A SPY PURE AND SIMPLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200050005-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 17, 2004
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: October 1, 1979
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Rel4/10/13 : CIA-RDP88-01350R00 -
October 1979
A S y Pure
anSim le
The Man Who Kept the Secrets
By Thomas Powers
Knopf 512.95
Richard Helms was both odd and typi-
cal in the CIA-as the CIA is both the
type and the betrayal of America's post-
war aspirations. Both the man and the
agency show how much one can sophis-
ticate naivete without changing its es-
sential nature. Helms was not the ob-
vious choice for Thomas Powers to
.make when trying to focus the CIA's
tale in a single personality. Helms was
not a born "gentleman," and America
was trying to ape England's old-school
network in the spy trade. He was not
flamboyant, like those who set up the
agency and managed to use most of its
money. He was cautious where they
plunged; he doubted, held back, criti-
cized from within. On issue after issue
he was the good guy. Then why did he
take the fall for the bad guys whose
deeds he had opposed?* Because the
good guys keep the- operation going.
They do not save us from the evil in such
a system; rather, they save the system-
as Helms was trying to do to the end.
Helms was, by type of service as
well as personal bent, part of the "re-
sponsible" CIA. He was a spy pure
and. simple. He wanted to know what
the other side was up to. Powers dis-
tinguishes this task from the work of
analysts and of operators. The analyst
wants to know how one knows what
'Helms lost his job as CIA chief in 1973 when
President Nixon made him U.S. ambassador to
Iran, evidently to get him out or-Washington
during the Watergate crisis. In 1977, a federal
court convicted Helms of perjuring himself
while testifying before the Senate Foreign Re-
o C()mm'ttee o n th CI4's rote in Chile
ta'ns
"I will wear my conviclion
like a badge of honor!"
the other side is up to. He specializes,
that is, in counterintelligence, in un-
covering double agents and creating
double agents in return. James Angle-
ton is the embodiment of this "spy
cubed" mentality, the man for whom
every move is a cover for other moves,
most of which-in time, all of
which?-may be covers as well. The
analyst strips layer after layer from a
reality that might not be there. Helms
never let himself be drawn into these
coils of solipsism. His strength was his
straightforwardness. Angleton, the
gentleman, may have been the most
sophisticated man in the CIA-to the
point where sophistication is hard to
sort out from craziness.
experience, put a premium on covert 1
operations. They are expensive, prom-
ise quick results, and assume that
things will go right if we just eliminate
a few evil persons. Allen Duties, the
primary shaper of the CIA, built his
career on wartime contacts with Ger-
mans plotting against Hitler. It is not
surprising, then, that his agency at
first poured money and effort into the
building of Resistance centers behind
the Iron Curtain.
But Powers points out that most of
these centers were barely existent or
were run by the other side. Americans
came into the displaced-persons camps
looking for agents to send back into
Eastern European countries. They
created a market for intelligence entre-
preneurs, and they alerted other gov-
ernments to what was going on. Some
of these governments obliged hasty
Americans by establishing fake centers
to draw our cash and equipment. One
of them, a Polish underground unit
called WIN, asked that an American
general be parachuted into Poland to
organize the Resistance. That was too
much, of course. Generals exist to send
others on such perilous missions. It
was lucky that no complying general
was found in this case; because after
Eisenhower's election-perhaps to I
alert him to the folly of invading Eu-
was revealed on Polish
rope-WIN
radio as a Soviet operation. The Bay of
Pigs was the culmination of a whole
series of naive attempts to imagine a
Resistance that did not exist and
"help" it by exposing our own pawns
to death.
Where does Richard Helms fit into
this picture of wasted dollars and lives,
broken laws and broken dreams? He'l
was skeptical-why punish himx? Be-
cause he was skeptical about methods,
he was fined $2,000 and given a 'suspended The operations man is activist, in- not aims. He believed, like the rest, that
two-year sentence. No ion,APfNM rFior RQI"914Q4/1p/J0dk G4A}?RD8913 R020AWQO5rAy all the world
Iran, he then launched a Washington-based when his acts displace the mere ob-
~
consulting firm to help Iranians do business GARRY WILLS is the author of Nixon Ago-
t~ith the 111; The Iranian revolution ended servers and expose the - agents of pure niS1eS, lnvrntin? America.- Jefferson's DeC(nra-1
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