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By the time John McCone resigned in 1965, Helms was one of his recommendations as a successor—a natural choice on the basis of experience and ability. He had recruited, trained, assigned and directed many of CIA's most trusted operations agents, and unlike many of his colleagues, he got along well with the State Department and the Pentagon. Nonetheless, President Johnson picked Admiral Raborn as director and made Helms the first deputy. There was a tacit understanding that Raborn's tour would be short and that Helms would use this period to establish himself with the Congressmen who oversee the agency's operations. Senate confirmation was unanimous, and Helms took over last June.
Minus Anecdotes. At the apex of the Western intelligence world, Helms remains withdrawn from public view. He has dramatic good looks—tall, lean, dark, with features reminiscent of Rudolph Valentino. Yet, says one close associate, "he is peculiarly minus anecdotes. There is no flamboyance." He lives sedately with his wife in northwest Washington in a modest home from which they rarely join in Washington's social whirl. In a city where most officials ritualistically tote bulging briefcases home, Helms usually goes home empty-handed—and by 7 p.m.
During the Senate committee hearing on his confirmation, Helms performed in a similarly low key, shunning any suggestion that he or CIA sought to be an invisible government. "The CIA takes no action without the appropriate approval of the appropriate officials," he said, "and they are not in the CIA."
The agency Helms runs goes by a number of nicknames—the Third Force, the Silent Service, the Other Agency (among DOS men overseas) and La Compania (in Latin America). The budget is $500 million a year, an amount that is largely hidden in Defense appropriations and is not subject to item-by-item scrutiny by the Congress. Nevertheless, CIA must account for every penny it spends to a specially trained top-secret team of the Budget Bureau. It is also under the supervision of a top-level Administration group whose membership includes Dick Helms; State Department's Katzenbach; Cyrus R. Vance, Deputy Secretary of Defense; and White House Aide Walt W. Rostow. The group meets at least once a week, examines in great detail every single "black" (covert) operation proposed. Even for "white" (overt) functions, it must approve expenditures as small as $10,000 if they involve particularly sensitive schemes. There are also CIA watchdog committees in both houses of Congress.
CIA headquarters is an eight-story white concrete building in a wooded, isolated section of Langley, Va., eight miles from Washington. Though once heralded by a profusion of highway signs, state policemen appeared one night in 1961—on specific orders from then Attorney General Robert Kennedy —and tore every one of them down; now the only marker says BPR (for Bureau of Public Roads).