SOME IRANIAN HISTORY FROM RICHARD HELMS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000500150045-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 20, 2005
• Sequence Number: 45
• Publication Date: February 28, 1981
• Content Type: NSPR

STAT
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a0_1 AFM" WASHINGTON STAR
28 FEBRUARY 1981
e:
m
taes
e
If on
r r 4 I back up through the: corridors . of
House")., Guerrilla groupsremained
in the American compound to.
"guard" the place for seven months
until bitter complaints finally dis-
Iodged.them from what should have
been inviolate U.S.territor)S.
s journey
k th
H
l
e
rnnfncp'i .ifS nower..rlookin2 for
In;-the'searclrfor-a n6r,policy to
combat` terrorism, this. government
would' do~well to listen;,toLa bit of.
history-froi> an`-old hand who help-
ed make some of it,-Richard Helms;
fbrmer;master spy 'former director-
of the Central'Intellige,nce.Agency,
formers ambassador. to-4 Iran, was
down=in,thesalubrious' environs of
Florida'a?few-days,''ago ruminating
to a. select: audience about'. the sei-
zure of?the' hostages in Tehran and
America's. failure !;too- -perceive the
event before it.happened and to un-
derstandzit.'after;it occurred, .." ..
Helms is:tone'of-::those-men who
was born-with wide-angle vision and
then- trained to. be. wary of~ instant
gratification in politics and diploma-
cy.- Educated in part in Europe, he
Went, back,after. Williams College to
report.for'United Press on the, rise
of Hitler..whom .he interviewed-in
1936. During World War II he served
in the' Office of Strategic Services
which-then became the CIA. Always
worked`~with'? the globe;-.pulling' a
string here then watching to see its
effec.there
..Ex ercising admirable krestraint
he-.remained quiet.through,.the?hos-
tage'trauma.: But he-has-watched and.
studied': the flow of events with his
same. -practiced eacompassing-eye...
Whet Iran-Took Hostages
'Thereasoritbehostages were tat
enwas*notbecausethe shah was
admitted ;tor the, United, States-' tfor
inedicaLtreatmentr Helms told,'his.
listeners
lahs;the?#.?Islamic Republic hard-,
liners,;.Wanted to:;bring' down the;
government.; of Prime . Minister.:
Bazargan.and put`a stop'to.its- quiet.
efforts to, resume at. least informal:
relations with the United States. Put,
another way, the excuse that the ad-
ventof?tlieshah.in the United States.
had:-caused `:`the embassy. takeover:
was nothing but a cover to hide what
:
,was a major domestic political coup
inside^.Irani.e.,the fail,-.of-.the Bar
zagaw,'goYernment rk
and, effect has been suggested : 'But.
because`Helms comes to that conclu-
sioni-inakes it considerably more in--
teresting as we sort throupgh the Iran-
debris for. some clue. on how to act
in'the future:.
It:'is Helms' contention that the
critical date is not any of those that
commemorate the. storming of the
U.S. Embassy or. when the shah was
laid out-.on the operating table in'
New-York, but rather Nov, 1, 1979,
when Carter's voluble-national secu-
rity aide Zbigniew Brzezinski; then
in _Algie_rs? 'for the, independence')
celebration, set up a meeting with
Bazargan and Foreign Minister Yas-
di. Helms-believes that, the session
set off alarms all through. the ranks I
of the Islamic hard-liners and three
days later they triggered the stor;!
ming of the U.S. embassy.
The Ayatollah Khomini- had be-
come convinced that the Bazargan
government. wanted to sustain and
perhaps enlarge a relationship. with
the U.S. Tharwas intolerable to Khoo-
meini, who had fired his movement
with the doctrine that AmericaLhas
'corrupted Iran. Khomeini-was the
power, a fact not fully understood
by our government.
