HELMS WARNS OF EXCESSIVE CURBS ON CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R000600230054-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 24, 2004
• Sequence Number: 54
• Publication Date: May 17, 1978
• Content Type: NSPR

WASHINGTON POST
Helms warns
Of Excessive
Curbs on CIA
BY George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Former Central Intelligence Agency director
Richard Helms urged Congress yesterday to restore
what he called a spirit of "collaboration" with the
nation's intelligence community instead of trying to
pin it down with elaborate controls.
Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Commit-
tee, Helms suggested that the CIA had been seriously
weakened by congressional and executive branch in-
vestigations of its misdeeds. Now, he charged, it is
"hemorrhaging" with continuing leaks of its secrets,
in books, in newspapers and elsewhere.
"If it continues, this country is going to be at a
serious disadvantage," Helms warned. "The Russians
are putting things into place. This is a time when
our, intelligence can't possibly be too good and when
we can't have enough of it. To coin a phrase, we're
certainly fiddling while Rome burns."
The hearing resounded with sympathetic senatorial
voices. The session was called to discuss a proposed
263-page charter aimed at reforming the CIA and the
rest of the intelligence community, but none of the
committee members present spent any time defending
it and some were openly critical.
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) charged
that "under the pretense of reorganizing the CIA,
we are making it impossible to do what it was
created for"-which Moynihan defined as maintaining
a policy of "being aggressively anti-Soviet."
Other committee members made clear that they
are in no rush to adopt a legislative charter in the
wake of the 1975-76 congressional and executive
branch investigations of wrongdoing on the part of
the CIA, the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies.
For his part, Helms protested that he had been a
victim of those investigations. Now the head of a
newly organized consulting firm allied with Iranian
interests, the former CIA director was fined $2,000
and given a two-year suspended sentence last Nov.
4 after he pleaded no contest in federal court here
to two counts of failing to testify fully and accurately
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Helms, in effect, asked the Intelligence Committee
to make sure nothing like that could ever happen
again-by making CIA officials accountable only to
the Senate Intelligence Committee and its House
counterpart.
He told a reporter after yesterday's hearing that
he didn't feel the Foreign Relations Committee, which
was inquiring into CIA activities in Chile, had any
right to demand his sworn testimony on the issue
as it did in February and March of 1973.
See HELMS, A24, Col. 1
PAGE
HELMS, From Al an "illusion ... part of the mythology
of Washington."
"After what happened to me le- of don't know of ant iLxector; at
gaily," Helms told the committee, it least during my time, who fiddle-fad-
became quite clear that no CIA offi- filed with the Congress" Helms in-
clal called before a Senate committee silted. When a member of the House
to give sworn testimony could expect or Senate got a CIA briefing, Helms
to do so "without taking his pants said, "he got the martini straight up-
down." not on the rocks."
Helms was also vehemently critical Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) said
of the presidential commission headed he was convinced that "a sizable part
by former vice president Rockefeller of the Congress" is "opposed to Intel-
that investigated CIA domestic mil- ligence" along with significant seg-
deeds. In one such case he said he had ments of the media.
been unjustly criticized by the com- "You have only to read any daily
mission for investigating newspaper paper of the East Coast or the West
columnist Jack Anderson in an at- Coast to make that sad discovery,"
tempt to determine the source of An- Goldwater said. "There's more leaks
derson's leaks, particularly about the here than there are in the men's room
India-Pakistan war. at Anheuser-Busch." He said he in-
"It was an absolute hemorrhage in
terms of intelligence information," tended to sponsor legislation
directed at the misuse of information
Helms said, defending his decision to gathered through intelligence
investigate the columnist under his sources"
obligation to protect the CIA N Helms suggested that the Senators
"sources and methods." also consider exempting the intelli-
Helms asked the committee either Bence agencies from "the endless in-
invesnves the tigatio ns clear o or atou cursions and Inquiries" of the Free-
gve to
ority to to ccCIA onduct director
ive s dom of Information Act, which he
give someone else the job of protect-
ing "sources and methods." Helms charged has had a "devastating" e -
said the CIA had never been particu- feet. xpressed his concern
spying by the
larly successful in asking the FBI to Moynihan e
at least not in his tenure as about the "massive" Committee
Soy at Union's
d
th
a so,
e
KGB (
CIA director from 1966 to 1973. for State Security) on Americans and
"Mr. Hoover had no stomach for it" the lack of public indignation over
elms said of the late FBI director. that, for which Moynihan blamed
"
"He wasn't interested. Therefore he American liberals. He predicted a
wouldn't do it"
At point in the hearing, Com bleak "God, day we of will have reckoning.
a lot to explain,"
mitee chairman Birch Bayh (D Ind.) Moynihan exclaimed. "It will not be a
said that there had been efforts in the occasion ... I fear of the con-
past on the CIA's part "to not let Con- happy ~~
tgress have the information or make sequences for American liberalism
ha
-
p
Congress believe something was
pening a little different than it actu-
ally is"
Helms denied this flatly, calling it
WHO. An Million.
Suffer Mental Illness
Approved For Release. 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600230054-2