SORRY, NO HELMS BOOK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000500150044-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 20, 2005
• Sequence Number: 44
• Publication Date: March 29, 1981
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Approved For Release 2006/01/12 : CIA-RDP91-00901R000500150044-
A X CLE A; ti:i 1:1
? PA;~;~~ THE WASHIPJGTON POST MAGAZINE
29 March 1981
kAn; `apology to ex CIA :chief. Richard
HeJnis, who was identified in'th is space
Mast month' asha~ ng written.a.bland,
'portrait of his years with the CIA. In
fact;'. Helms hasn't; written a memoir.
.His wifa wrote a book about her experi
-
'
antes
in Iran
and ,Thomas ; Powers
wrote The 1Lfan Who`K
pt
'
h
s
e
,
t
e Seeret
:
Richard Flzlms & the CI I N I
STAT
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 17 March 1981
Dear Dick,.
When I returned to the office I found your
thoughtful and generous contribution of the
."David Frost Show" tapes and transcript. This
material will be of great future value to our
employees, and I'wish to assure you it will be
used as you requested and as outlined in Ben's
note to you.
With much appreciation.
Yours,
{ -% 4r tl17iam J. Casey
The Honorable Richard Helms
Suite 402
1627 K Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20006
Distribution:
Original - Addressee
1 - DDCI
1 - DDA (for D/OT&E)
'ne oiret[a
Ce _ ntd genceAarncy
Approved For Relea06/01/12: CIA-RDP91-00
- SA/DCI Bross
D/ PA
- DD0
I - Acting C/Historical Staff
1 - ER
1 - ES Chrono
ES:BCEvans/ami (17 March 1981)
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 aso Vs.
Wife Cani 1t
Caution As .e
STAT
Approved For Release 2006/01/12 : CIA-RDP91-00901R00050
THE WASHINGTON STAR (GREEN LINE)
17 March 1981
By joy Billington.
Washington Star Staff Writer, .
During the long, hostage crisis,
two people- in an ordinary-looking
brick colonial house in Wesley
Heights watched the nightly televi-,
sion news with a special intensity.
As pictures of the captured Amer-
icans flashed across.- the screen,.`
Cynthia Heins -might say urgently
to her husband, "Dick, look, surely
that's our bedroom" - as she dashed
to the set to point out-a window or
door frame she recognized.
These small clues, at a time when
the White House and the :State De-
partment were trying to figure out
where the hostages werebeing held,
meant little to others;-'
But the former ambassador to Iran
and. his wife, sitting in their brown'
and white tulip-printed' sitting room
- uncalled npon by the Carter ad-
ministration to tap. their- special
knowledge, of that residence and
chancery halfway across the world
- viewed such pictures, from . a
unique perspective.
"They held five hostages in our,
bedroom. and four in the study-of.-,,
the apartment in the residence,"
Cynthia Helms says now. "We. didn't
expect the Carter people to approach
us, although. we had. photographs
of all the rooms.'Butwe,were sur.-
prised theydidn't ask someone who '
knew- the buildings. The Iranians
moved the furniture around, but
-things like windows ; and doors?:
couldn't be moved. And the com-
mentators kept saying that they
didn't know. where the hostages
were being held_
"One of the things I often won-
dered was how the plumbing,.svhich
was never good, was holding up.un-
whose book "An Both Helmses sensed the shah's isolation,'she
l
s
H
hi
m
e
a
Cynt
, Ambassador's Wife in Iran" has just .:recollects, and even though Richard Helms ad
been published, sits in her tranquil attended the same Swiss school as the shah, Cal.
brown-toned sitting room. The ;though at a different time) and had for sev}'ral
glossy auburn hair of the younger -years given intelligence briefings to the shah on
Cynthia in the portrait over the fire- :his visits to the United States, he could not alert
place - the Englishwoman and ex- the monarch, she insists
WREN (the British equivalent of the ;1. "How do you tell a head of state be's not bs in; --
,yAVEs) from a comfortably-off yeo-. . ;told the truth by his people? And anyway, how do ,
man farming family who rocked you produce the evidence that hes not?" _
Washington in 1967 when she and -: Ardeshir Zahedi,: the shah's ambassadof in
Helms divorced their former part-- :-Washington - whom- she barely mentions in',her
ners and married - is now streaked. ::book exacerbated the shah'sproblems, Helms
with sandy gray. v contends
Richard Helms is 57, and his pub- We saw him from a different perspe. His.::
lip-life is behind them. The final. lavish living was not in tune with an Islamic toua-
h
scene was played out in 1977, w
en try and the tremendous poverty- And those pa es
the former CIA director pleaded no yvere reported in. Iran. He was apt to uiislea the
ed with'
har
d
l
i
hi
g
e
ng c
be
t
contest after . 'shah on the policies of our government,w
failing to tell the whole truth about to some of the shah's confusion."
earlier CIA activities in Chile. She- does not believe that her husband's ap-
His four-year ambassadorship to lntment to-Tehran-he-bad refused Richard
Iran,.which also ended in 1977, is Nixon's offer of Moscow on the grounds th~t his.
only an amazing memory. Today4 CIA background would make that post unworkable
Helms is a consultant to mericair: - fueled-anti-American-feelings there, as home
firms doing business abroad. And; ,Helms critics believe: "A few radicals might have
.his wife can lay aside some of the been against-Diet but they were essentially~anti-.
caution that became second nature western. feelings, against anything that took power
to her over the years. away from the religious leaders=.
