Word: helmsely
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No one better personifies that description than Richard Helms, the man who now heads CIA. Although he has been with the agency since its start, no CIA chief ever came into office with such a passion for anonymity and downright disdain for public acclaim. His predecessors assumed the directorship after...
His relative anonymity is ironic in view of his prewar background, which promised prominence as well as accomplishment. Helms's father was an aluminum sales executive who upon retirement took his family to live in Europe. The move stretched Richard's prep schooling from Orange, N.J., to Switzerland...
What was to be his real career started in 1943, when Navy Lieut. Helms was transferred to the Office of Strategic Services, a switch that took him from desk duty in New York to Washington, Britain and finally Germany, where he worked under Allen Dulles. After his discharge in 1946...
"Dirty Tricks." Helms's public record for the next five years is a total blank. When he surfaced in 1952, it was as deputy to the chief of the plans division, the so-called "dirty tricks" department, which handles espionage and other undercover operations. Thirteen years later, he was...
Helms became head of the plans division in 1962, when CIA's top echelon was reorganized as a result of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. At this stage, the agency was smarting under severe external criticism and riven by intramural factionalism. Helms, even-tempered and affable, managed to avoid...