A Look Over My Shoulder

by Richard Helms

  The Senate formed the Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities on January 27, with Senator Frank Church at the helm. Not to be left on the outside with its nose pressed against the CIA windows, the House of Representatives formed its own Select Committee on Intelligence Operations, chaired by Congressman Otis Pike, on February 19.

  After Colby replaced Schlesinger as DCI, he established a policy that Senator Church and his staff were to be given access to all the documents, irrespective of classification, that the committee might think useful. Rather than wait until the committees asked for data, Colby was prepared to supply whatever such documents—internal memoranda, directives, dispatches, cables, and files—he thought the Church Select Committee (and subsequently the Pike Committee) might find useful. As director of Central Intelligence, it was Colby’s sworn responsibility to protect “CIA sources and methods.” Moreover, Colby made this decision without consulting or informing either the President or the national security advisor.

  It was after Colby’s early appearances before the Vice President’s commission that Rockefeller took him aside and asked, “Bill, do you really have to present all this material to us? We realize that there are secrets you fellows need to keep and so nobody here is going to take it amiss if you feel that there are some questions you can’t answer quite as fully as you seem to feel you have to.”* This warning and the DCI’s legal responsibilities did not affect Colby’s determination to continue dumping CIA files on the Rockefeller Commission, and subsequently the Senate and House committees. The fact that the Soviet and other foreign intelligence services were surely studying the disclosures with microscopic attention was also apparently ignored by Colby.

  The DCI’s unilateral actions effectively smashed the existing system of checks and balances protecting the national intelligence service. As Henry Kissinger points out, “In ordinary circumstances, the Director of Central Intelligence would have sounded the alarm against excessive disclosures inimical to national security. The President, in consultation with the Director and the Secretaries of State and Defense, would have sought to develop some criteria by which to define transgressions and confine investigations to these subjects.”† As in the past, this would have protected security secrets and opened the way to establishing procedures to prevent any further such abuses.

  The Rockefeller report noted that in the course of its twenty-eight-year history CIA had engaged in some activities that should be criticized, that some were unlawful invasions of the rights of Americans and should not be allowed to happen again. Press coverage of the Rockefeller report failed to stress that a number of these questionable activities were initiated or ordered by the various incumbent presidents. Seventy-five percent of the “domestic spying” incidents were security investigations of persons affiliated with the Agency. Only fifteen such investigations concerned persons not directly connected with CIA. This is a less than impeccable performance, but not all that bad considering the security atmosphere prevailing throughout the darkest days of the Cold War and the many years involved.

  I recall only two instances in intelligence history in which the files of intelligence services were as thoroughly ransacked as those of the Agency during these three investigations. Shortly after the Bolsheviks took power in Russia, the files of the Okhrahna—the imperial Russian intelligence and security agency—were thrown open to the public. The purpose of this hasty action was presumably to convince the Russian people that the czar’s government had used all manner of illegal secret operations to spy upon and destroy all political opposition to its rule. It was only when the Soviet security services realized that the newly formed Polish intelligence service had helped itself to all of this data that the barn doors were closed. Veteran Polish intelligence officers admitted that this information helped in their early successful penetration of the USSR. The second such instance came after the surrender of the Third Reich, when the victorious Allied and Soviet intelligence services assigned scores of researchers to the tons of Nazi files that had escaped destruction.

  The Church Committee began its investigation with what seemed to be reasonable precautions in the handling of classified data. CIA and other agencies involved in the investigation were allowed to delete sensitive portions of documents before handing them to the investigating staffers. Unfortunately, this precaution was often nullified by the tight deadlines imposed by the senator for delivery of the documents. In the time available it proved impossible for the reviewing staff to consult with other officers who might have a more informed opinion of the sensitivity of the specific material. Throughout this exercise senators like Charles “Mac” Mathias and John Tower struggled to keep the committee on focus and to avoid the most serious, and often gratuitous, security compromises. Their good counsel and cautions were persistently overridden by the enthusiasm that some of the others had for making headlines with the data supplied by CIA and Senator Church’s persistent grandstanding.

  One of the more revealing illustrations of Church’s approach to “Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities” surfaced in one of his early questions at the first public hearing with DCI Colby. With an appropriately grim visage, Church asked, “Have you brought some of those devices which would have enabled CIA to use this [a previously discussed poison] for killing people?” Given this presumably out-of-the-blue question, one of Colby’s side men promptly produced a clumsy pistol equipped with an unwieldy telescopic sight. DCI Colby described the device as a “Nondiscernible Microbioinoculator.” It was presumably supposed to convince worldwide audiences to stay tuned—the senator and DCI were hand in hand about to make a clean breast of CIA’s past. And as surely as the sun sets in the west, the world press leaped to attention.