This caution characterizes the'
"And the shah had become so enamored of his'
book she began writing when they foreign policy role, he no longer listened fordo-'
came home from Aran - a menu- meMic discontent
script which gathered dust on a pub- She shrugs sadly an obser-rer who felt a need .
usher's desk until the shah's to help, but whose growing sense of helplessness.
departure from Iran made it ~isud- on in the face of the-Iranian mentality came to clomi-
..denly timely. But in conversation pate her feelings.
now, with even more distance from
flan than when she was writing about it she is -~
more frank. ..: It is this that pervades her book, despite Its coo
"I?m. not sure the shah really was astrong per. style, its arm's length perspective that allojws llttlh
son," she says. "All that-bombast and selling him- emotion.. to show.. "I tried not to be-go sipy. 01
self as a strong ruler covered up the fact that be-1 Judgmental.- she explains. ":Also, when- wen
wasn't a strong person.. At least that's what I think there, I couldn't find anything to read about Irat
now, and while hindsight is always easy, when we but scholarly treatises for which I wasnot thet
were there you could see the problems- although ready - about Shia Islam:"=
'-not that-it would lead to an Islamic revolution.". - 'To fill the need for an:all-purpose bogk'abou
The shabanou,?.the :beautiful Farah :D, iba,_she Iran, she writes of this branch of. the Muslim reli
thinks "lost her usefulness- to the shah" by sur- gion and of the-importance of the mullahs, of Iran
rounding herself with "sore very unthinking jet- I ian history --entwined with the thread of thei
setty friends and by putting her relations in key own lives in thatAmerican compound w ere th
positions. For instance she started a project of age-old practice of diplomatic immunity as sooi
books for young children - a project F was sold; to be threatened as never before.
on at the time. But when you went out to the vii "Do not step on a Persian carpet or ak mullal
.lages you saw that the children couldn't relate to :because it increases their-value" is an ol sayin;
her beautiful, expensive books. she uses as a chapter Introduction. By the end o
v ? "She had so much money, she didn't see it should--
:have been done in a simpler way. She have herself
on the glamour of her life. S
-him understand far more about, what was going.'Jt
? Approved For Release 2006/01/12 : CIA-RDP91-00901 R000500150044-2
 STAT
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C;rl :
PARADE MAGAZINE
o; FASO:
1~
THE WASHINGTON POST
15 March 1981
PA SPECOAL
an considerations for the safety
of our embassy staff in Tehran?
Question No. 2: Who during
the Nixon-Kissinger and Ford-, Kissinger Administrations was
responsible for the inexcusable
intelligence failure to discover
the Shah's cancer? In retro-
spect, that may have been the
single most glaring sin of orris- :-
lion in the entire tragedy
.
its ?. ~r_ __ I Under four different direc-
tors-Richard Heizris, James
by L.LOYD SHEARER @1981
Schlesinger, William Colby and
St
f
unable to learn or detect the
truth about the Shah's health.
ans
ield Turner-our CIA was
0~ Now ; was in Tehran with Nixon and
Who
0- fad?
that Kissinger, the rumor of the
our 52 hostages have been home, Shah's malady was rife. A year
nearly two months C
o
, ngres- later, Cynthia-Helms, wife of
sional committees will surely be then-U.S. Ambassador to Iran;
asking some key questions I Richard Helms
h
,
eard the
about U.S.-Iran relations. For gossip: "I remember it well, but
starters, here are two, none of us could verify it. I saw
Question No. 1: Why did Jim- the Shah on numerous occa- - i
my Carter succumb to the ap- S1on8. To my eyes, he looked '
peals of Henry Kissinger and well and fit, and he kept deny-",
David Rockefeller and permit ing the rumors of his illness.
s.
the late Shah to enter this coun- It's incredible that our govern
try on Oct. 22, 1979-especiall y ' ment couldn't learn the truth.
when he had previously been As far back as 1973, French
cautioned not to do so by Chargd doctors diagnosed the Shah's ill= -11
d'Affaires Bruce Laingen, our ness as a form of blood cancer
man on-the-spot in Tehran? and began to treat him. The
"We should not take any steps French intelligence service is
in the direction of admitting the notorious for wiretapping, Shah until such time as we have ha and
it is difficult to believe ve that if
been able to prepare an effective Henry Kissinger and Richard
and essential force for the pro- Nixon-men also not averse to
tection of the embassy," Lain- the use of wiretaps-had seri-
gen reported. "We have the im-- ously wanted a valid report on
pression that the threat to U.S. the state of the Shah's health,
personnel is less now than it
they could not have obtained it.
