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

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Estimate even if it didn’t change the whole outcome of it, and I insisted that it be put in. Because I don’t
think that there was any reason for me to necessarily assume that all and eternal wisdom was vested in
the Agency and whatever they said had to be right and whatever anybody else said had to be “political
pressure.” It didn’t make any sense to me at all. So I believe that on that occasion and maybe on two or
three others I insisted that a certain adjustments be made in order to accommodate other points of view
in Washington. I would like history to show that we did our level best to make these Estimates sensible
Estimates, to try to accommodate the varying points of view that existed in the Government in various
times, came out where we thought we ought to come out and did an honest job with a great deal of
integrity. It isn’t that I feel any great feelings of resentment or that I was being used, or that political
pressure was being put on me that I yielded. It was only the fact that it isn’t true and therefore I’d like
the record to show that it’s not true.
& JS: There are two instances that are talked about usually and one of them has to do with the ABM-
SS9 question. The other has to do with the numbers in Vietnam. But let’s talk about the SS9. The
episode, which is pointed to, has to do with a statement on 11-8-1967 concerning the.Soviet intention to
develop a “first-strike capability.” And this really spoke to strategy downstream some way - several
years actually. I believe you had a telephone call fiom Me1 Laird about that time on the subject, saying
that this was a statement that was flatly contradictory to U.S. policy and a lot of other hoopla and stuff.
And at the USIB meeting you, I believe the record shows, requested that that statement which you found
gratuitous be taken out. Do you recollect that?
(U) RH: No, 1 don’t recollect that, but that doesn’t sound strange to me. That doesn’t offend me in any
sense. As a matter of fact, it turns out not to have been correct.
(U/FWQ) JS: Exactly! But I think that’s one of them - that you succumbed to the pressure and had this
statement taken out. But the point is, I believe, that the Estimate was really about current numbers,
current capabilities, and projections. And this was an element of strategy, which you just felt we did not
have any particular claim to.
&RH: This sounds quite likely; I might very well have done that. I think very likely that I might have.
You know, just to put a parenthesis in here. It’s ironical that in those days I was being accused by the
hard-liners of not being tough enough, too soft regarding Soviet intentions, the Agency wasn’t really
seeing what was really going on and so forth. And the liberals were saying we were far too hard-line and
so on. The years go by; suddenly you discover that the hard-liners in town are accusing the Agency of
not having recognized what the Soviets were up to. In short, whether you want to call it the blues, the
reds, or the whites or the blacks or the left and the right, the Agency estimating process, including my
role in it, has been accused of both things, and it seems to me that that isn’t all bad. And I have to say
that as one looks back on it, that if we had written Estimates that were essentially different fiom the ones
we wrote in the latter days or the latter years of the [Lyndon] Johnson administration and in the early
days of the [Richard] Nixon administration, I don’t think we would have had an audience, particularly in
the Johnson administration. {Secretaryof Defense Robert] McNamara would not have accepted an
Estimate that said the Soviets were going for a first strike capability. I don’t think that Johnson would
have either. I think the Agency’s credibility would have been ruined with those fellas. The Nixon
people took just the opposing view. I remember sitting with Laird one day before the Foreign Relations
Committee and [Senator William] Fulbright wouldn’t let me open my mouth. He just made Laird do all
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