Over the years, the appointment and dismissal of the Agency leadership had been handled by presidents in a personal and private manner. Unlike other presidential appointees, it had become customary for the DCI and the director of the FBI to remain in place during a change of administration. In keeping with this practice I did not submit my resignation to Nixon. When General Vernon Walters, my deputy, asked, I advised him not to offer his resignation.
On November 20, a routine message from the White House summoned me to a meeting with Nixon at Camp David. The bureaucratic confusion following the numerous resignations had died down. Several budgetary matters were under discussion, and I briefed myself and collected the necessary papers before going to the Pentagon heliport for the flight up the Potomac River. None of the handful of fellow travelers were known to me, or appeared interested in attempting conversation in the noisy helicopter.
I was met by a security officer who escorted me to Aspen Lodge. On the short walk, I noticed George Shultz headed for another building with a bundle of papers under his arm. Only on the return flight did it occur to me that George and other White House staffers might be discussing job changes.
Haldeman met me at the door—I was about to say, greeted me, but “met” is the right word—and guided me into the Aspen sitting room. The President rose from a small sofa, we shook hands, and I took a chair. As usual, Haldeman assumed his place at the President’s left.
Small talk was never one of Nixon’s social strengths, but he launched our chat with several rambling, disjointed observations before beginning to assure me how much he appreciated the fine job I had done during my tenure as DCI. After noting that I had been appointed by President Johnson, a Democrat, Nixon got down to business. He was eager for new ideas, and wanted “new blood” in his second term. I had been at the Agency for a long time. It was time to make some personnel changes. He wanted my reaction to his plan to appoint a new DCI. Even before Nixon reached this point, I had tumbled to the fact that there was to be no discussion of the budget. However surprised, I said I fully understood that I served at the President’s convenience, and that changes were to be expected. I added that the Agency policy required personnel to retire at sixty. I would reach retirement age in March 1973. Nixon seemed surprised both at the Agency policy and at what I had assumed to be the indisputable fact of my age. He was also unaware that from OSS to CIA I had served some thirty consecutive years in intelligence. Nixon apparently thought that President Johnson had brought me into the Agency.
At this point I suggested that it might be best if I remained at the Agency until March 30, my sixtieth birthday, and the time when Agency policy specified retirement. This would remove the DCI appointment from other, predominantly political appointments. After some discussion of details, Nixon agreed to postpone my retirement until spring.
In passing, I asked if Nixon was considering an Agency insider as my replacement, but he obviously had no intention of either asking my advice or revealing any of his own plans. As my earlier remarks began to sink in, Nixon paused as if he were shifting gears. Would I, he asked, be interested in becoming an ambassador?
This came as a total surprise to me—and probably to Haldeman. I admitted that since the thought had never crossed my mind, I would like a little time to consider it.
“If you were to accept such an appointment, where would you want to go?” Before I could respond, Nixon said, “What about Moscow?”
I moved from being surprised at having been dismissed from office to being floored by the prospect of wintering in the Moscow embassy. “I’m not sure how the Russians might interpret my being sent across the lines as an ambassador.”
“That’s a good point,” Nixon said. “But what about some other country?”
To this day I’m not sure why Iran came to mind, but it did, and I said, “Tehran might be a more plausible choice, but I’m not sure but what it’s time to leave government and to try something new.”
Nixon brightened. “Iran sounds good, I’ve got something else in mind for Joe Farland.” At the time, Ambassador Joseph Farland was in Tehran.
“In any event, I will have to talk to Cynthia before deciding on anything.”
I agreed to keep my dismissal to myself, with the promise to let the President know my decision in a few days.
We shook hands.
I headed back to the chopper.
The next morning at a National Security Council meeting, Henry Kissinger asked what had happened at Camp David. I was silent for a moment because I thought he surely knew, and I did not want to violate Nixon’s request that I keep my dismissal to myself. Henry bristled a bit and snapped, “If you won’t tell me, I’ll call Haldeman.” With this, I gave Henry the facts. His surprise was genuine.
Without a warning from the White House staff to me, the President swore in several members of the new administration on February 2, 1973. Among them, James Schlesinger was named director of Central Intelligence. The timing caught me by surprise. I had barely time to get my things out of the office and to assemble as many colleagues of all ranks as possible for a farewell session in the Agency’s new building.
A few days later, I encountered Haldeman. “What happened to our understanding that my exit would be postponed for a few weeks?” I asked. “Oh, I guess we forgot,” he said with the faint trace of a smile.
And so it was over.
Chapter 40
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TRICK QUESTIONS?
A few days after leaving CIA, I was summoned to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It was an open session to consider my appointment as ambassador to Iran—ambassadors are appointed by the President, but require “the advice and consent of the Senate.” Early in the questioning, Senator William Fulbright, the committee chairman, asked if this was the first time I had ever appeared before the Foreign Relations Committee in open hearing. I replied that this was indeed my first appearance at an open hearing. “In all these years?” Fulbright posed his question with heavy emphasis on “all these years.” I replied in monotone, “All these years.”
