WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- Richard Helms, director of the CIA during the country's Vietnam and Watergate dramas, died Tuesday at his home in Washington, the agency said Wednesday. He was 89.
The cause of death was not given. A CIA spokesman told United Press International that Helms had been in declining health for some time.
"With the deepest sadness, I have learned of the death of Ambassador Richard Helms," present CIA Director George Tenet said in a statement. "My thoughts and prayers are with his family at this time of grief.
"The United States has lost a great patriot. The men and women of American intelligence have lost a great teacher and a true friend."
The statement added that Helms' career and contributions "are not simply measured in history, they changed it."
According to former first lady Nancy Reagan, "Ronnie (President Reagan) used to tell me that Richard Helms was one of America's rare true patriots. His accomplishments and devotion to the country -- most of which are unknown -- were deserving of great accolades."
Richard M. Helms was the first career agent to head the CIA, appointed director in 1966 after 19 years as an assistant or deputy to each of the five administrators who served in the post since the agency was formed in 1947.
His low-key manner and non-political approach made him popular among colleagues and subordinates and most congressmen.
Among those who worked for the CIA while Helms ran it were Watergate mastermind E. Howard Hunt Jr., a 19-year CIA agent; Watergate bugger James W. McCord Jr., a 20-year CIA veteran, and Watergate burglars Frank L. Sturgis and Eugenio Martinez, who was on a $100-a-month CIA retainer at the time of the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters.
Helms was drawn into the Watergate scandal shortly after the break-in at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972.
He testified at the Senate Watergate hearings that on June 22, 1972, he assured acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray III that the CIA had "no involvement whatsoever" in Watergate.
President Richard M. Nixon's top aides, H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, called him and Deputy Director Gen. Vernon A. Walters to White House the next day.
According to Helms' testimony, Haldeman asked that Walters advise Gray that the FBI's investigation of "laundered" campaign money might run into CIA operations in Mexico.
Helms said he told Walters to make "a legitimate request" of Gray to notify the CIA if the FBI should encounter agency operations in Mexico.
In 1973, Nixon, for reasons never disclosed, requested Helms' resignation and then appointed him ambassador to Iran.
A terrorist, who was executed along with eight other accused conspirators on Jan. 24, 1976, had told a Westerner in Tehran that his band had planned to kill Helms and the shah but never got the opportunity. Helms was succeeded as ambassador by William H. Sullivan in 1977.
On Nov. 4, 1977, Helms was fined $2,000 and given a two-year suspended sentence by U.S. District Court Judge Barrington Parker after he had pleaded no contest to charges he failed to give accurate information to a Senate committee investigating CIA activities in Chile, where the CIA had supplied money to anti-Marxists in 1970 to influence elections.
Helms held that he had sworn to protect the nation's secrets and believed he could not in good conscience release the information.
Six years later, in an act Helms regarded as a symbol and an exoneration, he received the National Security Medal from President Ronald Reagan for exceptional service to the country.
Born at St. David's, Pa., on March 30, 1913, Helms was voted most likely to succeed from the 1935 graduating class at Williams College. He used his collegiate newspaper experience to begin a career in journalism that same year. As a European correspondent for United Press (now United Press International) from 1935-1937, he interviewed Adolf Hitler. Later, he became advertising manager for the Indianapolis Times.
Commissioned in the Naval Reserve in 1942, he joined the Office of Strategic Services the next year. Fluency in French and German won him assignments in France and Germany. He was discharged in 1946, then moved to the War Department's strategic services unit.
Months later he was assigned to Central Intelligence Group, and when the CIA was formed in September 1947, he became deputy director. Three times he was passed over for promotion.
President Lyndon B. Johnson named him to succeed Adm. William F. Raborn as director on June 18, 1966. He won easy Senate confirmation after affirming that the CIA would not make policy and that he would provide Congress with as much information about the agency's operations as he could.
Only one month into the new job, Helms incurred the anger of some senators for his journalistic bent in writing a letter-to-the editor of a newspaper, supporting an editorial criticizing Sen. J. William Fulbright, D-Ark., for demanding Foreign Relations Committee participation in overseeing agency affairs. Helms subsequently apologized.
Helms divorced his wife of 29 years, the former Julia Bretzman Shields, in 1968 and later that year married divorcee Cynthia McKelvie. Helms had one son by his first wife. Among his hobbies were tennis, sailing and reading mystery novels.
During Senate hearings, Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-R.I., asked him whether he did not have justifiable reason to decline to intervene in anti-Vietnam war demonstrations on grounds the law prohibited the CIA from domestic activities.
Replied Helms: "Absolutely, and I have never been lacking in clarity in my mind since I have been director, that this is simply not acceptable not only to Congress but to the people of the United States."
