORONA returned with twenty pounds of film—and more, and better, photographs of the USSR than all of the U-2 flights combined.

  As always in the intelligence world, one successful—against all odds—operation begets another often more daunting demand. We were soon informed that our magical triple play was entirely too time-consuming. Too many hours were involved in intercepting the stolen booty, flying it to Washington, and waiting for the lengthy processing. The time involved in this sequence seemed reasonable enough to me. Not so, said the impatient analysts. Something known as real-time readout was now deemed essential.

  Fortunately for us all, Albert D. “Bud” Wheelon, one of the most outstanding of our score of genius-level scientists, was at home in Annandale, Virginia, watching the Washington Redskins blow a National Football League game in San Francisco. It occurred to him that if a Redskins fumble could be viewed across the country in real time, it should be possible to arrange such a transmission from an earth-orbiting capsule careening several hundred miles out in space. Indeed, why not?

  Wheelon, who was the first chief of the newly formed Directorate for Science and Technology (DS&T), assigned the task to Leslie Dirks, a talented MIT physics graduate and former Rhodes scholar. Bud had recently recruited Dirks to run the Office of Science and Technology in the DS&T. This is not the place to recount the details, but by 1976 data from a satellite orbiting the USSR were transmitted to a relay satellite in a much higher orbit, from which it was then transmitted to a ground station in the United States. In effect, another spectacular triple play. The few seconds lost in this legerdemain fell within the definition of real time established by the persnickety consumers. The data flowed at the rate of over a hundred digital TV channels. Even more remarkably, the linkup was achieved on the first try.

  A few months before the first successful satellite flight, the coordinated estimates of Soviet missile strength ranged from 140 to 200 intercontinental nuclear missiles. The first CORONA photographs reduced the count from 10 to perhaps as many as 25 ICBMs. CORONA flew 145 secret missions, with equally rewarding results. I was invited to CIA headquarters in February 1995 when Vice President Al Gore announced the declassification of CORONA. It was a treat to watch one of our Top Secret Code Word CORONA cameras being handed over to the Smithsonian Institution. More important, the declassification gave the project a second life.

  From the first photographs in 1960, these reconnaissance satellites have continued to provide this government with the vital strategic intelligence needed for informed policy decisions. The military data protect our armies in the field. Policymakers can monitor compliance with international treaties, and evaluate natural and man-made disasters.

  Today, the photographs are available to environmentalists, agronomists, geologists, cartographers, and dozens of other experts. The photographs show changes in the arctic ice cap, pollution in rivers, the effects of deforestation, the encroachment of deserts on once fertile land.

  President Johnson once said, “We’ve spent between thirty-five and forty billion dollars on space … but if nothing else had come from that program except the knowledge that we get from our satellite photography, it would be worth ten times … what the whole program has cost.… We were building things we didn’t need.… We were harboring fears that we didn’t need to have.”

  Chapter 27

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  J. EDGAR’S FBI

  J. Edgar Hoover had been in office forty-two years when I was appointed director of Central Intelligence. Given the pressure of other business, I decided that I might wait a few days before making the customary protocol call. I had met Hoover several times at social events, invariably when British, Canadian, or Australian intelligence and security visitors were in Washington on official business. On these occasions our chats were strictly social, no shoptalk, ever.

  The day I first visited the FBI offices—as my grandmother would have said, “to make my manners,” and to assure Hoover that CIA would continue to work closely with the FBI—Hoover greeted me cordially, and waved me to a chair directly in front of his desk. After a forty-five-minute uninterrupted history of the FBI in peace and war, J. Edgar stood up. We shook hands, and he wished me well in my new job. As I recall it, I did not say a word during his monologue. Nor did Director Hoover mention anything that in any way concerned our respective professional concerns. It was after this bizarre session that I decided not to seek any further one-on-one meetings with him.

  A few months later, after a Tuesday lunch at the White House, I found Jim Angleton and Sam Papich, the FBI officer who handled liaison with the Agency, sitting in my outer office. Jim looked so glum and Sam so forlorn that I resisted the temptation to make a reference to “Death in the Afternoon,” and summoned them inside.

