Richard Helms
CIA Officer
1947-1973
Director of Central Intelligence
1966-1973
Helms joined CIA in 1947. His first assignment was to lead a convert campaign against the communist party during an Italian general election. The CIA promoted him from the Central European Division to chief of the worldwide Foreign Intelligence Staff because of the results he achieved in Italy. In 1953, he became chief of operations, the second in command of CIA’s Directorate of Plans headed by Frank Wisner. He became acting director of that directorate in 1956, following Wisner’s mental breakdown, and served in that capacity until Allen Dulles named Richard M. Bissell to replace Wisner in 1958. Helms’ specialty was tradecraft, i.e., contacting, securing and running agents in other countries. He was not a technical person and relied on others when intelligence gathering began to use sophisticated technology.646
President Johnson appointed Helms as DCI in 1966. He held the post until 1973. Throughout his career, Helms’ highest priority was CIA’s effort to monitor Soviet intentions and activities so that America would not experience a surprise attack
President Reagan awarded Helms the National Security Medal in 1983. He died in 2002 at the age of 89.647
In his posthumously published autobiography, Helms defended CIA’s handling of Israel’s nuclear weapons program.648 He also appeared to accept Avner Cohen’s description of Israel’s policy of nuclear opacity. In concluding his remarks on the subject, He wrote,
For my part, I had no reason to doubt that Israel has a nuclear capability. The notion that any nation less fearsomely armed can push Israel into the sea is, in my view, nonsense. . . . In fact, the Agency’s tracking of Israel’s progress in this area was done in an appropriate fashion throughout the relevant time between 1950 and 1970. There is no need to underline the difficulty of establishing what was being done at the installation built at Dimona in the Negev. To use ambassador Chip Bolen’s often-quoted all-purpose trope, it was “like trying to catch a fart with a mitten.” CIA was criticized for many alleged intelligence failures in my time, but this one never occurred. The top policymakers were kept adequately informed, and reacted positively to the Agency’s efforts and coverage. It was no small chore to avoid leaks or mistakes in working on a matter so sensitive in view of the domestic and international politics involved. This is borne out when one notes that no responsible member of the U.S. government ever felt it advisable to divulge facts on any explicit material regarding these matters. In sum, we did the job and were able to avoid the political pitfalls.
Theodore George “Ted” Shackley
Ted Shackley was born in 1927. His mother was from Poland; his father was a salesman from Hartford, Connecticut. After graduating from high school, he served in Army intelligence in post-war Germany. He learned Polish at home and German in the military. After his Army service, he attended the University of Maryland, graduating in 1951 with a major in history. He also participated in Army ROTC. His forty-seven year old father died of acute alcoholism and heart failure that same year. A short time later Shackley was called to active duty during the Korean War and a few months later was tapped for service in CIA because of his prior intelligence service and language abilities.649
Shackley rose quickly from novice to infamy during CIA’s most tumultuous times. Following a controversial career in several of the world’s most dangerous places, his tangential involvement with NUMEC intelligence was essentially an afterthought. According to Evan Thomas, Shackley was, “a coldly efficient intelcrat, a protégé of [legendary CIA agent] Bill Harvey, who liked to be forward leaning.”650 Shackley called this “looking downstream” on operational problems.651 CIA “China Hand” and later U.S. Ambassador to Korea, Jim Lilley described Shackley as “ambitious, tough-minded and ruthless.”652
Shackley’s first CIA assignments were in Germany, where he met Harvey, then Japan and then the Czech desk at CIA headquarters. In 1962, he was picked by Harvey to be Chief of Operations in the Miami station of CIA where Harvey headed task force W reporting to General Edward Lansdale, an active duty Air Force officer. Lansdale ran a program codenamed Mongoose with the objective of killing Fidel Castro.653 In June 1965, President Johnson ordered closure of the Castro-related efforts in Miami. Shackley oversaw decommissioning of what had become the Agency’s largest operation. CIA awarded him its Distinguished Intelligence Medal for his efforts.