  Lost in the blaze that followed was the fact that this preposterous “dart gun” was not a CIA concoction but the product of a Defense Department employee. As Henry Kissinger explains, it was in an effort to recoup some of the cost of developing this gimmick that the military had attempted to convince other, less lethally armed agencies to purchase a few.* At CIA, the free-sample Microbioinoculator was relegated to a locked closet. Until glimpsing the device on the front page of a newspaper, I had never seen it. Sometime later, a colleague and small-arms expert remarked that the pistol would be more effective if thrown rather than fired at a prospective victim.

  By October 1975, Church had completed his work. (Before the senator finished with me, I had testified for some hundred hours.) President Ford, who had a much more informed knowledge of the intelligence and security equities than he has been given credit for, tried to keep Senator Church from publishing his report. The President was convinced that the ensuing discussions of the mountains of classified data Church had amassed would play neatly into the hands of the anti-American elements throughout the world. He also knew that in the heat of the worldwide reaction to the material Church was preparing to disclose, little attention would be paid to the committee’s final findings: With the exception of Nixon’s Track II operation, CIA had functioned under appropriate congressional oversight and White House control and direction. The report placed heavy emphasis on the five assassination “attempts”: Castro in Cuba, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, Patrice Lumumba in Congo/Zaire, and General Schneider in Chile. Also mentioned was the fact that in eight months of dramatic investigation, Senator Church had managed to determine that CIA had never assassinated anyone.

  Senator Church refused President Ford’s request not to publish his committee’s report on the flimsy grounds that the committee had voted to release the report after a closed Senate session. The report was printed, and by late November 1975, copies of the report were given to each senator.

  In the prevailing climate, the sad fact was that most of the accusations of wrongdoing were immediately accepted and trumpeted as facts. Moreover, the accusations were far more widely propagated, and lived much longer, than the eventua
l denials. And many of these accusations still echo in the press and public mind.

  Congressman Pike headed a staff of fifty. From the beginning, it seemed to me that he affected a strong anti-intelligence attitude. This was a shrewd position in at least one aspect—there were more headlines to be gained by parading alleged misdeeds than by digging deeply enough to question the validity of the alleged transgressions. And to stay abreast of, or even occasionally to outshine, the more senior and somewhat more security-conscious Senate committee, the Pike allegations had to be freshly minted scandals.

  At the time, it was my impression that none of the staff employees of either congressional committee had any significant experience handling classified data, background in intelligence, or knowledge of security procedures in general. The ultimate irony of this sorry episode came when DCI Colby, who had provided the committees with hundreds of classified CIA documents, lost his pucker. In his book he refers to the Pike Committee staff as a “bunch of children who were out to seize the most sensational high ground … and could not be interested in a serious review of what intelligence is really all about.” As for the congressman himself, Colby said: “He accepted without change the ragtag, immature, and publicity-seeking committee staff that had been gathered for the investigation.”* To be fair, I must note that Colby also credits Pike with having started with three questions: How much does intelligence cost, how good is it, and what risks are involved? Alas, Pike did not come within sight of any answers to these questions. His young staff reminded me of a group of brats who, having broken into their school, celebrated the adventure by trashing their classroom.

  Congressman Pike finally stubbed his toe when he refused to agree not to make public five different intelligence estimates on a situation in the Near East. The consensus of the U.S. intelligence community was that the publication of these estimates would compromise its ability to monitor and evaluate certain situations. When the Pike group published the information on September 1, President Ford reacted sharply. In an open hearing the following morning, the assistant attorney general reminded the Pike Committee that the President was responsible for national security and foreign relations. He then directed the committee immediately to return all classified materials previously furnished to the committee and that in future “all departments and agencies of the executive branch … [are] to decline to provide … [the Pike Committee] with classified materials.”

  In Pike’s opinion, this raised a constitutional issue as to whether a congressional committee could on its own release classified data prepared by the executive branch. He refused to return any of the documents Colby had provided. Six days after the assistant attorney general’s order, Pike released more classified documents. Some were designated “Eyes Only,” and others contained the names of CIA personnel serving abroad. Pike subsequently subpoenaed the DCI to provide additional data on highly sensitive communications intelligence and the National Security Council to provide a mass of highly classified 40 Committee data on covert action operations. As the all-out battle lines became clearly established, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stepped upon the parapet. Loud and clearly he proclaimed that President Ford was entirely correct in withholding classified information from a congressional committee that refused to obey the legally instituted classification system established by a long-standing presidential order. It was at about this time, mid-October, that the tide turned.

  A New York Times editorial declared the Pike Committee to have been acting “contrary to public interest.” In a letter to the Washington Post, George Kennan strode into the fray with strong support for President Ford and Kissinger. The battle raged on, and the seriously irresponsible disclosure of classified documents continued—various promises and compromises notwithstanding. The tragic murder of Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens, on December 23, 1975, contributed to the changing press and public reaction to the Pike position. Dick Welch’s name (as well as his address and assignment) was one of those disclosed in the compromised CIA material. In late January 1976 the House of Representatives voted to block the release of the Pike Committee report until President Ford could certify that it contained no harmful classified data. No matter, the report was leaked.

