Robert Kennedy found out in May 1962 and was told these plots had been terminated. His biggest scoop, he said,. Over the years, speculation has grown that Helms was the famous source known as Deep Throat, who helped guide Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of the Watergate scandal. She had once remarked succinctly, "It takes heart to be in political life." Pat Nixon used her position as First Lady to encourage volunteer service--"the spirit of people helping people." Mr. Helms married Julia Bretzman Shields of Indianapolis in 1939. But asked Wednesday about the speculation, Woodward -- now an assistant managing editor at the Post -- said Deep Throat wasnt Helms. But Mr. Helms soon found himself called to account for his own actions when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence delved into the agency's efforts to assassinate world leaders or destablize socialist governments. In his personal life, Mr. Helms was known as an avid tennis player and sports fan, with a dry wit that showed when he was with friends, and, with his wife Cynthia, he was active in the Washington social scene. . There, his spy career focused on Russian KGB activities in Germany and Eastern Europe, tracking down former Nazi spies, and appropriating intelligence from them that the Axis powers had collected regarding the Soviet Union. James Angleton, another master spy who had spent World War II working with the OSS in Italy, also stayed. Helms, the first career intelligence officer to head the CIA, died Tuesday night at his Washington, D.C.-area home, the agency announced Wednesday. He was 89. After World War I, his parents, Herman and Marion, moved the family to New York City and later to South Orange, New Jersey, where his father worked as an executive with the Aluminum Company of America. Sources: Materials in collection. At CIA headquarters in Langley, one of the newest artifacts in the agencys private museum is a message from a father to his 3-year-old son. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/23/obituaries/richard-m-helms-dies-at-89-dashing-exchief-of-the-cia.html. Richard Helms was born on March 30, 1913 in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, USA. Those included Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic and Patrice Lumumba of the Congo. Helms, who consistently opposed that plan to oust Castro, was named head of the plans division, the third highest position in the agency. The highly polished surface of the sculpture accentuates the solid yet graceful posture of the alert feline. In 1965, Mr. Helms was named to the second-highest job at the agency, deputy director of central intelligence. He made only one public speech during his years as CIA leader, telling the nation's newspaper editors that "the nation must, to a degree, take it on faith that we, too, are honorable men, devoted to her service. As America's top spymaster, Powers wrote in his biography, Mr. Helms "is remembered as an administrator, impatient with delay, excuses, self-seeking, the sour air of office politics. Dennis wanted to be like his father in some ways. During the 1950s, Dulles gave him special assignments. An urbane and dashing spymaster, Mr. Helms began his career with a reputation as a truth teller and became a favorite of lawmakers in the late 1960's and early 70's. For Christmas, he already plans to give the replica to his son, Alexander Helms, a college senior majoring in studio art and photography. A Secret Order: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity in the JFK Assassination. Richard Helms's income source is mostly from being a successful Actor. Together they had a son Dennis, who as a young man briefly worked at CIA; he later became a lawyer. With the appointment of Allen Dulles as Director of Central Intelligence in 1953, Helms began to lay the groundwork for a program that became known as operation MKULTRA. You Save 25%. So-called terrorism may get a new lease on life. Wife: Julia Bretzman Shields (sculptor, m. 1939, div. Following the 1947 creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CI Clearly, newsman Schorr's presence alone had touched a nerve in the no-nonsense ex-director. He would serve longer as director of central intelligence than anyone except Allen Dulles, the legendary spymaster who led the CIA from 1953 to 1961. Helms was named director, a post he would hold for six years. For example, at Dachau, inmates were immersed in cold water to determine how long a downed pilot would last in frigid seas. Julia Bretzman Shields (deceased) - Genealogy Julia Bretzman Shields public profile View Complete Profile Matching family tree profiles for Julia Bretzman Shields Julia L. Bretzman in FamilySearch Family Tree view all Immediate Family Richard Helms, Director of Centr. Day-to-day tasks were run by the CIA's Sheffield Edwards, who several years later would become a key player in Helms's CIA Mafia operations involving Cuba. At the height of McCarthy's fervid hunts for communists inside the government, Mr. Helms headed a CIA committee to protect the agency against McCarthy's efforts to infiltrate the CIA with his own informers. Mr. Allende was killed in a 1973 military coup, which was followed by more than 16 years of military dictatorship. Gradually, the agency learned to use combinations of various methods to achieve amnesia in its subjects. But he kept being hauled before congressional committees to explain the CIAs efforts in earlier years to assassinate world leaders and disrupt socialist regimes abroad. Please c, ontact . . In that sense, he was a little frustrating, he said. In his personal life, Mr. Helms was known as an avid tennis player and sports fan, with a dry wit that showed when he was with friends, and, with his wife Cynthia, he was active in the Washington. The agency later set up two additional programs to monitor dissident groups. His dad never explained in full. He fancied a career in journalism, and