The senator then asked if I thought it wise for the Senate to have held my earlier appearances in executive session. I said yes. “Are you,” he then asked, “under the same oath that all CIA men are under that when you leave the Agency you cannot talk about your experiences there?” I said, “Yes, sir, I feel bound by that.” Fulbright asked again if I felt bound by this oath. I replied: “I think it would be a very bad example for the Director to be an exception.”*
Senator Fulbright and other senators had for years attempted to wrest some responsibility for CIA oversight from Senator Russell and his Senate Armed Services subcommittee on CIA. Russell had persistently and forcefully kept them at bay. In late 1971 when Senator Russell died, Senator John Stennis replaced him as chairman. Stennis made a game effort to continue Russell’s policies, but he was no match for Fulbright, who now had a free hand.
On February 7, 1973, two days after the relatively tame open session, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee met in executive session (a meeting closed to the press and public) again to consider my appointment. After a few desultory questions on training police officials and superficial queries on the Watergate scandal, Senator Fulbright announced that “it would be appropriate” that I be sworn as a witness. I raised my hand and swore “to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” I was then subjected to a closer questioning on the Agency than I had ever previously experienced.
Senator Stuart Symington, a member of both the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on CIA and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asked three direct questions.
“Did you try in the Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow the government of Chile?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“Did you have any money passed to opponents of Allende?”
“No, sir.”
“So the stories you were in that war [sic] are wrong?”
“Yes, sir.”*
It had been my custom after any testimony before Congress to review the session with Larry Houston, the CIA general counsel. He found no problem with the bulk of my testimony but thought I might have a problem with my categorical response to Symington’s questions on Chile. I disagreed. In the first place, I reminded Larry that Senator Symington had been thoroughly briefed on the operations that Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon had directed the Agency to undertake in Chile. The only exception to this, I added, was Nixon’s last-minute (Track II) order that I direct the Agency to intensify operations to prevent President-elect Allende from assuming office in Chile. At that meeting Nixon ordered me to keep his instruction from the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the ambassador in Chile, and anyone in CIA who was not directly involved in this activity. I also reminded Larry that six of the senators present at the hearing were not officially authorized to question me on any CIA activity. Larry remained doubtful.
Because Senator Symington knew the answers to the questions, I could not understand why he posed them. And in the decades that followed, I’ve yet to determine why he wanted my answers on the record. Symington had, of course, done much the same thing when, at a Senate hearing in 1970, with a group of other senators, he professed “surprise, shock and anger” at what he and the others claimed was their “recent discovery” of “CIA’s secret war in Laos.” Not only had the appropriate members of Congress been fully briefed on the Agency role in Laos, but Symington had twice visited Laos, stayed with our chief of station, and been extensively briefed by CIA officers, the ambassador, military attaché, and various Laotian officials.*
Sometime after John McCone resigned as director of Central Intelligence, he told me that he had chided Senator Symington, an old friend, for having asked the questions on operations in Chile when he knew what my answers must be. Moreover, as Symington well knew, the past activity was still very sensitive because of ongoing operations. Why had he put me on the spot? McCone asked. The senator did not answer. Later, McCone told me that this was the last time Senator Symington ever spoke to him.
A few days after this hearing, I also testified before Senator Frank Church’s Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations. In response to a direct question, I denied that CIA had any contact with the Chilean military establishment during my tenure as DCI. It was an open session, and my response was mandated by my earlier testimony on Chile, and the fact that the committee had no authority over any CIA activity.
The Senate approved my appointment, and Cynthia and I began preparations to leave Washington.
*Quotations from Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets (New York: Knopf, 1979), pp. 272–73.
*Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, on the Nomination of Richard Helms to Be Ambassador to Iran and CIA International and Domestic Activities (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974), quoted from Powers, p. 232.
*See this page.
Chapter 41
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ONCE PERSIA
Twelve hours before Cynthia and I were scheduled to leave for my assignment as ambassador to Iran, the director general of the foreign service telephoned with the news that President Nixon had ruled that diplomatic appointees, if kidnapped, would not be ransomed by the American government. This bon voyage message was in laconic contrast to the pleasant ceremony at which my family and a few friends watched Secretary of State William Rogers swear me in as an ambassador.
Because Cynthia was still recuperating from a serious operation, we decided to break the long flight to Tehran, and to spend a day with my brother Pearsall and his wife, Marianne, at their home in Geneva. At 3 a.m. Pearsall knocked on our bedroom door: the American embassy in Bern had an urgent telephone message for me. At that hour I scarcely expected good news and I was right. The State Department wanted me to know that Black September, an Arab terrorist group, was planning an operation against me. This was not the first time in the past few months that I had received such threats, and I went back to sleep. Cynthia had no such luck. She was still awake when Marianne called us for breakfast.
When we arrived in Tehran, the Shah was on holiday over Now Ruz, the Iranian New Year, and I was free to make the obligatory protocol calls on all the foreign embassies in Tehran. The experience ranged from straight vodka with the Soviet ambassador and his wife in mid-morning to an exhausting array of hors d’oeuvres prepared from an American cookbook by the chef at the United Arab Emirates. Warm soft drinks were the beverage of choice at most embassies.