Ted Shackley
CIA Officer
1953-1979
Shackley followed his assignment in Miami with a brief stint in Berlin (1965-1966), and then he served in Laos (1966 to 1968) and Vietnam (1968 to 1972). While station chief in Vientiane, he oversaw deployment of Hmong tribesmen of the Laotian highlands to resist the Pathet Lao and to harass the North Vietnamese army along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the supply line that wound through the Laotian jungle from North to South Vietnam. Up to 40,000 Hmong were in the field at a time. The war destroyed the Hmong people, reducing their numbers by 100,0000 or more. Shackley’s service in Laos earned him additional notoriety among his peers, “his tenure was marked by excessive bloodletting that could have been avoided. He was chasing delusions of a victory that was not possible . . . the butcher of Laos.”654 Shackley’s superiors in Washington called his Laos work “an exemplary success story.”655
Shackley went to Vietnam in December 1968 to help bolster the Saigon regime. Once out of the jungles of Laos, he assumed a more imperial demeanor, riding through Saigon in a chauffeur-driven, armorplated American car, carrying a loaded .45 in his briefcase, accompanied by a shotgun-toting bodyguard. His female subordinates in the Saigon office dubbed him the Blond Ghost.656 While there, he directed the transfer of a program called Phoenix from CIA to the military.657 Before Shackley’s arrival in Vietnam, CIA set up the Phoenix program to identify and neutralize civilians supporting the Viet Cong. Estimates of the civilians killed under the Phoenix program ran into the tens of thousands.658
In 1972, Shackley returned to Washington to run CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division where he undertook a cleanup campaign. In 1973, he received a second Distinguished Intelligence Medal for changes he orchestrated in the Western Hemisphere Division. Soon afterwards, when Colby was promoted to replace Schlesinger as DCI, Shackley became head of CIA’s East Asia Division.
In 1976, CIA promoted Shackley to associate deputy director for operations, giving him control over CIA’s worldwide covert operations.
On March 9, 1977 President Carter named his former Annapolis classmate, four star Admiral Stansfield Turner, as the twelfth DCI. Turner was a CIA outsider, an intelligence novice and a Christian Scientist who shunned whiskey for hot water with lemon. He was shocked by the good-old-boy attitude of the clandestine service that Shackley served as deputy director. In late 1977 and early 1978 Turner reduced the clandestine service by over 800 people, fired Shackley’s boss and shunted Shackley off to a lackluster job coordinating the diverse intelligence operations of the U.S. government. This demotion occurred soon after Shackley delivered his NUMEC briefings to various government officials. In mid 1979, after barely escaping prosecution by the Justice Department for his role in the Chilean coverup, with his patience exhausted by Turner’s refusal to let him anywhere near covert operations, and after twenty-eight years with CIA, Shackley resigned. At his farewell ceremony, he was awarded his third Distinguished Intelligence Medal.659 Some of his colleagues expressed relief at his departure because his name had become synonymous with professional dishonesty.660
In an autobiography published after his death in 2002, Shackley made a number of recommendations for future U.S. intelligence priorities. One recommendation had to do with the need to be concerned, “about the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons in the hands of countries whose rivalries and antagonisms may appear to be purely regional.” He cited Argentina, Brazil, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan and South Africa. Curiously, he said India was “within a screwdriver’s turn of
arming itself with a nuclear weapon.”661 Somehow he missed the fact that India, by that time, had been conducting tests of nuclear weapons, off and on, for 28 years.
When writing their 1991 book about covert activities between Israel and the United States, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn asked Shackley about the possibility of a diversion of enriched uranium from NUMEC to Israel. He was “vehement in disparaging colleagues in the Agency [apparently targeting Hadden and Duckett] who tied NUMEC to the Israeli weapons program.” The Cockburns also reported that Shackley told Congressional investigators that Hadden in his retirement “was contemplating his navel and getting bored and was therefore spinning stories [about NUMEC].” Shackley dismissed Duckett as an alcoholic and James Angleton as a wacko. He insisted that no diversion from Apollo occurred, a statement in stark contrast to the briefings he gave to various government officials in 1977.
