Richard Helms Interviewed by R. Jack Smith, 21 April 1982

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to do something to help the Israelis about all this. These fellas - Arthur Goldberg- this is the second
telephone call I’ve had from him. What are we going to do about all this?” Now, whether it was the
same day or the next day. Abba Evan visits Dean Rusk at the State Department. And presents him with
an Israeli estimate of the military balance in the Middle East. Coincidentallywith that, Israeli
intelligence sends the Agency the same estimate, or something very much like it. When this came in that
morning, I turned it over the Sherman Kent, and I said ‘‘I want you to give me a commentary on this
estimate, and we’ve gotta have it by the end of the day.” Because Johnson had gone to Montreal to open
the American Pavilion of Expo 1967, we didn’t know exactly when we were going to need the paper.
Well, 1had left the office, and was even on my way home that night, when I got word that there was to
be a meeting at the White House at 7:OO or 7:30. So I turned around and went back to the White House.
And we sat in Walt Rostow’s office, which is in the basement of the White House. And Rusk came in
and I forgot who represented the Department of Defense. Wheeler was there and so forth. At that point,
Rusk said to me. “Dick, did you read the paper that your fellas turned out on this Israeli Estimate?”
And I said, “Yes sir, I did.” And he said, “Did you agree with the paper?” It was a very short paper that
Sherman’s fellas had done, maybe two or three pages. And I said, “Yes I did.” And he said, “Dick, all I
want to tell you is this. In the immortal words of [one time New York Mayor] Fiorello La Guardia,I“If
this is a mistake, its a beaut.” And I said OK. Well, about that point, Johnson who had returned from
Canada, is up in his office and calls us all into the Cabinet Room for a meeting. He reads this thing. He
says, “You fellas think this is OK?” - Turning to Wheeler because this was a military Estimate. And
Wheeler said, “Yes, it looked all right.” Well, he said, “Wheeler, you and Helms and so forth get
together and scrub this thing down and come back in 72 hours and really lay it on the line with me, what
the Government really thinks about this.” Well, the next Estimate was even more refined than the first
one. And I think brought this down to seven days instead of two weeks or something like that so that in
the end it was only one day off. Well, Johnson went with the Estimate finally, and he didn’t commit
anything to the Israelis. He didn’t commit his prestige; he didn’t do anythng. And was enormously
relieved to be let off that hook. For a whole variety of reasons, he didn’t want to have to get involved in
that. And I have always attributed to that Estimate as being the first thing that had happened in his
Presidency when he suddenly realized that intelligencehad a role in his life and an important part at that.
Because you will remember that when he first became President, John McCone used to brief him every
day. Then he obviously got bored with that and stopped McCone’s briefings. And then nobody was
briefing him and nobody got very close to him and McCone quit as you remember because he had no
impact with Johnson. He didn’t see him; he didn’t seem to have any influence with him, and so he just
decided to go back to California. And during the [DCI Admiral William] Rabom period, Johnson did
not exactly spend a lot of time with Raborn. We were invited, he and I, to the National Security Council
meetings because that was part of my so-called training period as they called it. But: this was the first
time that he was really sort of jarred by the fact that those intelligence fellas had some insight that these
other fellas don’t have.
&) Then, subsequent to that I had a private meeting with him at one time about a variety of matters.
This is one of those meetings that no minutes were ever kept on, and I briefed him on some of the things
the Agency was doing that were rather sensitive. And he told me that he wanted some more in-depth
studies about some of the aspects of things in Russia, which I dutifblly reported at the time. But it was
starting right then, that.1 began to be invited to the Tuesday luncheons. Which meant, at that time, the I‘
Director of Central Intelligencewas finally on the magic inner circle where the policy was really made.
Those Tuesday luncheons, in my analysis, were nothing but a device invented by Johnson to have around
the table the people he wanted around the table. Rather than the people who were dictated by the
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