---
category: Intelligence & Government
created: 2026-09-21
location: Langley, Virginia
summary: Richard Helms's secretary, who on his instruction in January 1973 ordered
  the destruction of the recordings of his office conversations, and who told the
  Senate she had read every transcript and none touched Watergate.
tags:
- Person
- ElizabethDunlevy
- CIA
- RichardHelms
- Watergate
- HelmsTapes
updated: 2026-09-21
---

Elizabeth Dunlevy kept the transcripts of the conversations recorded in the office of [Richard Helms](/people/richard-helms/), director of central intelligence, "under her tight control in the vault."[^1]

### January 1973

The technicians of the agency's recording facility, Allen Kobliska and Nicholas Popivchak, had been destroying tapes for want of space since 1972 on lists submitted to her. On the week of January 22, 1973, as Helms left the agency, all the remaining originals, "about six safe drawers" holding some 125 tapes, were destroyed. Senator [Howard Baker](/people/howard-baker/) learned of the taping and the destruction from [William Colby](/people/william-colby/) in 1974; a letter from Senator Mike Mansfield to Helms of January 16, 1973, had asked that Watergate material be preserved.[^1][^2]

### Testimony

On February 6, 1974, before the Senate committee in a room where "a radio was played throughout to enhance security," she testified, in the summary of the agency's own observer, that "she did not order the destruction of the tapes at her own initiative, but had done so at the request of Mr. Helms, in the context of cleaning out the office in preparation for a new director"; that "she had no idea that any tapes other than Mr. Helms' tapes would be destroyed"; that "she had read them all and on her oath none contained any information relating to Watergate"; and that she had no knowledge bearing on Watergate, "but then corrected herself and referred to the 28 June 1972 memorandum to General Walters." She said that [Howard Hunt](/people/howard-hunt/) "had always been grateful to her for arranging a loan in connection with the terrible financial strain involving his daughter," a loan of about 12,000 dollars that Helms had arranged by telephone. Afterward she "expressed her concern that material that had been sent to Archives labeled 'To be opened only by Mr. Helms or Mrs. Dunlevy or at their death' was being used to reconstruct records on conversations taped in Mr. Helms' office." The committee's counsel Fred Thompson "saw some real conflict" between her account and the technicians'; the agency's observer did not.[^1]

[^1]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Legislative Counsel, memorandum for the record, "Select Committee Testimony of 6 February 1974," OLC 74-0197, February 6, 1974. CIA Reading Room, document 01474420.
[^2]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. "Minority Report on CIA Involvement, Submitted at the Request of Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr.," in *The Senate Watergate Report,* Dell, 1974, vol. 2, pp. 732 ff. (S. Rept. 93-981, 1974), "Tapes."