A Look Over My Shoulder by Richard Helms

Author:Richard Helms [Helms, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781588363091
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2003-07-15T04:00:00+00:00

*Lee Vagnini, a forensic chemist.

Chapter 22

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THE HEART OF THE MATTER

When I succeeded Dick Bissell in 1962, I began to focus more than I had previously on the work of the Directorate for Intelligence (DI). The directorate was responsible for CIA’s intelligence production—the prime responsibility assigned to the Agency by Congress in 1947. Ray Cline, an OSS veteran, had joined CIA in 1949, and later replaced Robert Amory as deputy director for intelligence. Ray was always anxious to make his presence felt in intra-agency discussions and in competitions for the President’s attention. He was intensely aware that the Directorate for Plans, thanks to the public’s apparently endless fascination with espionage and all its trappings—as portrayed by Hollywood—was the only element of the Agency that caught the public eye. This undercut Ray’s desire for the prominence to which he felt entitled.

It is difficult to describe the sometimes subtle maneuvers in relations with a colleague, but in time I became aware of what I can best define as Ray’s hand in my pocket. More specifically, he wanted my job.

It was not long after Admiral William Raborn replaced John McCone as DCI that Ray decided he needed a change. He had effected an excellent relationship with McCone, and enjoyed their frequent give-and-take on foreign policy problems. But there was none of that with the admiral, who had almost no experience in foreign matters and even less enthusiasm for being upstaged by an expert. Ray took a deep breath and asked for a post in Germany.

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In beginning this memoir, I was determined to try to give the DI at least a fraction of the credit it has earned. I first thought to check on how a few of the scores of writers have given the work of intelligence agencies its grossly distorted reputation. No luck.

Best-sellers from William Le Queux, early in the century, to Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, and their less talented followers ignore the fact that the purpose behind the imagined hugger-mugger involved in secret intelligence collection is to keep national policymakers well enough informed to make sound decisions and to avoid catastrophic mistakes. Nor could I find help from the writers who had varying degrees of actual intelligence experience. Their firsthand knowledge ranges from the espionage efforts of Somerset Maugham in Switzerland and Russia in the First World War, Graham Greene’s MI-6 service, and Eric Ambler’s military staff work in World War II. John le Carré’s considerable professional background in Cold War activity brought things up to date. Like most of the better spy novels, le Carré’s early books most often involve some aspect of counterintelligence—spies against spies—rather than intelligence collection.

No matter how perceptive and skilled, none of these writers have fashioned an informed, intriguing or, Heaven forfend, dramatic account of the platoons of skilled scholars, analysts, and scientists who are at the heart of the matter—the production of intelligence reports and National Estimates for the nation’s top command.

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It was General Walter Bedell Smith who, as DCI, shaped the Directorate for Intelligence. When

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