Contacts With, Bazagan4r~ C'i
One suspects at this distance that,
the filesof the State Department wilt?
some day reveal-many more contacts-
with the Bazargangovernment than
we know about as the Carter admin-
istration'sought frantically to-climb
back.. into bed with`iran. There-is
simply no other explanation . for the
indignities that were tolerated from
the first. embassy takeover Feb.. 14
guidance ;one: comes: out:inevitably
in the Oval Office. There:must first
be a firm idea-of what. kind of role
the nation intends to- play} in the!
world. Then there-,must, beta set of
priorities, an:-appreciation:of the
critical pressure points- Information
theri:.becomes crucial-,',hot. just the
repo. is on events but the long view
of. why trouble arises and from!
whence it comes. All-through the;
American system there. is. a desper-
ate need for more meaningful inter-
pretation of. the vast amount of fact
'that flows into Washington...;
Summed up,-the Helms theory sug--
gests that had we had. people of
breadth and sensitivity at the top
when trouble in Iranarose, we could
have-, grasped its -importance, fo-
cused`our concern, foreseen under-
lying ',hostility and prepared for
trouble.` Instead, the government
stumbled in a kind of. wishful stupor',
from event to event never quite un-
derstanding the sequence nor out-
running it. All that drama around
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.~ ),(called whimsically by..,those?-pres-
ent,, "The St. Valentine's Day Open
 Approved For Release 2006/01/12 : Cl JF P91-009
POST MAGAZI
priTl(;:1= 22EWASHINGTON
February 19B1
a:s FAG5-_. ~Z...._ -
QITESTIpld Which pictures don't fit in this group?
~tc.mzzv_ Tl.. +..;.:.vhsi uran't broke.
Agee attacked memoirs written by the two men who
ola
An
i
l
IA'
.
g
n
e
s ro
All are former CIA employeswho wrote- the C
books drawing on. their year of.service. the, agency's secret operations and aren't telling reporters they're in finan-i
with the Agency. Marchetti. (along-with named undercover agents. And Snepp cial distress, ex-directors Colby and';
coauthor John Marks1- criticized the criticized America's hasty and ill-con- Helms, were bland, flattering portray
agency's- methods-Y-Stockwell blasted ceived withdrawal from Vietnam The als of the CIA.
wave the fillers of Sam Giancana and Johnny Roseili_'
two-of the mobsters involved with the CIA plot in the
'68s:to4ssassinate Fidel Castro-ever beenfound?.
Gianna was hot dead by gunmen in is Chicago home in
1975; Roselli was found dead in an oil drum floating in a
Miami waterway -a *year later. No suspects in either death
have been apprehended
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Victor Plarchettz .. '. Richard Helms John Stockwell William Colby Philip Agee
 STAT
~ttxl~ p d F r Release 200676f/1M-S(5R93170a1 f5@q' 0
ov, ~19 February 1981
Mae
i:' .. --- ?._?.~:7J.i~-`M`t'-~se3 xi-,:.:aa-.c-~t~::i~-..ter?
By, D*vid Shribman';
WashitigtonStar Staff Writer-
- It seems all so fortuitious; An aim t`
bassador sets'6ff on. the luxurious`.
Red Arrow night train from Mosco u?:I
to Leningrad, and'. finds a- tempting,
young blonde' inYhis compartment::
A'young mantn tiie military attar
che,a office finds .he=has been as-:
signed a sexy-Russian. cleaning lady`
A diplomat,,..gets dt whispery tele1;
phone call. and the offer,of com-
r~?:
panionshipA , ,,while=s traveling to
far-flung Uzbek oriKirghtz
'And-yet itisn.~ as'fnnocent as it
seems. Behind closed doors, where.;
Soviet agents;are-mosf?artfiiI,.:even::
intimacy is`=full` of'.intrigue: The-'4
walls often have eyes and flash
bulbs nr
In- hotels? country hideaways and
even back alleys, the KGB operates
a,-high-stakes: pornography trade be--,
fitting the shadowy-worlds of Gra=.
harm Greene;and John-Ire Carte.: Its;
currency is ;blackmail; not rubles;
'and- the snare'
nare is sexual entrapment. `
`.. .Reports indicating an Army major'
assigned to the U.S.:embassy in Moe- -
.cow may. have. .bpen caught up _-in-
:'such a-trap are only the latest twists'
Am a.Sovietespionage:tradition that
is as old, as the'Russian Revolution.