  The situation that Jim and Sam
viewed as a serious crisis had surfaced a few days earlier in Colorado. In a routine discussion of the whereabouts of a missing college professor, one of the local FBI officers had inadvertently mentioned an inconsequential aspect of the case to the chief of the local CIA Contacts Division (overt) offices. When Hoover learned about this gaffe, he instructed Papich to demand that CIA identify the FBI officer who had made the mistake.

  Angleton asked if we should comply with Hoover’s demand. I refused. My strong feeling was that it was up to Hoover to ferret out his own agent. I did not want to put CIA in the position of finking on the slight slip of a career FBI officer.

  When Hoover, who took great pride in keeping abreast of all FBI activity, no matter how marginal, learned that I had no intention of investigating the incident, he forthwith suspended all liaison between the FBI and the Agency. This was informal—that is, Hoover did not inform me officially or by letter; he simply instructed Sam Papich to stop coming to the Agency to exchange communications and discuss problems.

  Jim and Sam both saw the situation as a much more serious crisis than I did. My reaction was conditioned by the fact that the last thing I wanted was an all-out contretemps with the FBI on such a trivial matter. Moreover, I decided that if J. Edgar wanted to punish me or the Agency, I did not, at the moment at least, see what might be done about it. I shrugged, and suggested that this episode might not be the end of the world as we knew it. After giving Jim and Sam the benefit of my reasoning, I suggested they go home, have a stiff drink or two, and wait to see what might happen. I assume that they accepted at least part of my advice.

  It turned out that what J. Edgar had suspended was any personal contact between Bureau agents and their CIA counterparts. At the work level both sides got around the problem by exchanging memoranda in lieu of the usually more rewarding—and less time-consuming—personal meetings. This went on for several weeks until, without notice, things returned to normal, with FBI agents coming out to the Agency as usual. This episode struck me as an example of Hoover’s determination to show that at all times he was fully in charge of every aspect of the FBI.

  My first insight into J. Edgar’s FBI came from Herman Horton, a Bureau officer who had left the FBI to join OSS and stayed on in CIA. Herman had actually worked in Hoover’s office. From the early days, Hoover had insisted that all liaison between the FBI and other government offices, including Congress and the White House, be conducted by the responsible FBI agents visiting the offices of the other agencies. No outsider was to conduct business on Bureau premises. All liaison reports went directly to Hoover, and all outgoing correspondence was signed by him. I came to consider Hoover the most accomplished American bureaucrat of the twentieth century. I say this without irony. J. Edgar had a superb grasp of how things are done in Washington, and was informed in detail of every aspect of the FBI.

  Hoover welcomed telephone calls from any senator, congressman, or high-ranking official, particularly one who might have been found misbehaving. According to Horton, it was Hoover’s practice to “glad-hand” these callers. Not to worry, the miscreants would be assured, Hoover kept all such details in a secret file right there in his private office. I was never aware of Hoover leaking any significant intelligence or internal security data, but the bits of salacious gossip that often floated into the White House were another matter. And I know nothing of the alleged sensitive files that he personally kept. The fact that it was widely thought that J. Edgar kept such files was probably threatening enough to keep some potential sinners in check.

  In the very early days, CIA conducted its own security background checks on prospective employees. When it became apparent that the FBI could handle this work more efficiently, the responsibility was turned over. In the United States, serious personnel security problems were handled jointly with the FBI and the CIA Office of Security.

  When the CIA Counterintelligence Staff was established, Jim Angleton assumed responsibility for operational liaison with the FBI. Jane Roman, a veteran OSS X-2 officer, handled the daily meetings with Sam Papich. Hoover could not have made a better choice in selecting a liaison representative than Sam Papich.

  Sam was one of the first FBI agents* to have worked undercover abroad. From 1941 to 1945 he had three undercover assignments in Latin America. This gave him an informed understanding of the difference between police work at home and secret operations abroad.

  Hoover was never comfortable dealing directly with foreigners. He restricted his few personal meetings with foreign officials to those from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. He rarely if ever dealt personally with any of the other foreign services with which the FBI maintained relations. To my knowledge, Hoover had never stepped out of the United States.