went to Europe as a reporter for United Press. The letter writer was his father, Richard Helms, the CIA director during the Vietnam War and Watergate eras, who died in 2002. But he eventually ran afoul of Congressional investigators who found that he had lied or withheld information about the United States role in assassination attempts in Cuba, anti-government activities in Chile and the illegal surveillance of journalists in the United States. , 13). Mr. Helms, who by nature had been cool and skeptical toward covert operations on such a large scale, had kept his distance from the Bay of Pigs. Helms and Angleton would use this information to plan their future in the world of espionage. Helms in the directorate of plans (covert operations) and Angleton in counterintelligence guided this new mission. Love, Daddy.. Fifty years ago on November 22, 1963, in Dallas's Dealey Plaza, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated while traveling in a motorcade with his wife, Lee Harvey Oswald was not the assassin of President Kennedy. He was known as a charming conversationalist, a gregarious partygoer and an accomplished dancer, and he and his wife continued to be familiar figures on the capital party scene. He lives with his wife in West Hartford, Connecticut. He became a consultant to businesses that made investments in other countries. Blood, Money, & Power: How L.B.J. Eichmann was captured by Israeli intelligence in 1960, tried, and executed. The Agency's behavior control program was built upon research experiments carried out during the Korean War (19501953). Links between unsavory Nixon White House activities and the CIA, including the agency's lending of disguises to Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt, prompted an internal examination ordered by Mr. 15 Sep 1970: President Richard M. Nixon and Henry Kissinger instruct CIA Director Richard Helms to spend up to $10 million "to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him." 2 Feb 1973: Richard M. Nixon fires Richard Helms, after Helms is loyal to CIA and not Nixon, over Watergate issues. In the early 1980s, attempts were made to restore Helms reputation. The couple divorced in 1968, and Mr. Helms married Cynthia McKelvie later that year. Soon, this newly contracted legion of psychiatrists began to test mind-altering drugs in conjunction with hypnosis. 229 0 obj <>/Filter/FlateDecode/ID[<0FE81A3C1E7EFE44AF36D8950331A64D><1C923204F3452F4692C304A98FB5F8E8>]/Index[222 28]/Info 221 0 R/Length 55/Prev 24142/Root 223 0 R/Size 250/Type/XRef/W[1 2 1]>>stream In a statement yesterday, Tenet described Mr. Helms as "clear in thought, elegant in style . He dated the letter V-E day for May 8, 1945. "He was a kind of middleman between the field and Washington policymakers, approving and even choosing the wording of cables to the field describing 'requirements'; and passing on concrete proposals for operations from the local CIA stations," Powers wrote in his biography of Mr. Helms. His role in those early years, authorities on the history of the agency say, was running covert operations. He was known as a charming conversationalist, a gregarious partygoer and an accomplished dancer, and he and his wife continued to be familiar figures on the capital party scene. He was discharged from military service in 1946 and continued doing intelligence work as a civilian. Mr. Helms's memoir, ''A Look Over My Shoulder: a Life in the C.I.A.,'' is to be released in the spring by Random House. A tireless campaigner when he ran unsuccessfully for President in 1960, she was at his side when he ran again in 1968--and won. During his war service in the US Navy, Lieutenant Helms was initially assigned to track enemy submarines off the coast of New York. He did not welcome congressional inquiry or oversight. The man who might have written on this card once controlled Europe three short years ago when you were born. Helms was, of course, very non-committal politically. His assignments included coverage of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. When the CIA was established, Helms was one of the architects of the new organization. According to Helms's assistant, George McManus, the main reason Helms did not tell his boss about mob involvement in assassination conspiracies was because McCone would have considered it "morally reprehensible.". The Measure of a Man is the earliest attempt to publish King's sermons in book form. 'His marriage, to Julia Bretzman Shields in 1939, was to make a major differ- ence to his later career, in an unusual way. Research on hypnosis was conducted to attempt to protect America's intelligence services from such tactics being used against them. At his retirement in 1973, Mr. Helms left an organization viewed with suspicion by many and about to undergo intense scrutiny from an unfriendly Congress for activities ranging from assassination plots against foreign leaders to spying on U.S. citizens. Most of the subjects tested did not know the nature of the tests being given to them. Less horrific experiments carried out by Nazi scientists were conducted in order to find ways in which to control prisoners and make them reveal secret information. During most of his tenure as C.I.A. I still do -- without regrets, without qualms, without apology, he told the Rockefeller Commission, which in 1975 investigated allegations of unlawful CIA activities in the United States. Helms and his wife Julia had one child, a son named Dennis. In 1929, when Richard was sixteen, his family including Richard, his older sister Elizabeth, and younger brothers Pearsall and Gates departed for Europe. ", The CIA's current director, George J. Tenet, had made a practice of consulting periodically with Mr. Helms since his appointment in 1997. He died on October 22, 2002 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. In 1973, Nixon forced him to resign as head of the CIA. 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