V o L u m e I : a d

Career U.S. intelligence officer and director of the Central Intelligence Agency

(CIA) during 1966–1973. Born in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, on 30 March

1913, Richard Helms graduated from Williams College in 1935 and worked

for the United Press in Europe during 1935–1937. Returning to the United

States, he became director of advertising for the Indianapolis Times Pub-

lishing Company.

In 1942 Helms resigned from this position and enlisted in the U.S. Navy.

Owing to his fluency in German, he was invited to join the Office of Strategic

Services (OSS) in 1943, where he worked with future CIA director Allen W.

Dulles. Helms remained with the OSS in Germany after the war and became

part of the CIA when it was established in 1947.

During the late 1940s and 1950s, Helms was stationed in Germany, Aus-

tria, and Switzerland. He also served several years at CIA headquarters in

Langley, Virginia. As his influence and stature grew during the 1960s, he

became involved in CIA activities that were at least questionably unethical;

these included planning assassination attempts on Cuban leader Fidel Cas-

tro and the overthrow of Republic of Vietnam (RVN, South Vietnam) Presi-

dent Ngo Dinh Diem, who was subsequently murdered in a generals’ putsch

in 1963.

After a stint as CIA deputy director during 1965–1966, Helms was ap-

pointed director of the CIA in 1966 by President Lyndon Johnson. As such,

Helms continued to engage in questionable endeavors. Under his direction,

the CIA supported more than one hundred research projects focused on mind

control, including experimentation involving illegal drugs on human sub-

jects. He also supported aggressive CIA activities in Vietnam. Under Helms,

the CIA engaged in domestic surveillance operations. He launched opera-

tions designed to investigate the relationships between American dissidents

and foreign governments and to target peace movements and radical college

organizations, although these operations were a serious violation of the CIA

charter. These lasted until the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973.

Helms also became increasingly concerned over the emergence of left-

wing movements in Latin America. In 1973 he directed the CIA-sponsored

coup d’état against Salvador Allende, the popularly elected president of Chile.

Allende was assassinated, and Chile came to be governed by a rightist mili-

tary junta under General Augusto Pinochet.

President Richard M. Nixon, under fire for the Watergate scandal, refused

to reappoint Helms as CIA director in 1973, allegedly because Helms

refused to involve the CIA in Watergate. Helms then became U.S. ambassa-

dor to Iran, a post he held until 1976. In 1977, Congress investigated Helms’s

part in the fall of the Allende regime and determined that he was guilty of

perjury for failing to truthfully answer questions posed by Congress. He was

fined $2,000 and given a two-year suspended sentence. He then became a

consultant for international business. Helms died in Washington, D.C., on

23 October 2002.

William T. Walker

906

Helms, Richard McGarrah

Helms, Richard

McGarrah

(1913–2002)

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See also

Allende Gossens, Salvador; Castro, Fidel; Central Intelligence Agency; Chile; Dulles,

Allen Welsh; Ngo Dinh Diem; Nixon, Richard Milhous; Office of Strategic Ser-

vices; Pinochet Ugarte, Augusto; Vietnam War

References

Colby, William, with Peter Forbath. Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA. New York:

Simon and Schuster, 1978.

Helms, Richard. A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency. New

York: Random House, 2003.

Powers, Thomas. The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA. New York:

Knopf, 1979.

Concluding document of the multilateral Conference on Security and Coop-

eration in Europe (CSCE), held during 1972–1975. The Helsinki Final Act

was signed by representatives of thirty-five European and North American

states on 1 August 1975 in Helsinki, Finland, and was the summation agree-

ment of the CSCE. The act bridged significant differences between Western

and Eastern Europe through far-reaching concurrences on political borders,

trade and, most notably, human rights. The accord is often described as the

high point of détente and was a key diplomatic turning point in the Cold War.

The Helsinki Final Act was not a formal treaty. It was an international

agreement to which countries were bound politically but not legally. The act

was the result of years of negotiations, first proposed by the Soviets in Geneva

in 1954. Discussions commenced in earnest with the Helsinki Consultations

of 22 November 1972 and the formal opening of the CSCE on 3 July 1973.

The Consultations and talks that followed focused on four baskets of issues.

The first dealt with ten principles guiding relations in Europe, including the

inviolability of frontiers, the territorial integrity of states, and the peaceful

settlement of disputes. The first basket also incorporated confidence-building

measures such as advanced notification of military troop maneuvers. The

second basket addressed economic, scientific, and technological cooperation

among CSCE states, and the third basket concentrated on such humanitar-

ian issues as the reunification of families, improved working conditions for

journalists, and increased cultural exchanges. The fourth basket focused on

follow-up procedures.

The signing of the Helsinki Final Act was initially unpopular in many

Western countries because it conceded Soviet domination of Eastern Europe

and formally recognized the Soviet Union’s annexation of Estonia, Latvia, and

Lithuania. Yet the publication of the Helsinki Final Act in Eastern Europe

spurred the formation of Helsinki Monitoring Groups, the most prominent of

which was founded in Moscow by Yuri Orlov, Yelena Bonner, and nine other

Soviet human rights activists. These monitoring groups called upon Eastern

bloc nations to uphold their Helsinki commitments and drew international

Helsinki Final Act

907

Helsinki Final Act

(1975)

The signing of the

Final Act was

initially unpopular 

in many western

countries because 

it conceded Soviet

domination of

eastern Europe and

formally recognized

the Soviet Union’s

annexation of

Estonia, Latvia, 

and Lithuania.

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