In his season of triumph, Nixon returned to replaying Richard Rodgers’s stirring anthem, “Victory at Sea.” The man from Whittier was now master of the globe. Entering his second term, he had a mandate from the voters and the will to prevail. Interest in Watergate abated and Vietnam negotiations were proceeding. When North Vietnam stalled on the final terms of a peace treaty, he ordered another wave of war. He authorized B-52 bombing strikes on sixteen major transportation, power, and radio targets in Hanoi. Within twenty-four hours, 129 B-52s took part in bombing raids.
The explosions were awesome, the destruction vast, the civilian death toll uncounted. Whether such violence actually forced changes in North Vietnam’s strategy remained unproven. The United States had already dropped more than three million tons of bombs on North Vietnam by the time Nixon took office in 1969, compared to two million in all of World War II.
“Only Nixon and Kissinger, coming in fresh and thinking, we know how to launch a threat campaign, could convince themselves that this was going to do the job,” said whistleblower Ellsberg, who originally favored the war. “By the end of the first term, they had dropped 4.5 million tons of bombs—but to no effect.”1 The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were still fighting and still demanding complete U.S. withdrawal.
The editorial reaction to the Christmas bombing raids was broad and harsh. Senator William Saxbe, Republican of Ohio, said the president “appears to have lost his senses.” The Washington Post editorialized that the bombing caused millions of Americans to begin “crying in shame and to wonder at the President’s very sanity.”
The critics were “disgraceful,” Nixon scoffed in his diary. They “cannot bear the thought of this administration under my leadership bringing off the peace on an honorable basis which they have long predicted would be impossible. The election was a terrible blow to them,” he said, “and this is their first opportunity … to strike back.”2 Nixon felt vindicated when the North Vietnamese returned to the negotiations a few weeks later. He was inaugurated for a second time on January 20, 1973, and the Paris Peace Accords were signed six days later.
Dick Helms had moved on. He wouldn’t be director much longer, and he felt no need to flatter the president. He and Cynthia attended an elegant and exclusive dinner party where Kissinger got up to speak about the peace he and Nixon had negotiated in Vietnam. As they left the dining room, Helms leaned over to Cynthia. “Nonsense,” he whispered, “they don’t have any peace.”3
“It would appear we have headed them off at the pass,” McCord wrote to Paul Gaynor on the eve of the burglars’ trial. “The crisis appears to be over.”
The crisis was the looming possibility that McCord’s lawyer or Hunt’s might call CIA witnesses, including Helms. McCord berated Gerald Alch and said he was firing him. “I repeated I would not stand for it, nor would I sit still for any other defense attorney trying to do it,” McCord said. “… Alch met with me again and assured me the issue was dead, that he would not try it again, nor would anyone else.”4
Two days later, McCord reported again to Gaynor. The prosecutors had tried to get all the defendants to plead guilty, “thus protecting those higher up from involvement,” McCord wrote. He and Liddy refused. “Now the prosecution is planning to state the motive of at least some of the defendants was blackmail.”5 At trial, the prosecutors asked to introduce transcripts of the conversations the burglars had intercepted in the DNC offices. A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union objected on privacy grounds, and Judge John Sirica upheld his argument. The question of blackmail as a motive for the Watergate burglary was never addressed in court.
Jack Caulfield passed McCord’s message about his defense strategy to John Dean, who consulted with John Ehrlichman in the White House. They knew Hunt planned to plead guilty and say nothing in hopes of executive clemency. Dean had heard that the burglars’ attorneys planned to blame Watergate on the CIA by convincing “those dumb D.C. jurors that they were watching the Mission Impossible show.” Now McCord was balking.
“No one knew why,” Dean said. “I wondered whether the Agency had reached him.”6
McCord had certainly reached the Agency via the back channel to Helms through Gaynor, a matter that required discretion. Knowing that Helms would soon be leaving the Agency, Howard Osborn took the folder of letters to Helms and asked for guidance as to what he should do with them. Helms reviewed the file and—deft touch—directed Osborn to check with General Counsel Houston. If the latter had no objection, Osborn was to—delicate phrase—“secure retention of the letter.”
