The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Richard Helms.md

created	updated	title	aliases	tags	category	summary	born	died	location
2026-05-15	2026-10-09	Richard Helms	Richard McGarrah Helms Richard M. Helms	KeyFigure Person CIA OperationCHAOS MKULTRA Chile ChurchCommittee ColdWar Israel 1950s 1960s 1970s	Intelligence & Government	Richard Helms served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973, authorizing Operation CHAOS domestic surveillance and ordering destruction of CHAOS and MKULTRA records before congressional investigation.	1913-03-30	2002-10-22	St. Davids, Pennsylvania

Richard McGarrah Helms (March 30, 1913 - October 22, 2002) served as Central Intelligence Agency Director of Central Intelligence from June 30, 1966, to February 2, 1973 - the only career CIA clandestine officer ever to hold that position, and the only DCI ever convicted of a criminal offense related to his service. A professional intelligence officer who entered the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and spent thirty years in the CIA, Helms authorized Operation CHAOS domestic surveillance, approved continuation of the MKULTRA human experimentation program, ordered the destruction of both programs' records before congressional investigators could access them, and in 1977 pleaded no contest to making false statements to Congress about CIA operations against Chilean President Salvador Allende. He simultaneously held the personal conviction, disclosed to his deputies, that Israel was using American intelligence as "an open pipeline for pumping intelligence to Moscow" - a view he never officially reported.¹

OSS and Early CIA Career

Helms attended Williams College and briefly worked as a journalist in Germany, interviewing Adolf Hitler for United Press in 1936. Commissioned into the U.S. Navy during World War II, he was transferred to the OSS and worked in London and the European theater on propaganda and agent operations. He joined the Central Intelligence Group (the CIA's predecessor organization) in 1947 and transferred into the CIA at its founding.

His career progressed through the CIA's clandestine service. By the late 1950s he was serving as Deputy Director of Plans (DDP), the agency's chief of covert operations - a position he held through the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and the early Kennedy years. As DDP he oversaw the ZR/RIFLE assassination planning program targeting Fidel Castro through the CIA-organized crime connection, and he personally knew about the CIA-Mafia assassination plots that he subsequently failed to disclose to the Warren Commission investigating Kennedy's death.

President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Helms as DCI in 1966, the first time a career clandestine officer had been elevated to the directorship. He served under both Johnson and Richard Nixon.¹

The Warren Commission and ZR/RIFLE

When the Warren Commission was established in November 1963 to investigate Kennedy's assassination, Helms as DDP was the CIA officer most directly responsible for the ZR/RIFLE program - the CIA's ongoing assassination plots against Castro using organized crime intermediaries Johnny Roselli, Sam Giancana, and Santos Trafficante, Jr. Helms did not disclose the existence of these plots to the Commission. The Church Committee's final report states that neither the CIA nor the FBI told the Commission about the CIA attempts to assassinate Castro, and that none of the testimony or documents the Commission received mentioned them.² David Belin, the Commission's counsel, wrote in 1975 that "[a]t no time did the CIA disclose to the Warren Commission any facts which pertained to alleged assassination plans to kill Fidel Castro."³

The Church Committee's 1975 interim report states that Helms "failed to inform the Warren Commission of the plots because the precise question was not asked."⁴ Helms testified to the committee in July 1975. Asked by Senator Morgan whether he was charged with furnishing the Commission information from the CIA that he thought was relevant, he answered: "No sir. I was instructed to reply to inquiries from the Warren Commission for information from the Agency. I was not asked to initiate any particular thing." To Morgan's statement "if you weren't asked for it, you didn't give it," he answered: "That's right, sir." He said he did not recall being instructed, or deciding on his own, to cover the precise details of the Agency's operations with the Commission, and that his recollection at the time was that it was public knowledge the United States was trying to get rid of Castro.⁵ He said that Allen Dulles "was sitting right there" in the Commission's deliberations and "knew about this," and that he did not know what Dulles had said to the Commission about the plots.⁵ Book V records that Helms was the only CIA official who was both in contact with the Commission and knowledgeable of the AMLASH operation, although he would not characterize that operation as an assassination plot.⁵⁶