"ThisY'sorx : b . th ag:, has"always
been- an- essential" element . of espi=
onage," said onetsou?ce. prominent
ins intelligence.:circles.:"But the`So-
viets have. made;it.- an-Aft. -Their tar-
get-,Js, completely:;.-inundated ;by
surveillance, -telephone taps, every
thing. They:kiiow his- habits , better:
;than he;:knows htmse]f " l
`m r?,tid,- h
'Mata Han IivesVSometimes-awl;
wardly, somett eswith;astonfshin
:ease? the Soviets have-used the: tech--
nique of-sexu alentrapment through
out..- the postwar - period; :.luring
Western diplbmats,:embassyguards
businessmen and. journalists with'
women known. within, the;KGB as
"sparrows
How :often-tlie sparrows get their.
worm - can ,never, be, known.'..Anct
:though diplomatic and military min-
istries throughout 1 he-- world warn
Russia-bound personnel of the dan.'
gers-that lurk in the unmade-mbeds
of Soviet relations, the West has of-
ten been embarrassed.by activities.
Approved
in.the sparrows' nests throughout
' the- Soviet bloc.
It happens time and again. In the
late--1950s six American diplomats
and 10' Marine guards were compro-
mised in Poland, a particularly fer-
tile area forsuch amorous intrigues.
The agents, described in the argot
of -the time- as "pretty Polish girls,"
infiltrated -the Marines'., sleeping
quarters while the diplomats en-
joyed?'4their- trysts : in - hideaways
around,,-;Warsaw. And -at, the, same
time,:a. Soviet intelligence agent se-
duced_the wife of an American
for- officer,'-following and
courting the woman for days.
?'?"They're throwing-girls at-us by
the :.scores. everywhere.-behind the
Iron:Curtain," an American official
said?-and: they've also begun to work
on our wives."
The-Americans yielded little more
than,their : bodies. in this series of
incidents;-no classified information.
Apparently. was passed on.-But two
years later, in the celebrated liaison
between Irwin C. Scarbeckand Ur-
szula Discner, a number of classified
American. documents were passed
to the. Communist side.---------- Scarbeck 'was the second officer,
of the American embassy in Warsaw
and Discner was the saucy 22-year--
old blonde he fell for. She was a
Polish agent, however,, and she set
him up for a raid. that led to black-'
mail and, finally, to the transfer of
classified information. Scarbeck, _
whose very- name still causes an-
guish: in the State Department, was
convicted and sentenced to prison.
Such incidents are sprinkled
through the tortuous history of East-
West, relations.
A,-ery prominent:Western Euro
pean journalist travelling ,through.
the Soviet. Union , was, drugged in
Soviet Georgia, where a high propor-
tion-,of these cases also seem :to oc-
cur, .and. then was ; photographed
with a woman. Once back in Moscow,-
colleagues advised him to inform
his embassy, his editor and his wife
of .the incident. . _
In.1965, Cmdr. Anthony Courtney,
.one of the British Parliament's bar -.-
sliest -critics of the. Soviet Union,)
'charged the Soviets with.' abusing i
their diplomatic privileges. -Less
than a month later snapshots show-
ing . him,, In bed with an Intourist
guide he met four years earlier were
circulating through the:'House -of
Commons; . x,~ i 7? "
There are many more. Gerda Mun-'
singer - prostitute, petty thief and
Soviet 'agent, according to a police
report - had liaisons with at least
two high Canadian. officials. And a
Norwegian foreign ministry official'
took a Russian as her lover, Soviet)'
agents discovered the connection,)
taunted her and:demanded security,
? ;-... ;.? .
-.-'--T71en there was the American-en-
gineer who vacationed in the Soviet
Union. In a restaurant-in the city)
.of Kharkov _he -was ushered,: in
nocently enough, to a table with anI
attractive woman. They passed .. a
pleasant evening and agreed to meet
again. The next. night she led him
to an outdoor bench. One thing ledi
to another and they:began to em-1
brace.