Houston had no objection. Osborn kept McCord’s letters in his safe.7 Helms had evidence of his former employee’s intentions, state of mind, and legal strategy. And he had counsel’s permission not to share it with the court—a tidy package that lent credence to Gerald Alch’s speculation that McCord was coordinating his legal strategy with “some representative of the CIA, perhaps a former colleague,” perhaps his appreciative friend, the outgoing director.
The trial of the burglars was anticlimactic. While all of Washington still wondered what the burglary was all about, the proceedings in Judge Sirica’s courtroom clarified nothing.
The Cuban defendants pled guilty to all counts. Under questioning from Sirica, they said they acted on behalf of liberating Cuba and uncovering Castro’s supposed connections to McGovern.
Hunt pled guilty on all counts, saying, falsely, that he had no knowledge of “higher-ups” in the conspiracy. He deprecated his former colleague. “McCord was a low-level security man,” he said.8
McCord contested the charges oddly. He told Gaynor that he had “evidence of the involvement of Mitchell and other sufficient evidence to convince a jury, the Congress and the Press,” but he did not present it during the trial. Instead, Alch offered a “defense of duress,” arguing that McCord thought it necessary to get intelligence from the Democrats to protect Republican officials from bodily harm. “Ridiculous,” snorted Judge Sirica.9 McCord was convicted. Investigators would not learn of McCord’s back channel to Helms for four more months.
The FBI agents working on the background check for ambassadorial nominee Richard McGarragh Helms heard many words of effusive praise.
“General Robert E. Cushman, U.S. Marines Corps, highly recommends Helms for the position of Ambassador,” reported the Alexandria, Virginia, field office.
Former director John McCone told the Los Angeles field office that the “appointee is totally responsible concerning security matters. Highest respect for the appointee’s intelligence and integrity.”
Dr. Louis Tordella, deputy director of the National Security Agency, said he “would highly recommend him for any position of trust in the U.S. government.”
Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield of Montana “considers him forthright and practical in his approach to foreign-policy.… And has no question concerning his patriotism, morals, reputation or choice of associates.”
Another twenty-two people vouched that Helms was “a dependable, trustworthy, dedicated and conscientious person.”
“If there is any question regarding Helms’ loyalty,” quipped Secretary of State William Rogers, “we’re all in a lot of trouble.”
When this package of praise reached Acting Director Gray, he passed it to the White House with a summary memorandum on Helms’s “character, loyalty, ability, and general standing.”10
Just when Helms was certified the most trustworthy of men, he then betrayed the trust bestowed on him. With his well-earned reputation for integrity, Helms was well positioned to pull a fast one, and he did. Such was his skill that his admirers could not hold it against him. They too wanted to believe in the law-abiding spymaster, and he gave them sufficient grounds.
It happened when Senator Mansfield announced the establishment of a select committee, headed by Senators Sam Ervin and Howard Baker, to investigate the Watergate affair. Mansfield sent identical letters to Helms and eight other people involved in the Watergate events, including John Dean and Richard Kleindienst.
“I am writing to request that you not destroy, remove from your possession or control or otherwise dispose of or permit the disposal of any records or documents which might have bearing on the subjects under investigation,” he wrote, referring to “the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, [and] the reports of political sabotage and espionage.”
When John Dean received Mansfield’s “request,” he assumed that any violation of its terms might expose him to contempt of court charges.11 A spy not a lawyer, Helms took the opposite course. He ordered his secretary, Elizabeth Dunlevy, to start disposing of records that he knew full well “might have some bearing” on the Watergate investigation.
Like Nixon, Helms had installed a taping system in his office that enabled him to record telephone calls and room conversations. The tapes were routinely transcribed. Helms and Dunlevy made a cursory review of three file drawers of the transcripts and decided none were related to Watergate. Helms ordered the material shredded and the taping system removed.12 Dunlevy later said she destroyed transcripts of either telephone or room conversations with Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and other White House officials.13
Helms said he could not recall any conversations with the White House burglar but he didn’t exclude the possibility.
“Did you have telephone conversations with Mr. Hunt?” he was asked in a court deposition in 1984.
