--- aliases: - Richard McGarrah Helms - Richard M. Helms born: 1913-03-30 category: Intelligence & Government created: 2026-05-15 died: 2002-10-22 location: St. Davids, Pennsylvania summary: Richard Helms served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973, authorizing Operation CHAOS domestic surveillance and ordering destruction of CHAOS and MKULTRA records before congressional investigation. tags: - Person - CIA - OperationCHAOS - MKULTRA - Chile - ChurchCommittee - ColdWar - Israel - 1950s - 1960s - 1970s title: Richard Helms updated: 2026-05-17 --- Richard McGarrah Helms (March 30, 1913 - October 22, 2002) served as [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/) [Director of Central Intelligence](/organizations/director-of-central-intelligence/) from June 30, 1966, to February 2, 1973 - the only career CIA clandestine officer ever to hold that position, and the only DCI ever convicted of a criminal offense related to his service. A professional intelligence officer who entered the [OSS](/organizations/office-of-strategic-services/) during [World War II](/events/world-war-ii/) and spent thirty years in the CIA, Helms authorized [Operation CHAOS](/programs/operation-chaos/) domestic surveillance, approved continuation of the [MKULTRA](/programs/project-mkultra/) human experimentation program, ordered the destruction of both programs' records before congressional investigators could access them, and in 1977 pleaded no contest to making false statements to Congress about CIA operations against Chilean President Salvador Allende. He simultaneously held the personal conviction, disclosed to his deputies, that [Israel](/places/israel/) was using American intelligence as "an open pipeline for pumping intelligence to [Moscow](/places/moscow/)" - a view he never officially reported.[^1] ### OSS and Early CIA Career Helms attended Williams College and briefly worked as a journalist in [Germany](/places/germany/), interviewing [Adolf Hitler](/people/adolf-hitler/) for United Press in 1936. Commissioned into the [U.S. Navy](/organizations/us-navy/) during World War II, he was transferred to the OSS and worked in London and the European theater on propaganda and agent operations. He joined the Central Intelligence Group (the CIA's predecessor organization) in 1947 and transferred into the CIA at its founding. His career progressed through the CIA's clandestine service. By the late 1950s he was serving as Deputy Director of Plans (DDP), the agency's chief of covert operations - a position he held through the [Bay of Pigs](/events/bay-of-pigs/) invasion of 1961 and the early Kennedy years. As DDP he oversaw the [ZR/RIFLE](/programs/zr-rifle/) assassination planning program targeting [Fidel Castro](/people/fidel-castro/) through the CIA-organized crime connection, and he personally knew about the CIA-Mafia assassination plots that he subsequently failed to disclose to the [Warren Commission](/events/warren-commission/) investigating Kennedy's death. President [Lyndon Johnson](/people/lyndon-b-johnson/) appointed Helms as DCI in 1966, the first time a career clandestine officer had been elevated to the directorship. He served under both Johnson and [Nixon](/people/richard-nixon/).[^1] ### The Warren Commission and ZR/RIFLE When the Warren Commission was established in November 1963 to investigate Kennedy's assassination, Helms as DDP was the CIA officer most directly responsible for the ZR/RIFLE program - the CIA's ongoing assassination plots against Castro using organized crime intermediaries [Johnny Roselli](/people/johnny-roselli/), [Sam Giancana](/people/sam-giancana/), and [Santo Trafficante Jr.](/people/santos-trafficante-jr/) He did not disclose the existence of these plots to Commission investigators, despite their obvious relevance to the question of whether Castro-linked parties had a motive to kill Kennedy. The [Church Committee](/events/church-committee/) found in 1975 that the CIA had withheld the assassination plots from the Warren Commission, and that this withholding had prevented the Commission from fully investigating a potential motive for retaliation.[^2] ### Operation CHAOS Authorization and Records Destruction In August 1967, Helms received President Johnson's instruction to determine whether foreign powers were directing the American antiwar movement. He tasked [James Angleton](/people/james-jesus-angleton/)'s Counterintelligence Staff with establishing the Special Operations Group that became MHCHAOS. He subsequently expanded the program under President Nixon's administration, approving Project MERRIMAC (domestic infiltration of antiwar organizations) and Project RESISTANCE (coordination with campus administrators and local police to compile dossiers on student organizations). In December 1972, knowing that Watergate-related congressional investigations were expanding, Helms ordered the operational records of MHCHAOS destroyed. A partial cache of budget and administrative documents survived only because it had been misfiled in a different location. In the same period, he ordered the destruction of records related to MKULTRA, the CIA's two-decade human experimentation program using LSD and other substances on unwitting subjects. The Church Committee found that these records destructions had permanently deprived investigators of a complete documentary record of both programs.[^1] ### Proposing and Protecting MKULTRA Helms was the program's originator as much as its protector. On April 3, 1953 he formally proposed to Director [Allen Dulles](/people/allen-dulles/) a program under [Sidney Gottlieb](/people/sidney-gottlieb/) for the "covert use of biological and chemical materials," arguing that "the development of a comprehensive capability in this field gives us a thorough knowledge of the enemy's theoretical potential" against "a foe who might not be as restrained ... as we are"; Dulles approved it as MKULTRA ten days later. Helms nurtured Gottlieb as his personal specialist and, bypassing the layers of command between them, dealt with him directly, embodying the conviction he later voiced in Senate testimony, that a clandestine operator "can't count on the honesty of your agent ... unless you own him body and soul." When the program needed a new charter in 1964 he agreed to rename it [MKSEARCH](/programs/mksearch/) on the condition that its substance remain the same.