Free The Black World of UFOs: Exempt from Disclosure by Robert M. Collins, Timothy Cooper, Rick Doty Page A

officers that some foreign power must have operated them, but suspicions were always diverted away from the CIA. However, according to a 1975 FOIA release, Walter B. Smith (3) who was the DCI before Dulles, had such an intense interest in the UFO subject, he went so far as asking for cooperation between all the military services, the Research and Development Board of the DOD, the Psychological Strategy Board and other government agencies as appropriate (4). We can only surmise from chapters 1 and 2 that this interest never waned even up to today, and it’s not too difficult to say that roughly 90 percent of all things done by the CIA are done covertly.
     
         The covertness of the CIA was keenly brought to the surface by the then new CIA Director Porter J. Goss who in 2003, before the 9-11 Commission, said that the classification policy was “dysfunctional.” “There’s a lot of gratuitous classification going on,” he said at a May 23, 2003 hearing of the Commission. “We over-classify very badly.”
     
         In 1962, John McCone, DCI, who had replaced Allen Dulles the year before, selected Helms as the DDP, Deputy Directorate of Plans, which proved to be important symbolically and substantively. It quieted many of the rumblings from the clandestine service careerists after the Bissell and Dulles ousters, and allayed their fears that McCone, a shipping and construction tycoon, was bent on running the agency like a big business. Helms’ promotion also signaled a shift in emphasis from covert action to espionage—a reorientation with which he wholeheartedly agreed.
     
         After McCone resigned in 1965 and was replaced by Adm. William Raborn, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Helms Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) to give him more Washington seasoning before elevating him to the top job. When that occurred a year later, LBJ handled it in his inimitable way by announcing it at a press conference without asking Helms first; the DCI-designate heard about the fait accompli from an administration official only a short time before President Johnson told the media.
     
    Helm’s Style
     
    Urbane, cool, shrewd, sure-footed, tight-lipped (kept all the little dirty secrets) controlled, discreet—such adjectives appear frequently in colleagues and friends’ recollections of Helms. On the job, he was serious and demanding. An efficient worker and delegator, he left his desk clear at the end of the day (almost always before 7 p.m.), feeling assured that the trustworthy subordinates he had carefully chosen could pick up the details and handle any problems. According to a colleague, “Helms was a fellow who by and large gave the people who worked with him his confidence . . . his instinct was to trust them. . . .”
     
         Sometimes, however, Helms’ hands-off style and deference to deputies worked against him. In the area of covert action, for example, more “proactive” management on his part might have averted the near-collapse of the CIA’s political action capabilities after the agency’s network of international organizations, propaganda outlets, proprieties, foundations, and trusts were exposed in a 1967 Ramparts’ magazine article. Similarly, in the area of counter-intelligence, Helms accorded (as mentioned before) the chief of the CI Staff DD/CI James Angleton, much leeway in vetting assets, dealing with defectors and suspected double agents, and searching for “moles” inside the Agency—despite the costs of disrupting legitimate operations and tarnishing officers’ careers (5).
     
         Helms declined a presidential request to submit his resignation after the 1972 elections, not wanting to set a precedent that he thought would politicize the position of DCI. After he was forced out in 1973— he believed that Nixon was very angry at him for refusing to use the CIA in the Watergate cover up—Helms spent several years coping with controversies ensuing in part from