..A.moment later she began yellin g
in Russian. The American was arl~j
rested for attempted rape and wasj
offered a choice: a long prison sen-
tence or cooperation with Soviet
agents:
dw: f
.A similar choice was offered a'i,
French embassy subordinate who l
was lured into a tryst with- a KGB
agent in 1961. He would neither en-
dure the humiliation of the photo-'~
graphs . nor:. cooperate with the
Soviets. He killed himself.
But perhaps the most startling in-
cident involved Maurice Dejean, for-
mer French ambassador to Moscow.,
The Soviets- followed him . through
posts in New York; London and To-~
kyo and knew he had an eye for a
well-turned leg..-Once in Moscow;'
KGB agents set him up with an ac--'
tress, accused. him of adultery and.
had him beaten
"Our operation with the. French
ambassador was one of the greatest
in the history of the KGB's inside
operations," a :former KGB agent.,
told a Senate committee nearly:a
dozen-years ago.---,,--
" There =There was, however, no evidencef
Dejean : parted :with. any. classified:
information and French President
COT
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 A
"r Release 2006/01/12 GTI~F~pP 1-p~~9F0~NR~O1Q 0,0150
A TICGL THE N A l iyr~
ON r' k,c: ' _..2----- 10 February 1981
? Stiff Upper Yellow Ribbon 1
Richard Helms, for-
mer ambassador to Iran,
former CIA chief and
holder of other res
on-;
p
sible - posts, says he
doesn't "mean to sound
nasty," but the United
States should have left
the hostages "to their
own fate." Helms told
People magazine this
week that the hostages
ld h
d
"
ave returne
HELMS wou
earlier if (former Presi-
dent Jimmy) Carter had not put a value on them
with all this hoopla. The hostages were prisoners
of war, and we should have declared war," Helms
said. "That doesn't necessarily involve shoot-
ing." Helms, 67,_ was appointed ambassador to
Iran in 1973 by then-President Richard M. Nixon.
He left Iran in 1977 to return to Washington and
open a consulting firm. When he was ambassa-
dor, he said, the State Department warned him
that if kidnapped, he would not be ransomed. "It's
a privilege to serve one's country," he said. "If
you get knocked about, that's what life is."
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 Approved For Release 2006/01/12 : CIA-RDP91-0090
NEV YORK TIMES
9 FEBRUARY 1981
New PE, V' Backs Ex-- nvoy on
BySEYMOURM.HERSH ? 1
For six years- -Edward M.. Korry,
United States Ambassador to Chile from i
1967 to 1971, has insisted that he was not
involved in and indeed tried to stop White
House efforts to induce a military coup in
Chile in 1970-to prevent Dr. Salvador Al-
lende Gossens, a Marxist, from assuming
the presidency:
Evidence has come to light suggesting
that Mr. Korry, despite his strong opposi-
tion to the Allende candidacy, was frozen
out'of the..planning fbr a proposed mili-.
Lary. coup and warned the White House
that it would be risking another "Bay of
Pigs" if It got involved in military, plots to
stop Dr. Allende's election.
Mr. Korry has not workri. in his pro ies-
sions, journalism or public affairs, since
1974, two years after the columnist Jack
Anderson published International Tele
nhone and Telegraph. Cornoration docu
ments that seemingly linked Mr. Korryto,
joint I.T.T: Central' Intelligence Agency
operations to block Dr.. Allende's elec1.
'tion.
Mr. Korry expressed particular bitter
nest toward The,New York Times for
'what he said was unfair reporting about,
his role in articles in 1974 that revealed
the C.I.A.'s activities in Chile and ..in.
-refusing in later years, despite hls.en-'t
treaties, to investigate ins actions accu-
rately.
