Richard Helms

Richard Helms: Born Philadelphia 30 March 1913, died 22 October 2002

A former head of the [Central Intelligence Agency], he was the only director of the Agency to have been convicted of lying to Congress over [CIA] undercover activities. In 1977 he was sentenced to the maximum fine and received a suspended two-year prison sentence.

In 1936, a year after he graduated from Williams College, Massachusetts, he was sent by United Press to help cover the Berlin Olympic Games; he had spent two of his high school years in Europe where he learnt German and French.

He joined the advertising department of the Indianapolis Times; within two years he was national advertising manager.

During World War Two he served in the Navy. In 1943 he was posted to the [Office of Strategic Services] ([OSS]) because of his ability to speak German.

In the aftermath of the War he was transferred to the newly formed Office of Special Operations (OSO), where at the age of 33 he was in charge of intelligence and counter-intelligence operations in Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

The OSO became a division of the CIA when that organisation was created by the National Security Act of July 1947.

Helms became Director of the OSO after the CIA's disasterous role in the attempted invasion of Cuba in 1961. After falling out with the Kennedys he was sent off to Vietnam where he oversaw the coup to overthrow President Ngo Dinh ]Diem]. Following the Kennedy assassination Helms was made Deputy Director of the CIA under Admiral William Raborn. But because of Raborn's ineptitude Helms found himself in effective control of the organisation.

A year later he was appointed Director.

The ease of Helm's role under Johnson changed with the arrival of President Nixon and his national security advisor [Henry Kissinger].

After the debacle of [Watergate], from which Helms suceeded in distancing the CIA as far as possible, the Agency came under much tighter Congressional control.

Nixon thought Helms disloyal and sent him to Tehran as US ambassador.

Helms' ultimate undoing was the CIA role in the subversion of Chilean democracy and the overthrow, under Nixon's orders, of that country's president, Salvador [Allende].

Helms' answers to Congress on the CIA's role in the affair were proved to be false and he was prosecuted.