The Church Committee's final report of 1976 states that why senior FBI and CIA officials permitted the Commission to reach its conclusion without all relevant information "is still unclear," and that "the possibility exists that senior officials in both agencies made conscious decisions not to disclose potentially important information."⁷ The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that Helms indicated he did not inform the Commission of the anti-Castro plots because he was never asked to testify before it about operations, and stated in a note that it considered this an unacceptable explanation, since the Commission was unaware of the plots and could not make a specific request about them. The same committee stated that only Helms would have been in a position to have both the knowledge and the power to cover up the plots, and that it was satisfied, on the basis of its investigation, that it was highly unlikely he did.⁸⁹

The CIA Inspector General's report of May 23, 1967 on plots to assassinate Castro, which according to its covering memorandum had been read only by Helms, the Inspector General and two of its authors, records that according to Desmond FitzGerald, he discussed the planned October 29, 1963 meeting with the Cuban official code-named AMLASH with Helms, who decided it was not necessary to seek Robert Kennedy's approval for FitzGerald to speak in his name.¹⁰ It states that "it is likely that at the very moment President Kennedy was shot a CIA officer was meeting with a Cuban agent in Paris and giving him an assassination device for use against Castro," and that "The AMLASH project was probably about as widely known within the Clandestine Services as any other project of a similar nature."¹¹

Operation CHAOS Authorization and Records Destruction

In August 1967, Helms received President Johnson's instruction to determine whether foreign powers were directing the American antiwar movement. He tasked James Jesus Angleton's Counterintelligence Staff with establishing the Special Operations Group that became MHCHAOS. He subsequently expanded the program under President Nixon's administration, approving Project MERRIMAC (domestic infiltration of antiwar organizations) and Project RESISTANCE (coordination with campus administrators and local police to compile dossiers on student organizations).

In December 1972, knowing that Watergate-related congressional investigations were expanding, Helms ordered the operational records of MHCHAOS destroyed. A partial cache of budget and administrative documents survived only because it had been misfiled in a different location. The records of MKULTRA, the CIA's two-decade human experimentation program using LSD and other substances on unwitting subjects, were destroyed in January 1973. Technical Services Division personnel destroyed them on the verbal orders of Sidney Gottlieb. Gottlieb testified that he was carrying out a verbal order from Helms in doing so, and Helms confirmed that the order was his.¹² The Church Committee found that these records destructions had permanently deprived investigators of a complete documentary record of both programs.¹

Proposing and Protecting MKULTRA

Helms was the program's originator as much as its protector. On April 3, 1953 he formally proposed to Director Allen Dulles a program under Sidney Gottlieb for the "covert use of biological and chemical materials," arguing that "the development of a comprehensive capability in this field gives us a thorough knowledge of the enemy's theoretical potential" against "a foe who might not be as restrained ... as we are"; Dulles approved it as MKULTRA ten days later. Helms nurtured Gottlieb as his personal specialist and, bypassing the layers of command between them, dealt with him directly, embodying the conviction he later voiced in Senate testimony, that a clandestine operator "can't count on the honesty of your agent ... unless you own him body and soul." When the program needed a new charter in 1964 he agreed to rename it MKSEARCH on the condition that its substance remain the same.¹³

MKULTRA Continuation and Psychic Research

Helms had approved continuation of MKULTRA through his DDP years and as DCI. He was aware of the program's scope, including the experiments conducted on unconsenting patients at Canadian psychiatric facilities under the direction of Dr. D. Ewen Cameron at McGill University's Allan Memorial Institute (Subproject 68), and the experiments using unwitting American subjects in safe houses operated through the Sexual Freedom Project in San Francisco and New York.

