A Look Over My Shoulder

by Richard Helms

  Jack Smith gave me the good news at my morning staff meeting. He claims that I accepted it without flinching—and might well have added that I did not trouble to wipe the egg from our collective faces. The report went immediately to the White House and Pentagon. And Jack’s staff undertook a postmortem.

  In a more perfect world, after criticizing our initially poor performance, a more perfect leader might have managed a word of encouragement for having, against formidable odds, achieved an impressive bit of long-range intelligence collection. It would have been too much to expect anyone to remark on CIA’s immediate admission of our initial error. As it was, the Sihanoukville incident appeared to be taken as further evidence of the Agency’s bias, and even sympathy, for what some of the White House staff referred to as the “McNamara position on Vietnam.”

  The worst result of the corrected estimate was the bludgeon it gave Agency critics to belabor any future intelligence estimates that did not reinforce the administration’s policy. “But what about your estimate on Sihanoukville?” was to become an all-purpose argument clincher.

  Chapter 38

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  NIXON VS. ALLENDE

  In contrast to my work with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, I rarely saw Nixon. When we did encounter one another, he was often affable and always businesslike. The atmosphere at National Security Council meetings was quite different. At these gatherings, Nixon often found fault with the Agency and spared me little criticism. This was certainly within his prerogative, but his views might occasionally have been tempered with some acknowledgment of the Agency’s competence.

  As a rule, Nixon’s instructions were conveyed to me by Henry Kissinger, or his deputy, Colonel (later General) Al Haig. As far as I ever knew, they were effective messengers. As national security advisor, Kissinger ran his own, exceptionally well-staffed shop. Staunch as he was in his own strong opinions, Henry quickly became secure in his relationship with the President he could scarcely have known when chosen for the job. Al Haig always struck me as the very definition of a highly competent chief of staff. There was never a detail that he failed to grasp or an error he did not put straight. Aside from an occasional lapse into obscure but colorful Army slang, he was always precise and to the point. “Let’s snake-check this one,” Al was fond of saying. I learned that every morning, on certain Army posts, prudent soldiers carefully examined their boots lest a chilly reptile had found a snug sleeping place.

  One of Kissinger’s important services was his ability to articulate President Nixon’s foreign policy views. At NSC meetings, Nixon would often speak at some length on his foreign policy plans or concerns. Curiously, for a lawyer and experienced public speaker, Nixon often rambled from point to point, out of context, and at length. No matter how closely the NSC members paid attention, these off-the-cuff remarks were sometimes bewildering and hard to follow. It always came as a surprise to me when in a press briefing a few hours later, Henry Kissinger would express Nixon’s earlier discourse in a well-organized and lucid form. It was only later I learned that when Nixon prepared for a public address, he would draft his remarks on legal-size yellow pads and, in the process of editing, in essence memorize the speech. It was when he was speaking in-house that Nixon was prone to wander.

  In National Security Council meetings and other such gatherings, Nixon appeared actually to enjoy disparaging various elements of the executive branch. It often seemed as though he were setting himself and the White House staff in an adversary position against the rest of the government. It was an odd attitude: as the ultimate boss, he presided over it all. Nixon trusted few. It was as though he felt beleaguered by his own subordinates. And maybe he was at times and in some instances. But he had the power and the responsibility to correct it.

  At one time, Nixon admitted to me that he wanted to get rid of J. Edgar Hoover, and asked if I had any suggestions. I had none. Like President Johnson, Nixon was not prepared to take the political heat involved in any such move. With his election to a second term, Nixon saw his chance to establish the kind of control of the executive branch that he wanted. He nominated a few officers as counselors on the White House staff. Their task was to keep an eye on selected cabinet departments. He also wanted to plant White House staffers in various departments in positions from which they could report regularly to the White House. This effort to seize a more firm day-to-day control of the government collapsed and disappeared in the storm that followed the Watergate break-in.

  At best, Nixon seemed perpetually cranky in his relations with CIA. He appreciated the fact that the Agency could adequately monitor an arms control treaty, but with the passage of time became sour as gall about our inability to shunt Salvador Allende aside from the presidency of Chile.

  Throughout my tenure under Nixon, candid glimpses of his attitude came to my attention and to that of other senior CIA officers. In the course of Henry Kissinger’s first post-election meeting with the President, Nixon took care to denounce CIA as a group of “Ivy League liberals” who “had always opposed him politically.”* Other all too candid glimpses of Nixon’s attitude came frequently to the attention of the Agency’s upper- and mid-level officers. At the lowest level, these remarks included ludicrous allegations—CIA personnel housed themselves in Georgetown and spent off-duty hours at cocktail parties making sport of Nixon. If our several thousand employees and their families actually lived in Georgetown, there would have been but standing room for one and all. On a more significant level, Nixon’s allegedly expressed wonderment as to what “those idiots out there in McLean are up to” could only poison the atmosphere. Face-to-face, Nixon usually affected a somewhat more benign attitude.