These comments by Shackley also contrast with the Cockburns’ rendition of sworn statements of General Starbird. They said Starbird identified Shackley as the source of the information about CIA’s discovery of HEU with a Portsmouth signature near Dimona in 1968.662 When questioned about this, Shackley told the Cockburns he could not comment “one way or the other.” Shackley also contradicted some of his statements to the Cockburns about people who figured in the NUMEC affair. For example, in his autobiography he gave a more balanced view of Angleton, “This is not to say that everything Angleton did was bad. Actually he did a lot of good.”663
Although Shackley met with NSC and ERDA staffers and various Congressmen in the summer of 1977 to tell them of CIA’s evidence concerning NUMEC, it is unlikely that he knew anything about NUMEC from his early days in CIA when he was preoccupied with Cuba, Laos and Viet Nam. Thus, in his meeting with such officials late in his career, Assistant Deputy Director for Operations Shackley addressed what others had done or not done about NUMEC before his watch.
After his death in 2002, his family denied the worst of the myths surrounding his life. His daughter laughed when asked if she agreed with labels like “covert bureaucrat” and “coldly deliberate” that people used to describe his career. “That was not the man we knew,” she said. “The real Ted Shackley was a man who cherished his hearth and home, told good jokes over fine wine and collected Oriental rugs.”664
***
These five CIA officers encountered NUMEC in various ways. Four (Duckett, Hadden, Helms and Shackley) went on the record after retirement to say what they knew. Angleton was characteristically silent. In summary, the varied duties and character of these five provide clues to their credibility.
•James Angleton was a senior CIA manager. He was devoured by a life of intrigue. He was a life-long and honored friend of Israel and aided its espionage activities. He could have paved the way for a Mossad operation at Apollo. He fell from grace because of his leadership of illegal operations on U.S. soil.
•Carl Duckett was a senior CIA manager and an ingenious technocrat who advanced the science of American intelligence gathering. He exerted influence in world affairs by taking information gathered by others and forming opinions for the edification of senior U.S. officials. Some of those opinions were recorded in National Intelligence Estimates while others were delivered directly to AEC, NRC, NSC, the president and the cabinet. He received high accolades from his peers for his contributions to the clandestine service. Under duress from Hersh, who had already tainted history’s view of Angleton, Duckett said he could not prove anything for sure, but he did not take back the fact that HEU from Portsmouth was found near Dimona.
•John Hadden was station chief in Israel at a critical time in the NUMEC affair. He was both a gatherer and an interpreter of intelligence information. He respected classified information. He had long and close connections with Mossad on behalf of CIA. He and Duckett shared similar views on the likelihood that Shapiro aided Israel’s nuclear weapons program. He viewed NUMEC as part of a broad international conspiracy by Israeli intelligence and nuclear officials to steal the bomb. He knew what Hermoni was up to.
•Richard Helms was an accomplished covert operator who ascended to and distinguished himself at the highest rank in CIA. He was a bureaucrat and inept in science and technology. He kept official secrets, even if he had to lie to do so. He expressed no personal affinity with Israel. The “drop it” message he passed from President Johnson to Duckett was consistent with Johnson’s other actions relative to Israel’s nuclear weapons program. In the end, when Helms addressed the Israeli nuclear weapons program, he concluded CIA “did the job.”
•Ted Shackley was a coldly efficient commander of covert operations. He was a major player in some of the most notorious CIA adventures of his time. He was alleged to have committed illegal acts, but he escaped accountability, both during and after his CIA career. He was in Southeast Asia in the mid to late 1960s when the NUMEC affair was unfolding. Shackley provided information about CIA’s evidence concerning NUMEC, including the discovery of Portsmouth HEU near Dimona, to ERDA, NSC, FBI and Congress. It is speculative to say, but his later maligning of Duckett and Hadden probably was designed to throw people off the track.