  In the early postwar days, liaison relationships between the Bureau and the CIA predecessor units were complicated by individuals smarting off. One side saw the other as cops, out of their depth in foreign operations. The others viewed the Agency staff as dilettantes, too delicate for the real world. Both were wrong. The respect and friendship that grew between Sam Papich and Angleton solved a great many problems, and served as the foundation for future relations at various levels.

  One of Papich’s earliest experiences with CIA came in a meeting with General Bedell Smith. Sam had gone to the DCI’s office on a delicate counterintelligence matter. He presented J. Edgar’s position, and General Smith exploded. “Does your boss really think he can send some bald-headed bastard in here to tell me how to run my business?” In deference to Beedle Smith’s well-known ulcer problems, semi-bald Sam remained silent.

  A few moments later, Smith got up from his desk and invited Sam into a small room adjoining his office. Coffee was served to Sam, milk to Smith. Cookies were shared. The air cleared, and Papich’s relationship with Beedle was soon back on track and prospering. Months later, when General Smith was named under secretary of state, he asked that Papich replace the Bureau agent responsible for liaison with the department. Fortunately for the FBI and CIA, Sam managed to talk the general out of pushing his request.

  By the late 1940s, we had achieved a reasonable and effective relationship between the two services. There were, of course, marked differences. The FBI was a national police service, and a good one. For decades the FBI’s basic responsibility was solving crimes; domestic counterintelligence came second. CIA’s operations activity was abroad. Differences in technique and methods became apparent when an FBI informant’s activity took him abroad and the control of the operation was transferred to CIA. Similar problems occurred when a CIA-controlled agent’s activity moved into the United States. Despite occasional misunderstandings, the relationship was always, at the least, more than adequate.

  Another area of occasional disagreement came in the assessment of the bona fides of defectors and agents. In the Nosenko case, the differences of opinion between the Bureau and the Agency were mild when compared to the strife that existed within CIA, and to a degree within the Bureau. Less contentious were the respective evaluations of FBI-controlled agents in place in the Soviet intelligence services. As it was in Vietnam, it is not unusual for experts dealing with identical data to come up with divergent evaluations.

  In the course of his service, J. Edgar made his share of enemies, and secretly disaffected superiors. President Nixon actually asked me how Hoover might be eased out of office. I understood his problem, but did not offer any advice. The bottom line was always attributed to President Johnson: “In the long run, I’d rather have Edgar on the inside pissing out, than on the outside hosing me down.” Both Presidents decided to let nature take its course. It did, and Hoover died in 1972.

  Since Hoover’s death a few commentators and journalists have been bold enough to speculate on his possible homosexual bent. The image of the legendary G-man in wig and ball gown has even been conjured up by one writer. I know of no reliable evidence to support this allegation, and have no reason to believe that J. Edgar was anything but the self-contained fellow
that he seemed to be. All I can contribute to the speculation is to point out that Hoover, a creature of habit, was almost never alone.

  Hoover’s daily routine rarely varied. An FBI car, driver, and bodyguard would pick Hoover up at his Thirtieth Street residence, drive to the apartment of his deputy, Clyde Tolson, on Massachusetts Avenue, and then to FBI headquarters. At noon, Hoover and Tolson would be driven to whichever restaurant was then their favorite. At the end of the day, the transportation routine would be reversed in time for early dinner and subsequent TV. This door-to-door transportation followed the same pattern when J. Edgar was on vacation—more often than not with Tolson.

  In the Washington fishbowl, and even on holiday, I find it impossible to believe that anyone as well known and as easily identified as Hoover might have managed a clandestine sex life. J. Edgar Hoover’s personal life could not have been more banal.

  Eccentric? Yes. Very eccentric? Yes, indeed. An active homosexual? No way.

  *FBI officers are referred to as “agents” or special agents. FBI-controlled spies are “informants.” In CIA, “agents” are spies. CIA operational personnel are “officers.” To belabor the obvious, it has happened that an FBI agent was also a spy, and that a CIA officer was also an agent. In context, Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames come to mind.

  Chapter 28

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  BEYOND X-2