[^4] ### MKULTRA Continuation and Psychic Research Helms had approved continuation of MKULTRA through his DDP years and as DCI. He was aware of the program's scope, including the experiments conducted on unconsenting patients at Canadian psychiatric facilities under the direction of Dr. [D. Ewen Cameron](/people/d-ewen-cameron/) at McGill University's [Allan Memorial Institute](/organizations/allan-memorial-institute/) (Subproject 68), and the experiments using unwitting American subjects in safe houses operated through the Sexual Freedom Project in [San Francisco](/places/san-francisco/) and New York. Separately, Helms authorized and expanded the CIA's psychic research program based in part on assessments of Soviet parapsychology research. He approved testing of [Uri Geller](/people/uri-geller/) at [SRI](/organizations/stanford-research-institute/) and the broader program that evolved into [Project Stargate](/programs/stargate-project/). His authorization reflected a characteristically pragmatic judgment: if the Soviets were investing in the capability, the CIA needed to assess whether it was real.[^2] ### Chile: Covert Action and Congressional Perjury In September 1970, following the election of Socialist candidate Salvador Allende in [Chile](/places/chile/), President Nixon instructed Helms in a meeting at the White House to conduct covert operations to prevent Allende from assuming the presidency. Nixon told Helms, in the presence of [Henry Kissinger](/people/henry-a-kissinger/) and others, to "make the economy scream." Helms's notes from this meeting, preserved and later produced to investigators, confirmed: "One in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile!... \$10,000,000 available, more if necessary... make the economy scream." The CIA subsequently funded opposition media, political parties, and military factions. General [Augusto Pinochet](/people/augusto-pinochet/) seized power in a coup on September 11, 1973 - the same year Helms was replaced as DCI and sent as U.S. Ambassador to [Iran](/places/iran/). In February 1973, when Helms testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding CIA activities in Chile, he stated under oath that the CIA had not "tried to overthrow the government of Chile" and had not "passed money to the opponents of Allende." Both statements were false. The 1974 Pinochet coup and subsequent Church Committee investigation produced documentary evidence of both activities. In 1977, Helms was charged with two misdemeanor counts of making false and misleading statements to Congress. He pleaded no contest (nolo contendere) and was fined $2,000 with a two-year suspended sentence - the minimum possible consequence for what amounted to perjury before Congress. CIA veterans gave him a standing ovation in the courthouse corridor after sentencing.[^1] ### Israel: The "Open Pipeline" Assessment Helms developed a personal conviction, disclosed to his deputies, that Israel was providing American satellite intelligence to the [Soviet Union](/places/soviet-union/) as part of an undisclosed intelligence exchange - characterizing Israel as "an open pipeline for pumping intelligence to Moscow." He never officially reported this assessment or commissioned a formal investigation, and he took no documented action on it. His reluctance reflected both the sensitivity of accusing an ally and the particular weight of any assessment that ran against the interests managed by Angleton's [KK MOUNTAIN](/programs/kk-mountain/) Israeli liaison program. When President Johnson sought an intelligence assessment of whether Israel had manufactured nuclear weapons, Helms provided the estimate (four warheads) and then obeyed Johnson's instruction that the finding be buried rather than formally reported. Johnson did not want intelligence conclusions that would require him to act on them politically. Helms's willingness to suppress an accurate intelligence product at presidential direction exemplified the institutional failure the Church Committee later documented.[^3] ### Iran, Retirement, and Memoirs Nixon appointed Helms U.S. Ambassador to Iran in February 1973, effectively removing him from CIA leadership after he failed to support Watergate cover-up efforts. Helms served in Tehran until 1977, overseeing the intelligence relationship with the Shah's SAVAK secret police. He returned to the United States to face the Chile perjury charges, was convicted, and then established a private consulting firm. He published his memoirs, *A Look Over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency*, posthumously in 2003. The book was notably reticent about the most significant controversial episodes of his career, consistent with his lifelong orientation toward institutional protection over personal disclosure. He died in Washington on October 22, 2002.[^1] [^1]: Powers, Thomas. *The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA.* Knopf, 1979 (the essential biography, based on extensive interviews). Church Committee (Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities). Final Report, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976. [^2]: Church Committee. "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders." Senate Report No. 94-465, 1975 (documents ZR/RIFLE and the failure to disclose to Warren Commission). Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis.* Little, Brown, 2017. [^3]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.* Random House, 1991. Chapters 11, 14, 16. [^4]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*. Times Books, 1979, Chapters 1, 4, 12.