Jesse Helms

Jesse Helms was a United States senator from North Carolina from 1973 to 2003. He worked for Raleigh newspapers and radio, went to Washington in 1951 as assistant to Senator Willis Smith, and from 1953 to 1960 was executive director of the North Carolina Bankers Association. In 1960 he became executive vice president of the Capitol Broadcasting Company, owner of the television station WRAL. His "Viewpoint" editorials closed its evening news from November 21, 1960, and were carried by the Tobacco Radio Network across the eastern half of the state. A study of his finances summarized them as "12 years railing against deadbeats, socialized medicine, the UN, 'shiftless Negroes,' and the 'moral degenerates' led by Martin Luther King Jr." He changed his party registration to Republican in 1970 and was elected to the Senate in 1972.¹

Ellis and the Congressional Club

His 1972 campaign was managed by the Raleigh lawyer Thomas F. Ellis, who in the late 1950s had "led a propaganda campaign to undermine the state's school desegregation plan," and who joined the board of the Pioneer Fund in 1973 with Marion Parrott. The club formed to pay the campaign's debt became the National Congressional Club, and with its sister company, Jefferson Marketing Inc., it employed nearly 200 people by the middle 1980s. An insider called Ellis "the brains behind all the things that we do." The club spent 4.5 million dollars as an independent committee on behalf of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Helms raised 8.1 million dollars for his reelection in 1978 and 15.9 million in 1984, when he and Governor Jim Hunt together spent 25.6 million, then the record for a Senate race and more than the presidential campaigns spent that year. Nearly two thirds of his money came in gifts under 200 dollars. The Pioneer Fund gave Ellis's Coalition for Freedom 195,000 dollars between 1983 and 1989.¹²

Nelson Bunker Hunt "heads the list of Texas oil moneymen giving to Helms," the same study found. "While his family gave $4,000 to Helms, he also dropped $90,000 into the Helms-related Institute for American Relations." Hunt said: "We're not as smart as other people, so we need every advantage." Other donors included Joseph Coors and Roger Milliken.¹

CBS

On November 13, 1984, Ellis, Carter Wrenn, and James Palmer Cain formed Fairness in Media, and in January 1985 about a million letters over Helms's signature asked conservatives to buy stock in CBS. The lawyer was Harry Weyher, president of the Pioneer Fund. CBS sued on February 15, alleging an attempt "to manipulate the market in CBS stock." Wrenn called the suit "an act of intimidation." Ted Turner, who made his own offer for the network in April, testified that he had held "extensive discussions with Sen. Helms" and the group. CBS ended both campaigns that July by buying back a fifth of its own shares.²³

Chile

In July 1976 Helms spent three days in Chile as the guest of the Institute for American Relations, the first senator to visit in twelve years, and met General Augusto Pinochet. Orlando Letelier was killed in Washington that September. In the Senate Helms defended the Chilean government against suspicion and advanced the "far more plausible" theory that Letelier had been killed by his own allies. "Terrorism is most often an organized tool of the Left, used coldbloodedly for political aims. Leftist terrorists do not hesitate to use terrorism against the Left." Representative Larry McDonald of Georgia denounced the dead man as a supporter of terrorism.⁴ Helms went again in July 1986. After a member of his staff was briefed by the CIA on the burning of Rodrigo Rojas by Chilean soldiers, the Chilean government learned of an American intelligence operation, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Helms or an aide had disclosed it. "The CIA was angry about the release because it created a threat to the agency's ability to gather information in Chile," a wire report said. Helms answered: "The State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency are constantly trying to discredit me and they're not going to be able to do it. The real need is for the State Department and the CIA to clean up their acts."⁵