THE WHITE HOUSE SWEARING IN CEREMONY OF RICHARD HELMS AS DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY THE EAST ROOM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000400230002-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 1, 1999
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: July 1, 1966
• Content Type: TRANS

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1 Tuly 1966
Reproduced below in its entirety is the statement made by the President
of the United States during the ceremony to administer the Oath of Office to
Richard M. Helms as Director of Central Intelligence:
THE WHITE HOUSE ti
SWEARING IN CEREMONY OF
RICHARD HELMS AS DIRECTOR OF
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
THE EAST ROOM
THE PRESIDENT: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Helms,
members of the Cabinet, distinguished members of the Congress, my friends.
It was a little more than a year ago that I asked Admiral Raborn to
come out of a hard earned retirement in California to take on one of the most
critical tasks in Government and to succeed a great Director, John McCone, as
head of the Central Intelligence Agency.
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I knew that I was asking a great deal of this good man. He had already
served his country long and well. He had capped his career by playing a vital
role in the development of the Polaris missile system. But once again I felt that
his country needed him and the President needed him, and he complied - a little
reluctantly - with my request. He agreed to make still one more contribution to
the security of his country and he attached only one condition, that he could leave
as soon as we decided upon a permanent successor.
We have come to the White House this morning because both Admiral
Raborn and I are satisfied that we have found the best man available as that
successor. Both of us have worked closely during the past fourteen months with
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the very able public servant whom we are swearing in today as the Director of
the Central Intelligence Agency and who became a partner of Admiral Raborn as
his Deputy by appointment at the same time the Admiral was selected.
I am extremely proud of both of these men and their colleagues. The
nature of their work does not often allow public acknowledgement. Praised or
damned (and we are living in an era where men who spend all their time con-
cerned with the -protection of the security of their country are frequently damned
more than they are praised) these men must go about their work without standing
up for bows and of speaking out in their own defense. Their role is misunder-
stood by 'some of their supporters, and I never read a morning paper without
seeing it being distorted by their critics.
In two and a half years of working with these men I have yet to meet
a. "007. " I have met dozens of men who are moved and motivated. by the highest
and most patriotic and dedicated purposes - men who are specialists in economics
and.political science and history and geography and physics and many other fields
where logic and analysis are crucial to the decisions that the President of their
country is called upon to make. Through my experience with these men I have
learned that their most significant triumphs come not in the secrets passed in
the dark but in patient reading, hour after hour, of highly technical periodicals.
In a real sense they are America's professional students; they are
unsung just as they are invaluable.
I do not want this opportunity to pass without at least this President
paying great tribute, high respect, absolute complete confidence and all the
recognition that I am capable of giving to patriots like Allen Dulles and John
McCone and Admiral Raborn.
In naming Richard Helms to the post of the Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency on the eve of this hopeful event and wishing godspeed to
Admiral Raborn, we pause to give them the nation's thanks for a job well done.
A little later at his convenience Admiral Raborn will return to the White House
to receive a very high recognition and award from the President in the company
of the Cabinet and others for the outstanding job he has done.
It is a very special pleasure to me, to one who has spent thirty-five
years in the Federal Government (not always cinder the protective arm of the
Secret Service or the Civil Service) to see one of the high positions in this
Government filled by a man who has devoted his entire career to the public
service of his country. Dick Helms, the man we are naming to this post, is
such a man.
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Although he has spent more than twenty years in public life attempting
to avoid publicity, he has never been able to conceal the fact that he is one of the
most trusted and most able and most dedicated professional career men in this
Capitol. No man has ever come to this high critical office with better qualifi-
cations.
I think it was Patrick Henry who said, "The battle is not to the strong
alone, it is to the vigilant and to the active and to the brave, " and it is to Dick
Helms and to the Agency that he will now head that we must look for this vigi-
lance. His own record and the past achievements of his Agency give us full
confidence'in the future operation of the Central Intelligence Agency with judg-
ment, with intelligence and above all with great public integrity.
Do you, Mr. Helms, solemnly swear that you will support and defend
the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that you take this obli-
gation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; that you will
well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office of which you are about to
enter, so help you God?
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