THE CIA ASSET: DOING THE JOB

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200050001-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 17, 2004
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 8, 1979
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Rely W!4/'T : CIA-RDP88-01
8 DECEMBER 1979
'0111
the job
THERE'S A WORD that keeps
cropping up in CIA parlance,
often used instead of "people."
(Paris) (Stratford-on-Avon)?. ? -
`But- it doesn't mean just
human 'beings," said Thomas
Powers. "It's a category of
things, shorthand for anything
they could- use: newspapers,
newspapermen, student organi=
zations,.a bug in a hotel room
somewhere, diplomatic activity,.
a research assistant in some-:
. "Yeah, sure," . said Tom
Powers:' "They'd probably have
.been smarter through the years
if they'd listed a few liabilities."
Actually Powers acquired ? a .
considerable amount of respect
Thomas 'Powers Sorting
out the revolution&
by the way revealed to the
world for the first time by my
book.. Which is crazy in
lot of tear gas, just like a lot o,.
journalists did then. '
radical. I'd be very hard put to
describe to you what my poli-
tics are, or were. But I certainly
felt every call to revolution was
personally addressed to me,
and that I had to stand up and
answer. Later I had to sort all
that out, which is why I ended
up. writing two books about it."
The two books are The War
at Home and Diana.- 1 Jaktng of
a ' Terrorist, on the Diana
Oughton who blew herself up in
that town house down in the
Village on 11th Street. It's, one
.block away from the house in
which Powers and his wife and-
their three little girls live today
- "the. house my wife arrived
at as an infant,` and grew.up
in." Candace Powers teaches
school on the Lower East Side.
She's the daughter of-the late
J. G. L. Molloy, once counsel to
Fiorello LaGuardia.?
So what about' Richard
Helms; who seems to emerge
from the pages of The Man
Who Kept-the Secrets (Knopf)
as an enormous blank, or, as
John le Carre puts it, a
"banality in depth'"?
Powers does not agree.
"Helms is not a banal man.
He's a prosaic figure. An
intelligence bureaucrat Not an
adventurer [arch-rival Bissell
wass the .adventurer]. Not an
errtihence grise. Just a good
administrator, a:guy trying to
run this enormous agency and
keep it out of the press, out of
trouble, out of conflict with
other intelligence ,agencies, out
of warfare with the White
House."
Then came Watergate. Now
comes Iran.
"I'm sure Richard Helms had
nobody knew."
Powers is now convinced that
a newspaper he worked on in
for. The. Agency during the Italy, the Rome Daily Amerl-
three'recent years he worked" can, was a CIA asset, though
on.-The Aran Who Kept the at the time all he noticed was .
Its scanty local coverage, its
"nuttily right-wing.. editorials."
whole curious area of American ? scoop in the Rome Daily Ameri-
endeavor. can on the day on which he and
" its author his wife- Candace woke up in
impression
"My
,
-
said, "is that the CIA is pretty Athens, Greece, . to. find- it
"
absolutely silent .and
intelligent. and capable.; I did an
not walk away with the feeling eerie city." When they reached
they were clowns."' ' Constitution Square and saw
"Thex CIA doesn't ' make . - Colonels- had taken over the
"It tries to country. ,
" said Powers
policy
.
,
do what it's told to do: In the- Powers will. be 39 this.
Bay of Pigs it was undertaking coming Wednesday. -He grew
something that couldn't-' be up in Pelham, the son of
done. Placing a force of 1500 Joshua Bryant Powers, a UPI
on an isolated beach - against - man turned publishers' repre-
nuts. So the problem-:wasn't
gumshoes. It was the plan."
and the Army. ("in Georgia as a
radio operator real boring")
learn of the two anonymities - the younger Powers went to
a Marine colonel and a CIA aide Rome for two years, briefly. to
- who toward the end of the London, then back here in late
Eisenhower era in fact worked 1967 to go to work himself on
up the Bay of Pigs for then : general assignment for UPI..
deputy director Richard Bissell. "I was their resident
'
specialist.
Former newspaperman Tom student-revolution -
Powers clenched a fist of satis- Must have covered 50 demon-
faction as he said: "Two names strations - big ones. Sniffed a
no inkling into the' ferment in
Iran during his whole tenure
as Ambassador there, - no
knowledge that the Shah was
about to fall until he fell.
"Helms's whole ; career. and
life was. as. an. intelligence
administatc r. 'Nobody, ever
asked him to go out Into. the
streets of Nicaragua to find out
what's going on. Nor would he
have done it. I think he'd have
chosen another line of work."
Powers had three Interviews
with Helms, and a fourth one
after Helms had had a chance
to look over the manuscript.
What had Helms said then?
"He said that the Cadillac he
had,- acquired in 1952 was
inherited from his father, and it
wasn't gray, it was beige."
Approved For Release 2004/10/13 : CIA-RDP88-0135OR000200050001-8