I had first met the Shah in 1957 when I visited Tehran to negotiate permission to place some sophisticated intercept equipment in northern Iran. The location, on high hills overlooking the Soviet missile ranges in the Kazakhstan area, made it possible to intercept the telemetry used to control the rocket flights. On that visit, the Shah acted as his own chief of intelligence—I was later to learn that His Majesty always acted as his own DCI. Our meetings went well, and the Shah authorized the installation. Later, when I was en poste in Tehran, my channel to His Majesty was via Assadollah Alam, the Shah’s longtime confidant, advisor, and minister of court. Alam arranged things, but in the nearly four years that followed, he never sat in on any of my sessions with the Shah. We always met tête-à-tête, with no note-takers or advisors.
One session with the Shah remains firmly in mind. We had several times discussed the secret help the United States, Israel, and Iran were giving the Kurd separatists in their struggle against Iraq. Using equipment supplied by the United States and Israel, the Iranian military were lobbing long-range shells over the mountains and into the area where the Iraqi forces were fighting the Kurds. The shelling was causing significant casualties among the Iraqi troops. Although the Kurdish chieftain, Mullah Mustafa Barzani, continued to plead for more support for his people, the Shah was becoming increasingly restive about the drain on Iranian resources. In March 1975 the Shah decided to head the Iranian delegation to a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Algiers. This was a surprise because it was unusual for the Shah to attend such a meeting, even when other chiefs of state were likely to be present.
On his return to Tehran at 2 a.m. on March 7, the Shah was, as always, greeted by a group of his ministers. While still on the tarmac, he briefed the ministers on the outcome of his negotiations with Saddam Hussein, then the number two man in Iraq. These negotiations came as a total surprise, and the moment the news reached the embassy I asked for a meeting with the Shah.
The Shah began by pointing out that his father, Reza Shah, had agreed to a treaty with Great Britain that placed the demarcation between Iran and Iraq on the border of Iran rather than in the Thalweg, * the deepest part of the Shatt al-Arab, the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The original border, the Shah said, had been demeaning to the sovereignty of Iran, and he was pleased to have obtained Hussein’s agreement to change the line to the Thalweg. The Shah also convinced Hussein to allow Shiite pilgrims to visit the Moslem holy places in Iraq, Najaf and Karbala. In return, the Shah agreed to halt the shelling of Iraqi troops, to cease supplying ammunition and equipment to the Kurds, and to open the Iran-Iraq border, which had been sealed with Iranian troops.
I was, of course, aware of the impact this news would have in Washington, but as ambassador I was scarcely in a position to rain on His Majesty’s parade. It was a done deal, and the most I might do was to inform Washington. When the Shah finished explaining his rather dubious success, I asked how the talks with Hussein were conducted.
“Oh,” he said, “we met for two days with Algerian President Boumedienne as go-between.”
“But Hussein speaks only Arabic—how did you talk to him?”
“I spoke French to Boumedienne, and he spoke Arabic to Saddam.”
So much, I thought, for formal negotiations, with maps, diplomats, note-takers, and expert interpreters at hand. The Shah was clearly proud to have righted a wrong and to have enabled the Shiite pilgrims—as many
as ten thousand a year—to visit holy sites. He could not have known that the Shiites would use their pilgrimage to smuggle audiocassettes bearing incendiary anti-Shah sermons of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and other exiled mullahs into Iran. The cassettes were quickly duplicated and distributed to mosques throughout Iran. The sermons contributed to the undermining of the Shah’s standing, and ultimately to his leaving Iran.
In Tehran security was about as good as one could wish. The embassy is in a twenty-five-acre compound surrounded by high walls and protected by local police. The Agency had assigned a security officer, Jim Cunningham, to accompany me whenever I left the compound for the city or to visit the provinces. My driver, Haikaz, an Armenian, had saved the life of one American ambassador by a clever and courageous bit of driving. As an added precaution, our vehicle, a shabby beige Chevrolet, was weighted with considerable armor plating. Cynthia was assigned another inconspicuous car and her own security officer.
As ambassador, my relationship with the Shah was as much as might be asked for. Our conversations were lively, though many times we had no choice but to agree to disagree. The polite give-and-take was always tempered by the Shah’s knowledge that, in the end, he was, indeed, His Majesty. Our meetings ranged from wherever the Shah happened to be to sessions in his private offices, formal diplomatic dinners, and receptions. At one of the major holidays, the Shah provided a buffet dinner for more than a thousand guests. I was standing with a plate in one hand and a glass in the other when an aide beckoned me to the Shah’s side. With plates, forks, and glasses in our hands, and in full view of the entire diplomatic corps and the Tehran social set, we talked shop for some ten minutes. My relationship prospered in part because the Shah had always been well impressed by the quality of the CIA people he had met through the years.
A Look Over My Shoulder Page 50