Separately, Helms authorized and expanded the CIA's psychic research program based in part on assessments of Soviet parapsychology research. He approved testing of Uri Geller at Stanford Research Institute and the broader program that evolved into Project Stargate. His authorization reflected a characteristically pragmatic judgment: if the Soviets were investing in the capability, the CIA needed to assess whether it was real.¹⁴

Chile: Covert Action and Congressional Perjury

In September 1970, following the election of Socialist candidate Salvador Allende in Chile, President Nixon instructed Helms in a meeting at the White House to conduct covert operations to prevent Allende from assuming the presidency. Nixon told Helms, in the presence of Henry A. Kissinger and others, to "make the economy scream." Helms's notes from this meeting, preserved and later produced to investigators, confirmed: "One in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile!... $10,000,000 available, more if necessary... make the economy scream."

The CIA subsequently funded opposition media, political parties, and military factions. General Augusto Pinochet seized power in a coup on September 11, 1973 - the same year Helms was replaced as DCI and sent as U.S. Ambassador to Iran.

In February 1973, when Helms testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding CIA activities in Chile, he stated under oath that the CIA had not "tried to overthrow the government of Chile" and had not "passed money to the opponents of Allende." Both statements were false. The 1974 Pinochet coup and subsequent Church Committee investigation produced documentary evidence of both activities. In 1977, Helms was charged with two misdemeanor counts of making false and misleading statements to Congress. He pleaded no contest (nolo contendere) and was fined $2,000 with a two-year suspended sentence - the minimum possible consequence for what amounted to perjury before Congress. CIA veterans gave him a standing ovation in the courthouse corridor after sentencing.¹

The Israeli estimate and the June 1967 warning

On May 25, 1967, Helms had the Office of National Estimates appraise an Israeli intelligence estimate within five hours. The appraisal stated: "We do not believe that the Israeli appreciation . . . was a serious estimate of the sort they would submit to their own high officials. We think it is probably a gambit intended to influence the US to do one or more of the following: (a) provide military supplies, (b) make more public commitments to Israel, (c) approve Israeli military initiatives, and (d) put more pressure on Nasser." David S. Robarge, the CIA's chief historian, describes the Israeli paper as a Mossad estimate and writes that the Israelis may have been exploiting their special relationship with James Jesus Angleton.¹⁵¹⁶

On June 1, 1967, Helms's deputy, Vice Admiral Rufus Taylor, wrote the memorandum of the conversation between Major General Meir Amit and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, captioned "Personal and Eyes Only for the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence."¹⁷ Robarge writes that Helms met a senior Israeli official on June 1 who hinted that Israel could no longer avoid a decision, that the official left the United States on June 2, and that that morning Helms wrote an "Eyes Only" letter to President Johnson forewarning that Israel probably would start a war within a few days.¹⁸ Helms was awakened at 3:00 a.m. on June 5 by a call from the CIA Operations Center. He recalled that "in the midst of one meeting" during the war Johnson asked how accurate his intelligence on the progress of the war was, and that he answered: "It's accurate just as long as the Israelis are winning."¹⁶

NUMEC letter, April 1968

On April 2, 1968, Helms wrote to Attorney General Ramsey Clark asking that the FBI "initiate a discreet intelligence investigation of an all source nature of Dr. Shapiro in order to establish the nature and extent of his relationship with the Government of Israel," and asked that the letter be returned to him once the Attorney General had acted, because the subject matter was "so sensitive for obvious reasons." A twelve-line passage before the request remains redacted.¹⁹ The subject was Zalman Mordecai Shapiro of the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation.

Israel: The "Open Pipeline" Assessment

Helms developed a personal conviction, disclosed to his deputies, that Israel was providing American satellite intelligence to the Soviet Union as part of an undisclosed intelligence exchange - characterizing Israel as "an open pipeline for pumping intelligence to Moscow." He never officially reported this assessment or commissioned a formal investigation, and he took no documented action on it. His reluctance reflected both the sensitivity of accusing an ally and the particular weight of any assessment that ran against the interests managed by Angleton's KK MOUNTAIN Israeli liaison program.