“I don’t recall any, but I may have,” Helms said. “If he was in the Agency, I would normally have talked to him there, but I don’t recall any conversations with him. I did not have any telephone conversations with him after he went to work for the White House.”14
Helms shrugged off criticism. The destruction of his personal material was “a routine part of vacating his office,” he explained to the Rockefeller Commission. “… He assumed that anything of affirmative value had been transferred from the tapes and he felt obligated [that] the records of confidential conversations between him and others should not become part of Agency files.”15
Helms’s definition of “related to Watergate” was exquisitely narrow. The fire at McCord’s place? Not related to Watergate. Hunt’s job at the Mullen Company? Not related to Watergate. The packages Hunt sent to his office? Not related to Watergate. The destruction of Helms’s personal archive of files, tapes, and transcripts was completed before the end of the month. If you could believe the former director, none of it was related to Watergate.
On the morning of February 5, 1973, Helms showed up at Room 4221 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building for a scheduled meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with his old friend and sometime nemesis Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas presiding. It was a friendly session devoted to Helms’s nomination as ambassador to Iran.
“I believe Director Helms has established a reputation that may well have saved the Central Intelligence Agency from a good deal of additional criticism because of the respect that all of us have for him as a person and the way he has operated,” said Senator Stuart Symington, Democrat of Missouri. Senator Chuck Percy, Republican of Illinois, added Helms “was a superb public servant.”
Fulbright inquired about the Agency’s ties to the Watergate burglars.
“They had all retired,” Helms said. “They had left. I have no control over anybody who has left.”
Fulbright said he just wanted to confirm that Hunt and McCord were former CIA men.
“Yes sir,” said Helms. “Hunt was and McCord was.”
The questioning moved on to CIA funding for the National Student Association and Radio Free Europe, and the session was soon over.
“C.I.A. Discloses It Trained Police From 12 Agencies,” announced the front-page headline in the New York Times the next day. In response to a question from New York congressman Ed Koch, John Maury, CIA liaison to Congress, had disclosed an Agency training program that assisted local police in the handling of explosives, wiretaps, and organization of intelligence files. Koch charged the Agency was flouting the 1947 National Security Act, which stated that “the Agency shall have no police, subpoena, law-enforcement powers, or internal-security functions.”16
Fulbright called Helms back for questioning, this time in executive session. The seven senators and the outgoing director met in a conference room in the Capitol. Helms was exasperated.
“What is involved here is nothing but what we regard as a public-spirited act,” Helms began. Four or five years before, he said he had dinner with a group of police chiefs and was appalled to learn many departments did not have intelligence files.
“So I said, ‘Well, if there’s one thing we know how to do in the Central Intelligence Agency and that is how to set up intelligence records and files … and as an individual American citizen who’s interested in law and order and decency in his community, if there is any way that we could help instruct you as to how these files are set up I would be glad indeed to have a man available.”
The program taught techniques developed for the war in Vietnam, Helms said. “We developed a system where treating a cloth with chemical and wiping off a man’s hands you can tell whether he had dealt with explosives or not,” he boasted.
Fulbright interjected that the issue was “not your very sophisticated methods. It is whether or not it is proper for you to directly become the mentor of our police.” “Oh no,” said Helms, sounding surprised that Fulbright didn’t care about his support for “law and order and decency.”17
Fulbright wanted to know more about the burglars, starting with Rolando Martínez. This was the first time Helms testified under oath about Watergate. With the scandal exploding, the stakes were rising. He skied around the facts, like they were poles on a slalom run.
“Mr. Martinez was never an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency,” Helms said. He was merely a part-time employee as of June 1972. “He was on a retainer of $100 a month at that time.”18 What Helms did not say was that Martínez was a full-time contract employee from 1963 to 1969.
As for McCord, “he actually was an employee of the Agency … up until 2 years,” Helms allowed, as if searching his memory, “2 or 3 years ago.”
“But since then he has had no relationship?” Fulbright inquired.
Since then McCord had displayed the autographed photo from Helms in the office of McCord Associates. He had interviewed or hired a dozen former Agency employees, some of whom Helms knew quite well. He had used Agency references to buy eavesdropping equipment. His longtime confidential informant Lee Pennington had helped Ruth McCord burn CIA documents in the wake of the break-in. And McCord had sent Helms four private back-channel communications about his defense strategy.
