HIGH-WIRE ACT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200050006-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 17, 2004
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: November 12, 1979
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

,TICLE# r'tfit'd For ReleaseT2/10/13: CIA-RDP88-0
ON PAGE
12 November 1979
Books
High-Wire Act
THE MAN WHO KEPT THE SECRETS
by Thomas Powers
Knopf; 393 pages; $12.95
T he CIA has been the target of so many
attacks in recent years that the once
highly secret agency is now more famil-
iar to the general public than, say, the
U.S. Department of Agriculture. Yet all
the revelations by disgruntled former em-
ployees and leftist ideologues have not
added up to a balanced appraisal of the
agency. To a considerable extent, that
task has been accomplished by Thomas
Powers, a former U.P.I. reporter who won
a Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for his coverage
of the radical bomber Diana Oughton.
With near clinical detachment, Powers
has produced a remarkably realistic por-
trait of American intelligence beset by bu-
reaucratic rivalries, personality clashes
and presidential caprice.
The agency, Powers believes, was
badly served, as was the central figure in
his narrative, Richard Helms, who head-
ed the CIA from 1966 to 1973. A consum-
mate professional, Helms was the prover-
bial man in the middle. His job was to
furnish the best possible intelligence, and
yet he had to contend with intense polit-
ical pressures from the White House and
the Pentagon. It was a high-wire act from
which every CIA director has sooner or
later tumbled. -
Helms, as Powers sees him, was far
from the stereotype superspy. Neither
dashing nor adventurous, he was cool and
cautious, perhaps to a fault. A colleague
recalls him remarking about a project:
"Let's do it right, let's do it quietly, let's
do it correctly." He was especially skep-
tical of large-scale covert actions because
he felt they drew too much attention to
the CIA and jeopardized its main func-
tion: collecting intelligence.
Still, as a good soldier, Helms was
dragged into operations against his bet-
.ter judgment. A case in point was the at-
tempt to assassinate Fidel Castro. As the
author describes the episode, John and
Bobby Kennedy told the CIA to get rid of
Castro. That is why Helms was so dis-
gusted during the later Senate investiga-
tion of the CIA when Frank Church
demanded written proof of an order to
kill the Cuban leader. Helms felt
like responding (but didn't): "Senator,
how can you be so goddamned dumb? You i
don't put an order like that in writing."
When Helms was named CIA direc-
tor by Lyndon Johnson, he had been thor-
oughly schooled in careful handling of
Presidents. Nevertheless, writes Powers,
Helms may have been too diffident about
asserting himself on critical issues. Con-
fronted with varying estimates of the
strength of the North Vietnamese forces,
he did not consistently back up his own
analysts. He tried to compromise between
the White House and Pentagon optimism
and the more pessimistic CIA projections.
As a result, says Powers, the U.S. was un-
prepared for the ferocity of the 1968 Tet
offensive.
But even the resilient Helms could not
cope with the mounting pressures of the
Nixon era. Communication between the
President and the CIA became a problem.
The National Security Council and the
CIA, writes Powers, were "like ships pass-
ing in the night." I
Nixon dumped Helms when he failed
to provide sufficient cover-up for Water-
gate. In departing, Helms once again took
the rap for what his superiors had ordered.
He was charged with lying to a Senate
committee about the CIA's role in the at-
tempt to prevent Salvador Allende from
becoming President of Chile, a Nixon-
Kissinger project he had vainly opposed.
Helms was fined $2,000 and received a
two-year suspended sentence and a lec-
ture from the judge about telling the truth.
He felt it was his job to keep the secrets,
and that he did-pointing up the moral
of this fair and searching book: Amer-
ica's intelligence can be no better than
the Presidents it serves. - Edwin Warner
Approved For Release 2004/10/13 : CIA-RDP88-0135OR000200050006-3