,Mr. Korry, who lives with his wife in
Stonington, Conn., insists that his sullied
reputation and his early inability to get
appropriate work stern from publication
of the I.T.T. documents and from two
subsequent widely publicized investiga-
tions by Senate committees. He is now a
.visiting professor of international rela-
tions at Connecticut College in New Lon-
don.
Much of. the new evidence, including
highly classified internal C.I.A. docu-
ments, was provided by a former intelli-
gence official who had direct knowledge
of the agency's activities against Dr. Al_
' lende,who died in the course of a military
upritin.g against him in 1973. Corroborat-
ing information was obtained in inter-
views with other C.I.A and White House
officials. Internal documents provided by
the C.I.A. to the Senate Select Committee
,,on Intelligence - and not published by
the committee in its reports in 1975 on
Chile-have also been obtained. Finally,
Mr. Korry made available some of his
private communications with Washing
ton during the 1970 election period.
These materials raise new questions
about the extent of C.I.A. operations -in
Chile in 1970 and the efficacy of the Sen-
ate committee's investigation. For exam-
ple, an "eyes only" internal C.I.A r5-
-port, filed in early 1971 and not provided
to the Intelligence Committee, shows that
senior agency officials were aware that
an operative had entered Chile under a
false passport and posed as a member of
the Mafia in making contact with anti-Al-
lende :orces.
. ? In another internal 1971 report, William
.V. Brae, then chief of the agency's clan-
destine service in Latin America, was
formally advised that an operative had,
posed.as - a representative of the Ford;
Foundation and the Rockefeller Founda-
tion while on special assignment to Chile,
In October 1970 -a tactic in violation of a'
-Presidential prohibition against the use
of American educational and ptdlan-'
thropic foundations as covers. The opera-
tive , in later meetings with Chilean buss
neesmen, made it clear, according to the!
C.I.A. documents, that "as a representa
tive of American business interests," he',
was eager "to activate a military take-i
over of the Chilean Government."
None of this, it is now evident, was'
Imown to Ambassador Korry.
Not Considered Trustworthy
In interviews, a number of C.I.A. offl-l
vials directly involved in the anti-Allende
operations emphasized that Mr. Korryi
was not% considered trustworthy by the,
White House or by C.I.A. headquarters.I
"Korry never did know anything," said
an intelligence operative who worked in
the embassy under Mr. Korry in 1970.
While he was in Chile, Mr. Korry was
)mown in the Nixon Administration for
his outspoken hostility to Dr. Allende and
ills harsh anti-Communist stance. Mr.
Korry, who acknowledges the severity of
his views on Dr. Allende, was active in
lobbying for a ?. 100,000 C.I.A. propaganda
effort against him and his Marxist views
that was authorized by the Nixon Admin-
istration in the spring and summer of
1970.
Nonetheless, Mr. Korry insists that he
repeatedly advised Washing on not to
take any steps toward a military solution
of the Allende problem. On Oct. 9, 1970,
for example, he told the White House in a
direct message made available to The
New York Times that he was appalled to
learn that unauthorized contact had been
made by the C.I.A. station in Santiago
with Patria y Libertad, a right-wing ex-
tremist group advocating the violent
overthrow of the Government. "I think
any attempt on our part actively to en-
courage a coup could lead us to a Bay of
Pigs failure," he added in the "eyes
only" cablegram.
In the interviews Mr. Korry constantly
focused on his inability to get newspapers
to publish his view of events after he left
Chile. But he says that he perhaps waited
too long, until 1978, to begin to tell all he
Approved For Re' ti b9e
cpi'fs precbxt;,W
tionalsecurity interests.-- ?
Mr. Korry, who is 59 years old, was a
foreign correspondent for. United Press
and went on to Look magazine, where- he
served as European editor. In 1962 he was'
designated Ambassador to Ethiopia by
President John F. Kennedy, serving
there with distinction, by all accounts,
until his assignment to Chile.
His moment in the greatest glare of
publicity came in September 1974, soon
after The New York times disclosed that
the C.I.A. had spent at least S~8 million in
Chile in an effort to prevent Dr. Allende's
election and; failing in that, sought to
make it irnoossible for him to govern.Mr.
