OLD CIA HANDS LAUD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84-00161R000400210016-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 20, 2014
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: May 11, 1973
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release @50-Yr 2014/02/21 : CIA-RDP84-00161R00040021001617-7-77
THE EVENING STAR and DAILY NEWS
Washington, D. C., Friday, May 11, 1973
E.19
-
GROOMED BY HELMS
BY OSWALD JOHNSTON
Star-News Staff Writer
Earlier this week the Central Intel-
ligence Agency? still somewhat demor-
alized by the bureaucratic house clean-
? ing ordered by its new director, James
R. Schlesinger, was shaken by disclo-
sures that the agency had helped Water-.
gate conspirator E. Howard Hunt in an
? illegal domestic espionage mission.
Called to account in Congress,
Schlesinger admitted the 1971 associa-
tion with Hunt was "ill-advised" and
? promised such things would never hap-
pen again. And he strongly implied that
his predecessor, Richard M. Helms, the
career agent ousted from the CIA direc-
torship early in President Nixon's sec-
ond term, was partly to blame.
Today, with congressional hearings
still pending, Helms' administration.
stands partly vindicated. With the sud-
den transfer of Schlesinger to the Penta-
gon, the new CIA director-designate
turns out to be the very man Helms
himself was quietly grooming as his
successor: Williami E. Colby.
The announcement that Colby, a
veteran agent who is the CIA's ranking
expert on Vietnam, would step up to the
directorship from his post as director of
clandestine operations, drew uniform
praise from old agency hands.
'S professional" was the way one old
hand summed it up. The consensus was
that no more fitting a successor to
Helms himself could have been found ?
despite the bureaucratic house-cleaning
tHS/HC- 7.1k
Phoenix, with its highly publicized
and exaggerated body counts of Viet-
cong killed by its South Vietnamese
operatives, gained a widespread reputa-
tion as an organization of political as-
sassination. This could inject controver-
sy into Colby's confirmation hearings in
? the Senate.
BUT FOR CORDS operatives in the
field, little of that oort of reputation has
rubbed off on the slight, bespectacled
and self-effacing Colby who created lit-
tle lore, and even close associates had
trouble thinking of an anecdote to illus-
trate his style.
The most characteristic one per-
haps was related byColby's former boss
Komer:
Colby, on loan to the State Depart-
ment from' the CIA, was extremely re-
luctant to inherit Komer's colonial scale
house in Saigon and chauffeur-driven
car when he took over as chief deputy in
the CORDS program in November 1968.
He even felt uneasy with the title
ambassador, Komer recalls, and agreed
to accept the title, house and car only
when it was pointed out to, him that the
? Vietnamese nominally running the pro-
gram would think he was down-graded
If the trappings of Komer's lifestyle
were not maintained. "He still made one
mistake," Komer recalled. "He didn't
keep my Chinese cook.". '
HELMS, like Colby, stepped up to
the CIA directorate from the director.
?
ship of clandestine operations.
Despite in-house elation at seeir
an insider resume control at the CL
informed observers feel that the ma
lines of the modernization Schlesing(
began will remain ? if only. becauf
Colby was virtually the only chart(
member of the old-line intelligence cli
to be promoted under Schlesinger's te
ure.
"If he has the mandate to keep c
? cutting down staff, he'll dh it," one ass.
ciate from Vietnam days predicted. "I-
has that ruthlessness."
UNDER Schlesinger, a staff cu
back of five to ten percent of ti-
agency's 15,000 employes was well u
? derway, and during Schlesinger's fir
few weeks in office, a whole group (
old-line professionals who had bec
close to Helms were fired.
The actual direction the Colby r
? gime will take probably will not becon
known for many months. But a few st
face indications could appear unmet
ately if Colby decides in the name
professional tradition to undo some
the minute changes of style Schlesing
? has ordered in his first few months;
director.
' Changing "plans" to "operationr
was one. Another was even mo
symbolic: When you telephone t:
agency's central switchboard now, ti
operator no longer answers with a re(
tal of the number you have just diale
She says, "Central Intelligence." Su(
Declassified and Approved For Release @50-Yr 2014/02/21 : CIA-RDP84-00161R000400210016-0
? Declassified and Approved For Release @50-Yr 2014/02/21 : CIA-RDP84-00161R000400210016-0
,
THE EVENING STAR and DAILY NEWS
Washington, D. C., Friday, May II, 1973
/44
candor has been unheard of for the past
ten years at least.
Schlesinger had carried out in recent
months.
Less reverently, Colby's coming
could be described as the re-establish-
ment of the "old-boy network" that has
dominated the agency since its begin-
ning in 1947 and which Schlesinger, for
reasons of ideology as well as economy,
, had been instructed to dismlantel.
A Yale graduate, a World War II
alumnus of Gen. William (Wild Bill)
Donovan's Office of Strategic Services
who twice parachuted behind enemy
lines, Colby, 53, is probably best known
as an architect of the pacification pro-
gram in Vietnam in the late 1960s.
E-19
,
DETACHED fromi the CIA to serve
under the controversial Robert Komer
in Vietnam right after TET 1968, Colby
quickly made a name for himself as the
?rare official in that frustrating, endless
? war "who always listened to what you
. had to say and always followed through
? when he promised something," as a
province adviser who served under him
recalled yesterday.
The pacification program, or Civil
_Operations and Rural Development
Support (CORDS), despite the contro-
versy that surrounded its counter-in-
surgency offshoot program, Phoenix,
was one of the few American operations
' in Vietnam whose participants occasion-.
? ,? ally believed they... were accomplishing
something. .
. ,
Declassified and Approved For Release @50-Yr 2014/02/21 : CIA-RDP84-00161R000400210016-0