Another telling public reaction from Richard Helms that adds insight into his character was delivered during a lecture for students at Johns Hopkins University in the fall of 1972. Earlier this year, the CIA contacted Dennis Helms to let him know the agency was redesigning its in-house museum and wanted to increase its memorabilia from Richard Helms and the three other CIA directors who also served in the OSS: Allen Dulles, William Casey and William Colby. Working through Berlin, he planned and executed successful eavesdropping operations on the Soviet Union. Helms' first marriage to Julia Bretzman Shields ended in divorce. After the war, Helms stayed in intelligence work, giving up his plans in the newspaper business. 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. Enabling JavaScript in your browser will allow you to experience all the features of our site. Two years later, he pleaded no contest to failing to testify fully before the committee. But the relationship between Mr. Helms and Nixon was never smooth, and in November 1972, shortly after he had been elected to his second term, the president summoned his CIA chief to a meeting at Camp David and asked him to resign. In 1976, Mr. Helms returned from Tehran, retired from government service and became an international consultant. One part still confuses. Nixon's reasons were never made public, but Power said in his biography that Mr. Helms was convinced "that Nixon fired him for one reason only -- because he had refused wholeheartedly to join the Watergate coverup.". They asked: Got anything interesting lying around the house? In addition to researching information based on North Korean field work, the CIA dug deeper, researching experiments found in captured Nazi documents. This was considered an important requirement by the experimenters in order to produce dependable results. But during this time, the agency was also conducting operations that would change public perceptions of the role of intelligence gathering. For a man who considered himself a genuine patriot, it was a bleak note on which to end his professional career. Dennis said he didnt know. I was simply trying to find my way through a difficult situation in which I found myself.''. 249 0 obj <>stream He served under such men as Allen W. Dulles, Richard M. Bissell, John A. McCone and Vice Adm. William F. Raborn. 0 But asked Wednesday about the speculation, Woodward -- now an assistant managing editor at the Post -- said Deep Throat wasnt Helms. The man who might have written on this card once controlled Europe three short years ago when you were born. Shields, Judith L. "Judy"September 10, 1949 - May 24, 2022Preceded in death by husband, James W. Shields, Sr.Survived by children, Jim Jr. (Lisa), Scott, Laura Lewis . Share on Facebook Share. 'His marriage, to Julia Bretzman Shields in 1939, was to make a major differ- ence to his later career, in an unusual way. The Agency's MK experiments started out in 1950 as project BLUEBIRD. He and his fellow officers were the beneficiaries of the most successful espionage operation of World War II in Europe the breaking of the German code by allied cryptologists an operation code-named ULTRA. In this position, Helms was in charge of all covert action operations. For Christmas, he already plans to give the replica to his son, Alexander Helms, a college senior majoring in studio art and photography. Frank Brown Shields.He married Julia L. Bretzman, daughter of Charles Bretzman and Bertha Grauel. He later married Cynthia McKelvie, who survives him. Thats the way it often goes in CIA families. Over the next 20 years, Mr. Helms rose through the agency's ranks, and in 1966 he became the first career official to head the C.I.A. The Agency's behavior control program was built upon research experiments carried out during the Korean War (19501953). Mr. Helms pleaded no contest in 1977 to two misdemeanor counts of failing to testify fully four years earlier to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In the early days of World War II, Helms was commissioned in the Navy with the rank of lieutenant. During his war service in the US Navy, Lieutenant Helms was initially assigned to track enemy submarines off the coast of New York. The letter happened to arrive at Langley the day after Osama bin Laden was killed in May. Julia B. Shields (1908-?) We encourage you to research and . I just wish there had been more such occasions.. The couple were divorced in 1968, and Mr. Helms married Cynthia McKelvie later that year. In part because of his foreign language skills, he was able to hook up with the United Press in London and soon after was sent to Berlin. . was able to eavesdrop on Moscow's conversations with officials in East Germany and Poland. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. That was about it. investigation into the Watergate breakin. During Iran-Contra, a lot of CIA people suddenly found themselves on the wrong end of an investigation. He grew up in South Orange, N.J., and was schooled in Europe, where he became versed in languages and fluent in French and German. Helms was born in St. Davids, Pa., the son of an Alcoa executive and grandson of a leading international banker. Helms and his wife Julia had one child, a son named Dennis. Some Richard Helms images. In 1935, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Williams College, where in his senior year he was president of his class, editor of the campus newspaper and the yearbook and president of the honor society. who was born in Indianapolis, Indiana to Charles Bretzman of Hannover, Germany and Berta W. Bretzman of Minnesota. But the most contentious criticism of Mr. Helms centered on Chile. For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now. The following year, he was one of a group of foreign correspondents to interview Adolf Hitler. 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. I didn't want to mislead the Senate. In 1940, she was 32 years old and lived in Washington, Indiana, with her husband, Richard, son, and daughter. 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. Mr. Helms pleaded no contest in 1977 to two misdemeanor counts of failing to testify fully four years earlier to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In this case, it is interesting to note that a vegetable is also the term for what could happen if an experiment went awry and the subject's memory was lost permanently. ''I had found myself in a position of conflict,'' he told a federal judge at the formal proceeding after entering a plea agreement with the Justice Department. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. . By the same token, Helms writes that key CIA actions were always carried out with presidential approval. In the judgment of Richard Helms, the CIA worked only for the president. He worked in New York plotting the positions of German submarines in the western Atlantic. His father signed off with a term that he rarely used for himself. The hearing from which he had exited had consisted of four hours of questioning before the Rockefeller Commission regarding CIA attempts to assassinate foreign leaders. Mr. Helms was forced out of the agency in 1973 by President Nixon, who considered him insufficiently cooperative in providing C.I.A. hb```X0xb,G}4q,u pQ b`Y $ 75p7H$D4c5z`q %c Uf` i I didn't want to lie. The substance of the briefing did not surface publicly for two years, until a combination of news media accounts, a presidential commission and congressional committees bent on public disclosure made it known. As the Cold War intensified, and the nation saw the rise of rabid anti-Communist Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a sense of paranoia emerged regarding the Soviet Union and Communist efforts in the field of mind control. Those included Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic and Patrice Lumumba of the Congo. In 1939 he married Julia Bretzman Shields, and they had a son, Dennis, who became a lawyer. Through much of his tenure, Helms -- with his solid background in the agency during the Cold War -- was well-regarded by congressional oversight panels and the news media. He later married Cynthia McKelvie, who survives him. Born on March 30, 1913, in St. Davids, Pa., Richard McGarrah Helms — he avoided using the middle name — was the son of an Alcoa executive and the grandson of a leading international banker, Gates McGarrah. 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. , 13). In the face of the Communist challenge, the US military sought to prepare its soldiers for survival in the event they were captured by the enemy. He fancied a career in journalism, and went to Europe as a reporter for United Press. Richard Helms was born on March 30, 1913 in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, USA. His assignments included coverage of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Dad liked it that way.. But the fact that we received it on the very day that we in the museum received news along with the rest of the world of the successful bin Laden operation stunned us.. As for the initials "MK," the words "mind control" come to mind, though the origin of this code name has never been found. She married Frank Shields on 15 May 1929. He is also survived by a son, Dennis, from his first marriage. Helms was, of course, very non-committal politically. Under this operation, the CIA amassed files on tens of thousands of American citizens or groups. Actually, he knew that his father worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, but he did not know what he did there. 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. While Dennis was growing up in Washington, the letter went into family scrapbooks. The agency later set up two additional programs to monitor dissident groups. Learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser, Richard Helms walked briskly from a hearing room in Washington, DC, on April 28, 1975. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. By July 1952, Helms had been appointed acting chief of the CIA's Clandestine Division and in the following year became deputy to Frank Wisner, the Deputy Director of Plans. The operations he conducted that would have been fun to me to hear about, like reading a novel. Through most of the 1950s, he was a leading recruiter and trainer of intelligence agents working in the Eastern Bloc. Dennis wanted to be like his father in some ways. "I found myself in a position of conflict," Mr. Helms said. In 1940, she was 32 years old and lived in Washington, Indiana, with her husband, Richard, son, and daughter. It did not report the cause of death, but Helms had been in failing health for some time. In 1939 Helms had married Julia Bretzman Shields, a sculptress six years his senior. While with the OSS dur- ing the war, Helms made contact with a handful of men who would remain influential . 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. - 22 October 2002) (his death) "You are born with that kind of skill, and he had it." Through the 1970s, Helms was repeatedly called to testify before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about CIA activities that may have violated the agencys charter. He was 89. I think if I had done anything else I would have been disgraced.''. His biggest scoop, he said,. Eichmann was captured by Israeli intelligence in 1960, tried, and executed. 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. Espionage, he once remarked, is not played by the Marquess of Queensberry rules, and the only sin in espionage is getting caught., Lets face it, he said on another occasion, the American people want an effective, strong intelligence operation. 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. At the close of World War II, top German spy Commander Reinhard Gehlen escaped the approaching Russians and fled to the Americans, bringing with him a treasure trove of Nazi and Russian intelligence files. The Measure of a Man is the earliest attempt to publish King's sermons in book form. Richard McGarrah Helms (March 30, 1913 October 23, 2002) served as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from June 1966 to February 1973. In a statement yesterday, Tenet described Mr. Helms as "clear in thought, elegant in style . Initially, he held desk jobs in Washington and New York but later served in Britain and the European theater. Chief, Dies at 89, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/24/us/richard-helms-ex-cia-chief-dies-at-89.html. Contents 1 Tennis career 1.1 Davis Cup 2 Grand Slam finals 2.1 Singles (2 runners-up) 2.2 Doubles (1 runner-up) 2.3 Mixed doubles (1 runner-up) 3 Marriages The simple, abstract rendering is characteristic of . Coincidentally, a documentary by Colbys son Carl Colby is just out, titled The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Spymaster Father, William Colby., Dennis Helmss own search has been less revelatory. Mr. Helms's memoir, "A Look Over My Shoulder: a Life in the C.I.A.," is scheduled to be released in the spring by Random House. .BooklistReaders who cant get enough of speculation about the JFK and RFK assassinations should definitely give [CIA Rogues and the Killing of the Kennedys] a read . He had multiple melanoma. When Hitler spoke face-to-face, active salivary glands seemed to make his voice indistinct, Helms wrote in his memoir.). Father of Dennis and grandfather of Julia and Alexander; brother of Betty Helms Hawn, Pearsael Helms and Gates Helm; stepfather of Didi Anderson, Jill . In the late 1950s, he interned at the CIA vacuuming dust off Soviet newspapers in the agency library and later went to Williams College, just like his dad. 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