When President Johnson sought an intelligence assessment of whether Israel had manufactured nuclear weapons, Helms provided the estimate (four warheads) and then obeyed Johnson's instruction that the finding be buried rather than formally reported. Johnson did not want intelligence conclusions that would require him to act on them politically. Helms's willingness to suppress an accurate intelligence product at presidential direction exemplified the institutional failure the Church Committee later documented.²⁰

Iran, Retirement, and Memoirs

Nixon appointed Helms U.S. Ambassador to Iran in February 1973, effectively removing him from CIA leadership after he failed to support Watergate cover-up efforts. Helms served in Tehran until 1977, overseeing the intelligence relationship with the Shah's SAVAK secret police. He returned to the United States to face the Chile perjury charges, was convicted, and then established a private consulting firm.

He published his memoirs, A Look Over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency, posthumously in 2003. The book was notably reticent about the most significant controversial episodes of his career, consistent with his lifelong orientation toward institutional protection over personal disclosure. He died in Washington on October 22, 2002.¹

Footnotes

---

1. Powers, Thomas. The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA. Knopf, 1979 (the essential biography, based on extensive interviews). Church Committee (Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities). Final Report, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976. ↩︎

2. U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies, Book V, Final Report, April 23, 1976, p. 5. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_V.pdf ↩︎

3. Book V, p. 73 (Belin memorandum to the Rockefeller Commission, May 20, 1975, p. 1). https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_V.pdf ↩︎

4. U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report, Senate Report No. 94-465, 1975, p. 269 and note 1. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit ↩︎

5. Book V, pp. 70-72 (Helms testimony of July 17 and 18, 1975; testimony of 7/17/75, pp. 118-119, and 7/18/75, pp. 36-37). https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_V.pdf ↩︎

6. Book V, p. 69. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_V.pdf ↩︎

7. Book V, p. 7. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_V.pdf ↩︎

8. U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on Assassinations, Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations, 1979, Part I-D, p. 253 and note 8. https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1d.html ↩︎

9. Same report, Part I-C, p. 128. https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1c.html ↩︎

10. Central Intelligence Agency, Inspector General (J. S. Earman), "Report on Plots to Assassinate Fidel Castro," May 23, 1967, covering memorandum and pp. 88-89 (JFK record 104-10213-10101). https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10213-10101.pdf ↩︎

11. Same report, p. 94. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10213-10101.pdf ↩︎

12. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Final Report, Book I, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976, p. 389 (MKULTRA records destroyed January 1973 on Gottlieb's verbal orders; Gottlieb testifying that he carried out Helms's verbal order; Helms confirming). ↩︎

13. John D. Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. Times Books, 1979, Chapters 1, 4, 12. ↩︎

14. Church Committee. "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders." Senate Report No. 94-465, 1975 (documents ZR/RIFLE). Jacobsen, Annie. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. Little, Brown, 2017. ↩︎

15. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 61, Memorandum from Rostow to President Johnson, May 25, 1967, with attached CIA appraisal. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d61 ↩︎

16. Robarge, David S. "Getting it Right: CIA Analysis of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War." Studies in Intelligence 49, no. 1 (March 2005). https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/CIA-Analysis-1967-War.pdf ↩︎

17. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 124, Memorandum for the Record by Vice Admiral Rufus Taylor, June 1, 1967 (prepared June 2). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d124 ↩︎

18. Robarge, David S. "Getting it Right: CIA Analysis of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War." Studies in Intelligence 49, no. 1 (March 2005). https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/CIA-Analysis-1967-War.pdf For the June 1 to 2 meeting Robarge relies on published accounts, among them Michael B. Oren's, which rest on Amit's interviews and writings. ↩︎

19. National Security Archive, "The NUMEC Affair: Did Highly Enriched Uranium from the U.S. Aid Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program?" (November 2, 2016), Document 8, Letter from Richard Helms to Ramsey Clark, April 2, 1968 (ISCAP Appeal No. 2013-062). https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-11-02/numec-affair-did-highly-enriched-uranium-us-aid-israels-nuclear-weapons-program ↩︎

20. Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapters 11, 14, 16. ↩︎