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

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him this sitting at the luncheon table, but before lunch we were having a sherry out in the living room,
and he was having some kind of arcane conversation with Dean Rusk about something that I didn’t
understand. And it was clear that [Secretary of Defense Clark] Clifford didn’t understand either.
Something was going on. So when I tell him this at lunch, he said, “Oh no, I don’t think you’re right
about that. They’re talking about us.” I thought to myself, what in the hell does he mean, “they’re
talking about us.’’ And there were some more veiled references to something going on. When the lunch
was over, I got a hold of Tom Johnson, who kept the notes at the end of the table, I said, “Tom what’s
going on here?” He said, “Don’t tell anybody I told you, but tomorrow there’s going to be a joint
announcement by the United States and the Soviet Union that they are going to enter into Arms
Limitation, or Arms Control Talks, and this has been very secretly arranged. The announcements are
going to be made, and I think actually he went on to say, although I’m not sure about this, “The
President’s planning a trip to Moscow.” In any event, I then said, “Well, look Tom, you heard my
comments about the Russians invading Czechoslovakia. I want to be sure those are in the minutes.”
“Oh”, he said, “I got it down, I got it down.” “Well”, I said, “you be sure they’re in there.” So that was
the end of that. 1O:OO that night, we were back in the White House [Soviet Ambassador Anatoly]
Dobrynin having come in early in the evening to tell Rostow that the Russians had invaded
Czechoslovakiaand that we weren’t to get upset or anything. This was a limited operation and all the
rest of it. But of course there was a National Security Council meeting called, because I remember I was
out having dinner at a restaurant and my buzzer went off, and I went dashing down to the White House.
I remember Clifford walking in to the room before the meeting began and saying to me, “What do you
think the Czechoslovakianshave done to cause the Soviets to invade Czechoslovakia?” I said, “Clark, it
isn’t what the Czechoslovakians have done, it’s what they have not done that caused the Soviets to
invade Czechoslovakia.” That National Security Council meeting took 2 minutes to discuss the invasion
and the ensuing hour to figure out how they were going to kill the joint announcement that was
scheduled for the next day. And keep this from leaking to the papers that the announcement was about
to be made. In other words, how they were going to tidy-up what was obviously a package that had just
dropped on the floor and splattered all over the place.
JS: I’ve always cited that particular episode as a failure of Soviet intelligencebecause they felt that
%hall ey had to do was to roll in there and forces that favored the Russians would rise up and take over
the country. It didn’t work that way at all; they sat there for two weeks waiting for that to happen, and
finally they had a hell of a situation on their hands.
NRH:My recollection was that we found out later, didn’t we, that the Russians’ equipment, the Red
Army equipment, had white crosses on the engines of the Jeeps and the personnel carriers and so forth to
distinguish them fi-om the Russian equipment which the Czechoslovakian army had. I
N J S : Let me ask you, was the Yom Kippur war on your watch or just after?
las9day. I then went down to the State Department and began to get ready to go to Iran. I don’t think I’
ever went back to the Agency building after that. Speaking of the Yom Kippur war, I haven’t read
Kissinger’s book yet, which I believe has quite an extensive examination of the intelligence that was
available in connection with that war in 1973. But one thing I do remember: that summer,and I’ve
RH: No, it was on Colby’s. I left the Agency on the 2ndor 3d of February, 1973, and that was my
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