  In contrast to the repeated criticism, I was surprised to read Nixon’s comment on me as recorded on a bit of the famous White House tapes.† It came on May 11, 1973, at the height of the Watergate crisis. Nixon is conferring with White House Chief of Staff General Al Haig. “Helms’s ass is out there,” Nixon says. “His whole career is out there.” After a few words on General Walters, Nixon continues, “Helms would never agree … to falsify cops and robbers things. He’s never going to say that he participated in a cover-up.” There may be some less favorable judgments on the tapes, but I’ve not come across them.

  It was soon after Nixon’s first inauguration that it began to seem that what he wanted from CIA was intelligence reports and estimates most likely to support his foreign policy and domestic positions. In effect, he wanted a claque underwriting and applauding his policies. Dislike for the bearers of bad news is, of course, universal. No president can have been more disheartened by bad news from the battlefield than President Johnson. But like President Lincoln, LBJ accepted bad news and moved along accordingly. Nixon showed little interest in an independent intelligence service. The ink that puts this opinion to paper does not flow easily, the more so because of my conviction that on foreign policy issues, Nixon was an extremely well informed president. Whatever my faults and the possible shortcomings of the Agency’s senior officers, the explanation for Nixon’s persistent deriding of many who were in the best position to serve him and his administration must rest deep within the personality of Nixon himself.

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  To most Americans, and to me before 1962, the word “Chile” conjured up the image of a small democratic country stretched alongside Argentina at the southern tip of the Western Hemisphere. Today, however, I still associate Chile with some of the most unpleasant aspects of my professional life.

  Almost from its inception in 1947, CIA activity and objectives in the Western Hemisphere were overshadowed by the more demanding concerns in the USSR, Eastern Europe, the Far East, and the several hot spots in the Near East and Africa. By 1959, the advent of Castro brought Cuba abruptly to the attention of the Eisenhower administration. In 1961 the Bay of Pigs reinforced President Kennedy’s conviction that there should be no communist governments in the Western Hemisphere.

  For some 150 years, and with only a handful of brief interru
ptions, Chile was known as one of the more democratic and stable countries in Latin America. The constitution provided for a multi-party political system based on open elections. Presidents served a six-year term and were not allowed to succeed themselves in office. Unlike many others in the hemisphere, the Chilean military maintained a hands-off relationship with the government; there was a developing middle class, and women had begun to play a more active role in public life. At my first briefing on Chile, I recall the young desk chief reminding me that I should not confuse the political terms used by the European labor movements with those in Chile. The European parties were essentially democratic/labor-oriented reformers working within the existing democratic parliamentary systems. From its birth in 1933, the Chilean Socialist Party was dominated by far-left Marxist-Leninist ideologues, with the sometimes openly expressed objective of destroying the existing “bourgeois society.”

  In 1962, President Kennedy directed CIA to provide covert support to the Christian Democratic Party. More than $200,000 was authorized. It is not much of a sum these days, but it was quite hefty at the time. The Kennedy concentration on Castro, and the need for containing Cuban efforts to export their revolution to South America, meant that Chile loomed large. From 1962 until 1970, under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, the policy governing CIA operations in Chile was simply to preserve the democratic constitutional system. When subsidies were given, the funds were used to strengthen the democratic elements committed to economic and social reform. Covert propaganda alerted the Chilean voters to the danger of the Soviet-supported popular front strategy and countered the heavily subsidized Soviet and Cuban propaganda machines. In Chile, as in many other areas, the political parties most likely to share and support the U.S. objectives were democratic and left of center.

  As the 1964 election approached, I met daily with my deputy, Tom Karamessines, and the desk officers concerned with Chile. It would take time and a delicate hand to establish the mechanisms—press and radio outlets, financial support—necessary to help underwrite Chile’s democratic government. Our efforts were carefully coordinated with the Kennedy White House and embassy in Santiago.

  Eduardo Frei, the competent and popular leader of the Christian Democratic Party, was elected president in 1964 with a comfortable margin. His plan to initiate various reforms attracted the favorable attention of both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The Alliance for Progress granted Chile a net of some billion dollars in aid—more per capita than any other country in the Western Hemisphere. Early in the 1964 election campaign, the Johnson administration directed CIA to pass $3 million to Frei’s Christian Democratic Party. The following year, President Johnson authorized CIA to commit another $500,000 to help block the election of a dozen far-left candidates for Congress.

  In office, Frei found it easier to promise reform than to put the programs into practice. The left-wing Christian Democrats were dissatisfied because Frei had not pushed through the more ambitious programs. The right-wing members of that party were alarmed by the scope of some of the reform measures. The resulting discord splintered the Christian Democratic Party and triggered an unwelcome polarization in Chilean politics.

  When President Nixon took office, he inherited the policy of the two previous administrations that had both openly and covertly opposed the possible election of Salvador Allende. The prospect of an Allende government in Chile was a clear threat to our national interest. In a three-way election, it appeared most likely that the two non-Communist parties would split the anti-Allende vote and allow a Socialist-Communist government to step into office.

