THE CHANGE AT CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000100010003-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 24, 2000
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: December 26, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

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Approved For Release 2000/P ? CIA-RDP75-00001 R
" C 4972
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Vy There are such strict limits to what is knowable about
the Central Intelligence Agency and its workings that
any discussion of Mr. Helms' departure from the direc-
torship and Mr. Schlesinger's appointment to replace
hira must necessarily rest on a comparatively small store
of information. Even so, one or two things are plain.
And chief among these is the fact, evident from what
is known about the two men themselves, that one highly
qualified and eminently capable official is being re-
placed by another.
Richard Helms has spent most of his professional life
:in intelligence work, and he has acquired a reputation
among those qualified to judge, as a man of great hon-_
esty and tough-mindedness. The term "tough-minded"
in this connection can only summon forth imaginary
zither music for some people and visions of grown men
running around endlessly shoving each other under
trains. But Mr. Nelms-unflappable, personally disin-
terested, and beyond the reach of political or ideological
.pressures where his judgment is concerned-earned his
.reputation for tough-mindedness in an intellectual
sense. As Agency Director, lie has been far less a public
-.figure or celebrity than some of his predecessors-Allen
Dulles, for example, or John McCone-evidently prefer-
ring to maintain a certain becoming obscurity. Ile has
'