* * *
39 On August 6, 1979, in a memo for Udall, Henry Myers noted a possible reason that Hersh came down on the side of Shapiro and not Duckett in his 1991 book. That is, Shapiro’s lawyers pressed Udall’s staff to believe “that Duckett was a disreputable person, who had been fired from his CIA position for indiscretion, and who should not be believed. . . . That [Shapiro’s lawyers] would have us believe that Shapiro is telling the truth and that Duckett is lying, in itself, says something.”
40 Hersh described this episode in Chapter 7 of The Sampson Option. In 1957, the nuclear physicist Raymond Fox left the nuclear weapons design facility at Livermore National Laboratory and immigrated to Israel. Livermore specialized in computer modeling of three-dimensional shock waves for explosive lenses used in implosion-type nuclear weapons and in development of miniaturized nuclear weapons for delivery by missiles.
Chapter 15
Wrap-up (1979-1980)
The FBI’s files on Shapiro and NUMEC continued to grow in 1979. The redacted versions show that the Bureau wanted to end the investigation, while the Justice Department kept asking for a few more interviews. On November 13, 1979, when the investigation was nearing its end, an FBI agent interviewed me regarding my role as the leader of the Conran task force. Almost 20 years later, in 1998 when I began my research for this book, I obtained the agent’s summary of my interview. I found it among NUMEC-related records that FBI released to Benjamin Loeb in response to his FOIA request in the mid 1980s as part of his research for Seaborg’s memoirs.
The interview was conducted in Bethesda and the agent only asked questions about the alleged diversion at Apollo, i.e., he included none of the other topics addressed by the Conran task force. At that time, NRC was in the midst of its response to the March 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, so NUMEC was not my highest priority. Because of incriminating information that had appeared in the press after the work of the task force ended, the agent inquired why the task force had not probed further into whether or not a diversion had occurred, rather than deferring to second-hand accounts of CIA and ERDA briefings of the NRC commissioners. I said the task force was not given a choice in that matter by the commission. I also recommended that the Bureau talk to Michael Ward of the Dingell staff who had information implying that Shapiro had been an unknowing participant in the NUMEC loss. That part of the interview is clearly legible in the highly redacted and declassified version of the agent’s summary of the interview. A section of the interview pertaining to foreign intelligence is redacted entirely.
The FBI report containing the record of my interview includes summaries of many other interviews, has many redactions and includes no other mention of Michael Ward. Perhaps the agent was too busy or did not understand the importance of what I suggested. Curiously, the report is dated November 9, 1979, days before several of the reported i
nterviews were conducted, including mine.665
Two of the 50 or so interviews contained in the report were dated September 24 and 26, 1979 and are completely redacted, not even naming the interviewees. Perhaps these were people associated with the CIA. Other pages of the report summarize interviews with former NUMEC employees, but apparently not Shapiro. All of them said they had no knowledge of a diversion. Notables that were interviewed, all of whom claimed to know nothing directly about Apollo, included former Attorney General Ramsey Clark; NRC’s Executive Director, William Dircks, who succeeded Gossick in that position; NRC Commissioners Joe Hendrie, John Ahearn, Victor Gilinsky and Richard Kennedy; and former AEC General Counsel and NRC Chairman Marcus Rowden. Several NRC employees from the Division of Safeguards were also interviewed, as were managers and employees of ERDA and DOE, including General Giller, General Starbird and Robert Fri.
One interviewee, former AEC employee Earle Hightower, said he thought an intentional diversion might have occurred. Hightower was assistant director for safeguards and security at the AEC when he retired in 1978. He alleged that Seaborg’s close friendship with Shapiro meant NUMEC’s violations of AEC rules would largely be ignored. “We submitted report after report and it went nowhere. My immediate superior . . . would take it to the general manager and it generally died there because the general manager knew Seaborg would not do anything. It was frustrating.” It is remarkable that FBI could have heard these statements by a person with this background without qualifying its earlier conclusion that there was no indication of collusion in high places in Shapiro’s favor, that is, no coverup.
Stealing the Atom Bomb: How Denial and Deception Armed Israel Page 35