  In February the Village Voice, a weekly New York journal not previously noted for its coverage of congressional or foreign affairs, published a version of the Pike report. Daniel Schorr, a CBS journalist, subsequently admitted that he had slipped his copy of the document to the Village Voice—possibly because he could not find a more suitable outlet. As a journalist, Schorr was under no legal obligation to reveal the source of the stolen document.

  President Gerald Ford attended the burial ceremony of Dick Welch at Arlington National Cemetery with honors due to a man murdered by political activists while assigned to the U.S. embassy in Athens.

  *Training foreign agents within the United States is scarcely to be equated with running secret intelligence operations in the Colorado mountains. Aside from the unwelcome publicity, the more serious result of this disclosure was that it tipped the Chinese to the fact that CIA was preparing agents for work in Tibet.

  *Facing Reality (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), p. 161.

  *A Time to Heal (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), p. 230.

  *William Colby, Honorable Men (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978), p. 400.

  †Years of Renewal (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), p. 320.

  *Ibid., p. 328.

  *Honorable Men, pp. 431–32.

  Chapter 43

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  STORM WARNINGS

  I was quietly getting on with my ambassadorial duties in November 1975 when Henry Fowler telephoned to say that he and George Ball were in Tehran on business and would like to drop by and say hello. Henry Fowler, known to his friends as Joe, had been secretary of the Treasury under President Johnson. George Ball was number two at the State Department under Dean Rusk and had attracted considerable attention for publicly opposing the war in Vietnam. Joe and George had both practiced law and were popular and distinguished figures on the Washington scene. We were friends of long standing, and lunch at the residence offered a good chance to pick up on the most recent Washington gossip.

  Before we had settled down for a drink in the library, Joe, like many of our Iranian visitors, made a close inspection of the American Indian paintings Cynthia had borrowed from the National Museum of American Art in Washington. He was not long in getting down to business. “If you are going to do any more testifying in Washington,” he said, “you’d better get yourself a good lawyer.” There may be more effective ways of souring the last sip of one’s sherry, but none comes to mind.

  During the process of obtaining Senate approval of my appointment as ambassador, I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Watergate Committee, and Multinational Corporations subcommittee. At the time, I saw no need for an attorney, and thought that the presence of such a guardian might give a misleading slant to my testimony. To my surprise, it was these hearings which seemed to concern my two visitors more than my subsequent appearances before Senator Frank Church and his Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, the group that was to become better known as the Church Committee.

  My tenure in Iran was plagued by sixteen strenuous round trips to Washington. I accompanied the Shah on an official visit, and made another trip to testify on Watergate. Most of the remaining visits were devoted to Senator Church. I recall at least one session with the House Select Committee on Intelligence Operations, also known as the Pike Committee. These sometimes all but back-to-back trips and the hundred or so hours of testimony on incidents that I could scarcely recall were at the least exhausting.

  In those days, if the weather and flight connections were perfect, the trip from Tehran to Washington, with a change of aircraft in London, averaged from seventeen to eighteen cramped, chairbound hours in the air. Combined with the time spent scuffling from one aircraft to ano
ther at Heathrow, this made for an exhausting experience. Along with reading, picking at microwaved delicacies, and glancing at the films shown on previous trips, I had ample time for what might at best be called contemplating the verities. Any hitch in the weather or flight schedules might add as much as five hours to the total. “Boredom,” “stress,” and “wear and tear” are words that come to mind.

  In Washington, friends insisted that I stay with them rather than at a hotel. This helped to keep my internal clock on one setting and minimize some of the exhausting jet lag. It also made it easier to face as many as four hours attempting to cope with remarks such as “But Mr. Ambassador, you signed this CIA cable!” After glancing at the cable, I often had to reply, “Yes, Senator, that is my signature. On some days, I may have signed as many as twenty cables. Now, years after the fact, I doubt that I can recall any one of them.” This is not an exact quote but it is close enough to give the flavor of the questioning. After two or three such days, I was free to “hop” another interminable trip back to the embassy.

  Before Senator Church had had his fill, I testified before his committee for, as best as I can now remember, some thirty times. In the moments of relative rest during the senator and his ample staff’s fulminations, I found it increasingly difficult to suppress my ever stronger inclination to shout, “Do you really think that CIA would undertake an operation of that importance on its own authority, and not at the direction of the President, and without the knowledge of the National Security Council? And without informing appropriate members of Congress?” But I did no shouting.

  Time surely heals many wounds and often softens judgments. That said, it remains my opinion that Senator Church operated his committee at a level of self-serving hypocrisy unusual even for other run-of-the-mill presidential hopefuls. For his own purposes, Church affected to assume that CIA ran most of its sensitive operations on its own initiative and authority, and without the President’s knowledge. Church would also have had his TV audience and the print media believe that the Agency operated behind the back of the national security advisor and his staff. At one of his dramatic heights, Church described CIA as a “rogue elephant”—presumably rampaging both Washington and foreign capitals.*