“None whatever,” Helms replied.19
As for Howard Hunt, Helms could barely remember him.
“My recollection is that he resigned rather than retired.” He squinted. “I am not sure exactly.”
“About when?”
“About two, two and a half years ago,” Helms said.
The dating of Hunt’s retirement, at least, was accurate. In the three years since then Helms had shielded Hunt from the repercussions of shopping his Bay of Pigs manuscript and written a letter of recommendation that helped him land the job at the Mullen Company. Hunt had been given a security clearance by Tom Karamessines, received assistance from the Office of Medical Services on the Ellsberg personality profile and obtained equipment from General Cushman’s deputy for the break-in at Dr. Fielding’s office. And Hunt had honored Tom Karamessines’s parting words at his exit interview: stay in touch.
“He had no relationship to the CIA since then?” Fulbright asked.
“No, sir,” Helms lied sincerely.20
The questions moved on to other subjects in the news: heroin production in Southeast Asia, the assistance to local police, and the purpose of the Agency’s Domestic Contacts Division. The senators were not unfriendly, but they were no longer deferential. And then the shadow of JFK’s assassination returned, if only for a moment.
Senator Symington of Missouri mentioned President Harry Truman, who had just died six weeks earlier. Symington proceeded to read aloud the column that Truman had written in December 1963, one month after JFK was killed in Dallas.
“I never thought when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations,” Truman had written. Much to Helms’s discomfort, Symington read to the former president’s conclusion. “There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel we need to correct it.”
Symington’s aside was a sign of the new mood, the new morality, among even these mostly sympathetic senators. The events of Watergate had revived Truman’s post–November 22 warning about “peacetime cloak and dagger operations.” Once willing to look the other way, the senators now asked questions, if only because the Watergate affair begged them. Who are these people? What is going on here?
At the time virtually nothing was known publicly about the CIA’s activities in Chile, where Allende’s leftist government still held power.21 Symington, who had been briefed on some secret Chile operations, was curious.
“Did you try in the Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow the government of Chile?”
“No, sir,” said Helms, which might be parsed as truthful. The CIA had given money to the pro-American Christian Democratic candidate but that was for the 1970 election, not a coup. Helms himself had authorized payment to the men who ambushed General Schneider, but the payment was intended to foster a “coup climate,” not a specific plan of overthrow.
“Did you have any money passed to the opponents of Allende?”
“No, sir,” Helms said. That was in no way true. The Agency funded Agustín Edwards, the anti-Allende publisher, and paid off General Viaux, the ultra-rightist coup plotter.
“So the stories you were involved in that war are wrong?”
“Yes, sir,” Helms affirmed falsely. “I said to Senator Fulbright many months ago that if the Agency had really gotten in behind the other candidates and spent a lot of money and so forth the election might have come out differently.”22
That fateful exchange—three simple questions and three routine denials—was over in minutes, but the words would last for years as a defining moment for Congress, the Justice Department, the CIA, and Helms. It was the moment when the Agency’s impunity, born in 1947, began to come to an end.
Helms had one last Oval Office meeting with Nixon before he and Cynthia left for Tehran. The president, it seemed, still wanted his counsel. With his new national security adviser Brigadier General Brent Scowcroft at his side, Nixon cross-examined Helms on U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf. Helms said U.S. and British interests were similar but not identical. In Mexico, Nixon complained that President Echeverría had “ostentatiously rolled out the red carpet” for a state visit by Allende. Helms said Echeverría had sent word that his statements were for “domestic consumption” only.
After twenty-five minutes of conversation, Nixon asked Scowcroft for “a private word” with the ambassador. Scowcroft left the room so the two men could talk alone.23 It is the last time Helms and Nixon are known to have spoken during Nixon’s presidency. The burglars were coming to trial, and Helms was going overseas. Their conversation was not recorded.
After four years in power, Helms’s and Nixon’s bond was more fraught than friendly, intricate but not emotional, collaborative but not close. They were two men of power threatened by an ongoing criminal trial, an imminent Senate investigation, and the ongoing transformation of Washington political culture. Two men who needed and feared and admired and mistrusted each other. Two scorpions, backing away from a long and wary dance.