Korry, with Richard M. Helms, then Di-
rector of Central Intelligence, and two
senior State Department officials. was
accused by members of the Senate staff
of having provided. misleading testimony
to the Sensate multinational subcommit-
tee of the Foreign Relations Committee,
headed by Frank Church, Democrat of
Idaho, which held hearings in March and
April 1973 into I.T.T.'s involvement with
the Chilean election.
During the hearings Mr. Korry testi-
fied that the United States maintained a
"total hands off" policy toward the mili-
tary during the campaign for the elec-
tion, which Dr. Allende won in a three-
way race by only 30,000 votes of three mil-
lion cast. Mr. Korry denied knowledge of
the I.T.T. cablegram that became a focal
point-of much of the hearings - a report
from two I.T.T. officials in Santiago that
the Ambassador had finally received
"the green light to move in the name of
Richard Nixon" against the new Presi-
dent.
Repeatedly refusing to answer many
queries in full from the senators and the
subcommittee staff diredtor, Jerome I.
Levinson, Mr. Korry insisted that to de-
scribe confidential communications and
official orders would be "contrary to the
 Approved For Release 2006/01/12: CIA-RDP91-00901R
POLICY REVLEW
PITBLISHED by THE I RITAGE FOUNDA7
WINE. 1981
Can CounterinteB ige ce Con
In From the Cold?
ARNOLD BEICHMAN
"The best hope that the free world will
an efficient, constitutional, freedom-los i
quately secret - CIA and FBI."
- M.R.D. Foot, Professor of IV'
University of Manchester, in ~
IVl
What a cushy job it must be today to run
the USSR secret.police and espionage agency. 7
and job security, not as in the old Stalin days
years as head of the secret police, you were tal
Better yet, Yuri Andropov, who runs the
Politburo secure in the knowledge that his
adversaries, the CIA and the FBI, have for thi
been so weakened that they are no longer serf
Even now, when there is some possibility th
allow the CIA and FBI to function once me
years before these agencies will be sufficient
KGB penetration and disinformation.
Penetration of the CIA by the KGB is now an eseaousnea racy.
On October 29, David H. Barnett, a former CIA agent, confessed
that he had been selling important secrets to the Soviet agency
for some years - including a top-priority clandestine CIA
operation in Indonesia in the 1960s. Mr. Barnett also confessed
that he had revealed to the KGB the identities of thirty covert
CIA employees.
The organizational deficiencies have multiplied since 1975
because of Congressional investigations, Executive orders and,
above all, because of the serious decline of U.S. counterintel-
ligence capacity in the CIA and the FBI. This was the conclusion
of many. specialists who attended the third meeting of the Con-
sortium for the Study of Intelligence (CSI). It is now possible,
for example, to assign Soviet agents to the U.S., literally by the
shipload. In 1978, there were 1,300 Soviet and 700 Soviet-bloc
officials. permanently assigned to the U.S. as diplomats, media
and trade representatives, and staff to international organizations.
The number of Soviet-bloc graduate students has increased from
the usual 35-40 to 200. During 1977, there were almost 60,000
Soviet-bloc visitors to the U.S. Of these visitors, 14,000 were
commercial, scientific, and cultural delegates, while the remain-
ing 40,000 were crewmen who enjoyed complete liberty while
Soviet ships were docked in 40 U.S. deepwater ports.
Now I have it on good authority that before Congress put the
FBI on its "most wanted" list, the FBI routinely covered KGB
suspect agents on a one-to-one basis, that is, one FBI surveillance
expert to one KGB suspect. Today, as Mr. Andropov, knows
well, the ratio has dropped to 1-to-4. There are just too many
KGB targets floating about the U.S. today, while some 300 FBI
staffers are busy checking applications from all kinds of dubious
Approve?PR dl@48e "YOg442rP(414IR iui%OgOdOS0Orl5QO45e1
former Assistant Attorney General Antonin Scalia, now a pro-
fessor at the University of Chicago Law School: