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

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(W-0) Because of a gap in the tape (fault of J.S.) Richard Helm’s statement about CIA performance
in Soviet advanced weapons Estimates is missing. (He had little of note to say previously on questions
Re. Vietnam, bombing of Hanoi and Cambodia.)
(U/l??O) RH: Actually, this question of Agency Estimates goes back to something we were discussing
a few minutes ago. From the very beginning of the Nixon administrationNixon was criticizing Agency
Estimates, Estimates done back when he was Vice President. What he knew about Estimates in the
intervening years I don’t know. But he would constantly, in National Security Council meetings, pick on
the Agency for not having properlyjudged what the Soviets were going to do with various kinds of
weaponry. And obviously, he was being selective but he would make nasty remarks about this and say
this obviously had to be sharpened up. The Agency had to understand it was to do a better job and so on.
(U/bWQ) And I haven’t the slightest doubt that Nixon’s carping affected [Henry] Kissinger who after
all was his National Security Advisor. And Kissinger, in those days, was hardly an old comrade of
Nixon’s. He’d only been hired a few months before and they’d been strangers and so forth. So
estimating was hardly something that he wanted to be a champion for. I don’t know how much he’d
s .. I
I -
read the Estimates way back then himself. But in any event, these two men tended to work on each other
with respect to the estimating process of the Agency. And Kissinger, feeling that Nixon didn’t regard
the Estimates as being very good, didn’t pay very much attention to them himself. And he had a
tendency to be selective in the way he read intelligence. I remember, maybe after a couple of years or so
his commenting to me. He said, “You know, the most usehl document you fellas turn out is that
Weekly Summary that you put together. That’s much more valuable than the daily stuff. That I can sit
down on a Saturday morning and read and bring myself up-to-date and I think it’s a good publication.”
And this was part of Kissinger’s tactics. The more you keep people off balance, the more you keep the
pressure on, the more he felt that they’d work harder, or be more carehl or do a better job or something.
So that getting any praise out of Kissinger, for any particular thing was almost - well, it virtually never
happened; he didn’t have any commendations to hand around to anybody. I’ve sat through endless
meetings with him and there was nobody he ever told, “You’ve done a good job or that’s a good paper”
or something of this kind. He’d just go plowing along with whatever he had on his mind at the moment.
So, there was a period there, there was no doubt about it, when Agency analysis and estimating was
having heavy weather in the White House.
( U / F w TOthis day, I obviously don’t have any way of judging what my being Director had to do
with this one way or the other, because, after all, Nixon re-appointed me. But I was no man for
Erlichman or [Bob] Haldeman. I mean they didn’t like the appointment in the first place. So there was
an element around Nixon that was certainly anti-Helms. I mean it didn’t manifest itself with knives in
my back, particularly. But you know, “This guy is not for it.”
( U / w O ) I think Kissinger says in his book that Nixon never really fully trusted me and so forth, And
I was no friend of Kissinger’s in those days. I barely knew him. I’d met him before the Kennedy
administration and I got along all right personally. So that whatever fictions there were over various
pieces of paper, they were not exacerbated by any personality conflicts between me and him. That I
think probably was a plus. I mean if there had been personality conflicts in addition to these other
matters than I think there would have been blood on the moon of a different kind. Not easy to deal with
in any sense: Kissinger. But on the other hand, you had to admit or admire the fact that he paid
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