  As the 1970 presidential election loomed, three candidates were chosen. On the right, the National Party chose Jorge Alessandri, a respected establishment figure. Alessandri had been president from 1958 to 1964, and was thus able to run again. The Christian Democrats picked Radomiro Tomic, a slightly left-of-center candidate.

  Salvador Allende, a founding member of the Chilean Socialist Party and an avowed Marxist, was the choice of the Popular Unity coalition. Following Moscow’s lead, the Chilean Communist Party and the Socialists had combined with leftist fragments to form a version of a European popular front called FRAP. Allende was outspoken in pushing hard-line, Moscow-inspired programs. If elected, he would expropriate land and basic industry, and end “American monopolies.” The independent judiciary was to be subordinated to a “Popular Assembly,” and a “national system to promote a popular culture” would be established. Nor did Allende blush at larding his speeches with large chunks of policy lifted verbatim from the Chilean Communist Party programs. He also took care to make sure that the electorate understood one of his most deeply felt convictions: “Cuba in the Caribbean and a Socialist Chile in the southern cone will make the revolution in Latin America.”

  Moscow responded by showering Allende and his party with funds. By our count, even Castro handed Allende some $350,000 taken from the lean Cuban treasury.

  In mid-April 1969, some eighteen months before the presidential election, there were several significant storm warnings. President Frei recognized that the popular base of his Christian Democratic Party was eroding, and began moving to the left. Allende’s support within the Congress was increasing, and the prospect of a three-corner presidential race between two conservative candidates and the Allende front had become even more discouraging. Chances were strong that Tomic and Alessandri would split the democratic vote, leaving Allende with at least a plurality in the national election.

  Several times, we warned the Nixon administration that if the United States were to undertake a serious covert action in the 1970 presidential election, we would have to get under way. There would be much more involved in this campaign than funneling funds to the non-communist parties.

  I no longer have a record of the exact date, but it was at about this time that Senator William Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, summoned me to his office at the Senate. I knew he was aware that in the 1964 presidential campaign the Agency had given political and financial assistance to Frei and the Christian Democratic Party. Now, Senator Fulbright wanted to know if CIA was about to undertake a campaign against Salvador Allende and the Popular Unity coalition. At the time, it appeared that Fulbright knew that the Nixon administration had approved a lightly funded campaign which involved nothing but a covert propaganda effort. It was obvious that he was opposed even to this level of activity, but did not think it would be worth a fight with the Nixon administration to make an issue of it. As I was about to leave, Fulbright said, “Dick, if I catch you trying to upset the Chilean election, I will get up on the Senate floor and blow the operation.”

  The Agency’s most formal alert came on April 15, 1969, when I raised the problem at a meeting of the 40 Committee.* I bluntly stated that if CIA was to be directed to attempt to influence the election, it was time to begin. There was no response from the White House. Later that year, I repeated my argument. If a serious effort was to be made, it must begin at once. Again, the White House failed to take notice.

  Here, Henry Kissinger’s and my memory differ. Henry writes that the Agency should have insisted more firmly that the situation was desperate, and that if action was to be taken, CIA would need a maximum of advance time.† I think CIA spoke often and loudly enough. In Henry’s and my mutual defense, there were more than enough problems and crises elsewhere to keep us both occupied—Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, airplane hijacking, Middle East cease-fire violations, Soviet intentions to build a submarine base at Cienfuegos in Cuba, plus the usual garden variety of lesser bothers.

  In the interests of compromise, and if Henry will agree that he and his staff should have listened more attentively, I will grudgingly admit that the Agency might have shouted even more loudly. In the event, the National Security Council, the State Department, and the White House dropped the ball.

  I first thought to include CIA among those who fumbled, but in retrospect the intelligence estimates were correct and timely. Furthe
rmore, the ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry, could scarcely have been more prescient in his comments. Had the Agency protested more vigorously against the Nixon administration position, it would have risked stepping into the policymaking field.

  It was not until March 1970—some six months before the election—that the 40 Committee authorized CIA to spend $135,000 on what it referred to as “spoiling operations.” This less than felicitous expression meant only that the Agency was to cause enough squabbling within the Allende fold to fragment the movement. In late June, the 40 Committee increased the budget to $300,000. Posters were printed, news stories planted, editorial comment encouraged, rumors whispered, leaflets strewn, and pamphlets distributed. The thrust of this effort was to show that an Allende victory risked the destruction of Chilean democracy. It was a strenuous effort, but the discernible effect seemed minimal. The cost and extent of this activity was but a fraction of the Soviet and Cuban effort in Chile.

  As the Nixon administration began to focus on Chile, the State Department’s Latin American Bureau took the position that any financial aid to the parties that might block an Allende/Socialist/Communist election victory must be found within Chile and that no support should be given to any one candidate. Aside from the fact that there was not the slightest hope that significant funds could be scraped up in Chile, the effect of canceling any U.S. government support to the democratic elements would surely signal a lack of concern for the problems likely to result from a Castro-Allende axis. This abrupt U.S. laissez-faire attitude was also certain to cheer the many radical elements in Chile’s neighbors—Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru. The notion that neither of the democratic parties should be supported meant that their split vote would hand the election to Allende.