was in the spring ... Neverthe- For years we backed a Shah
less, the danger of hostages be- who knew he was terminally ill- '
ing taken in Iran will persist." but refused to tell us. '
Did Jimmy Carter goof when At this stage of the game, the
his humanitarian considera- American public is entitled to
tions fbr the medical care of the learn the truth about the Ameri-
Shah overruled his humanitari- ,~[r
can enc`~ an. Hopa
Approved For Release 2006/01/12 CIA-RDP91-00901W. A nal comrnittea
will supply it.
 oved For Release Q0b16MA2,1OQ)WM911{pM2
ON P0.Cl~. t'larch/Apri 1 1981
The untold story of
the. secret offensive
waged by the U.S.
government against
antiwar publications
by ANGUS MACKENZIE
he American public has learned
in the last few years a great
deal about, the government's
surveillance of the left during
the Vietnam War era. The re-
port of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence (the Church
committee) first suggested how widely
the government had been involved in
planting informants inside New Left
groups, propagating false information
about these groups, and using a variety
of tactics to disrupt their activities. That
such tactics were also used on a vast
scale, against dissenting magazines and
the underground press, however, has not
been reported in a comprehensive way.
The story has lain scattered in a hundred
places. ;Now, documents obtained by
editors and writers under the Freedom of
Information Act, and interviews with
former intelligence agents, make it pos-
sible, for the first time, to put together a
coherent - though not necessarily
complete - account of the federal gov-
ernment's systematic and sustained
violation of the First Amendment during
the late 1960s 'and early 1970s.
The government's offensive against
the underground press primarily in-
volved three agencies - the CIA, the
FBI, and the Army. In many cases, their
activities stemmed from what they could
claim were legitimate concerns. The
CIA's Operation CHAOS, for example,
was set up to look into the foreign c
nections of domestic dissidents; how-
ever, it soon exceeded its mandate and
became part of the broad attack on the
left and on publications that were re-
garded as creating a climate disruptive
of the war effort. At its height, the gov-
ernment's offensive may have affected
more than 150 of the roughly 500 un-
derground publications that became the
nerve centers of the antiwar and coun-
tercultural movements.
A telling example of this offensive
was the harassment of Liberation News
Service, which, when opposition to the
Vietnam War was building, played a
key role in keeping the disparate parts of
the antiwar movement informed. By
1968, the FBI had assigned three infor-
mants to penetrate the news service,
while nine other informants regularly
reported on it from the outside. Their
reports were forwarded to the U.S. Ar-
my's Counterintelligence Branch, where
an analyst kept tabs on LNS founders
Ray Mungo and Marshall Bloom, and to
the Secret Service, the Internal Revenue
Service, the Navy, the Air Force, and z missioner of the Internal Reve-
the CIA. The FBI also attempted to dis nue Service
to request that the
,
credit and break up the news service IRS review Ramparts' corpo-
through various counterintelligence ac- rate tax returns to determine, who the
tivities, such as trying to make LNS ap-. magazine's backers were- Terry agreed
pear to be an FBI front, to create friction to do so. Subsequently, Ober's offiqe
among staff members, and to burn down provided the IRS with "detailed infor-
the LNS office in Washington while the mant information" about Ramparts
staff slept upstairs. Before long, the backers, whom the IRS was requested to
CIA, too, joined the offensive; one of its investigate for possible tax violations.
recruits began filing reports on the Ober's investigation of the magazine
movements of LNS staff members while uncovered no "evidence of subversion"
reporting for the underground press to or ties to foreign intelligence agencies.
establish his cover as an underground By August, however, it had produced'a
Angus Mackenzie is a free-lance writer in journalist. computerized listing of several hundred
northern California. Editorial assistance The CIA was apjtarently the first fed- Americans, about fifty of whom were
was provided by Jay Peterzell of the Center eral agency to plan actions a ainst the subject of detailed files.
for National Set Irir} ~~ , +, Ieas~t PQI~/0 lgf ed ( R~g~ OtR00051RA Mf 4rt?b, Ober's mandate was
which also provided research assistance. CHAOS grew out of an investigation of expanded as the CIA, responding ng tb
The ortic?le was financed in part by the Fund
{? ,..,._..,.t:..... Ramparts magazine, which during the pressure from President Johnson. in-
rectorate of Plans (its "dirty tricks" de-
partment) assigned to counterintel i-
gence agent Richard Ober the task f
"pulling together information on Rai,
parts, including any evidence of su~
version [and; devising proposals for
counteraction." While those proposals
remain secret, several details relating to
the Ramparts operation have become
known.
n February 1, an associate f
Ober's met with Thom S
Terry, assistant to the coal