Two Agents, Two Paths: How the CIA Became a Vital Operation

Day by day, the visceral memory of September 11 is fading, but the tectonic reorganization of the federal government continues. In April, the Bush administration asked Congress to expand the powers of the Central Intelligence Agency. Specifically, the administration wants the CIA to have the authority to issue "national security letters" demanding access to a wide range of personal records held in the United States, including those kept by banks and on-line service providers. These de facto subpoenas would not require court approval.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the administration's proposal was how little controversy it generated. True, Democrats in a closed-door session of the Senate Intelligence Committee succeeded in temporarily delaying a vote on the measure. But its very introduction shows how significantly the parameters of government have altered in the past year and a half. During the 1990s, the national security state appeared to be slowly eroding. Now, with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the expanding powers of the CIA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Pentagon, that trend has reversed.

If you had said 25 years ago that one day the CIA would be authorized to undertake operations inside the United States, you would have been laughed at or savaged. The Watergate scandal led to allegations that the CIA had become an unaccountable and thuggish arm of government. After the revelations of the Rockefeller Commission and of the 1975 congressional committees led by Senator Frank Church and Representative Otis Pike, the CIA was widely thought of as "a rogue elephant" that had engaged in illegal and immoral activities throughout the world and had helped create the ugly morass of Vietnam.

As director of central intelligence (DCI), William Colby admitted to Congress that the CIA had planned assassinations of foreign leaders and, contrary to its charter and the law, had spied on U.S. citizens within the United States. Another of the agency's former directors, Richard Helms (who served as DCI from 1966 till 1973), was charged with perjury for failing to reveal to Congress the full extent of the CIA's involvement in the coup that overthrew Salvador Allende in Chile. In the 1980s, the agency's reputation was again tarnished by its part in the Iran-contra affair, and in the 1990s, it suffered another blow when it was revealed that CIA officer Aldrich Ames had been a long-time spy for the Russians.

Yet today the agency has assumed a lead role in the struggle against terrorism, and its star is ascending. Helms could not have known that his posthumously published autobiography would appear in the midst of this transformation, but his defense of the CIA's role in protecting the United States could not be more timely. Equally suited to the moment is John Prados' comprehensive (although often dry) account of the strange career of Colby.

Helms and Colby are suitable proxies for the contemporary debate over how much latitude government agencies should have to preserve the nation's security. For most of their overlapping careers, the two men would have given a similar answer: a lot. But then their paths diverged. In the cultural maelstrom of the 1970s, Colby became a critic of the national security state, while Helms remained its vigorous defender. Colby became a hero to those who believed government bureaucracies had crossed a dangerous line and a villain to those who thought he had fatally undermined the capacity of the United States to defend itself. Depending on one's point of view, Helms played the villain to Colby's hero or the hero to his villain.

Judging from these two books, Helms had the more compelling persona of the two. Both men were consummate spies and consummate bureaucrats. Although bureaucracy demands conformity, narrative demands drama, individuality, and sudden shifts in plot. Colby provided drama when he revealed some of the more sordid aspects of the CIA, but much of his life and personality remain veiled, and Prados -- one of the true experts on the history of the agency -- does not succeed in fleshing out his personality. Helms, however, was blessed with a brilliant earlier biographer in Thomas Powers. A strong desire to rebut Powers may have been one reason why Helms felt compelled to write his own account of his life and career. As evidenced by his rage at Colby, Helms could give as good as he got, and although much of his memoir is a breezy potted history of the agency, the flashes of anger, pride, and high dudgeon make Helms' Helms more intriguing than Prados' Colby.

THE QUIET AMERICANS

Until the late 1960s, few Americans understood the workings of the intelligence world -- the so-called secret government. The CIA, the Defense Department, and the National Security Council all were created by the National Security Act of 1947, and for most of the next two decades, the functions of the first were only dimly comprehended. It was understood that the CIA provided the president with intelligence about potential and actual U.S. adversaries, but there was little public awareness of how that intelligence was obtained. Even less was known about the other component of the CIA: its Directorate of Operations, also known as the Directorate of Plans, which was responsible for covert action.

To some extent, there was a wink-and-nod quality to public knowledge in this era. People knew that the CIA was partly about spying, and they had vague, romantic notions about spies borrowed from Ian Fleming and Graham Greene novels. But as long as the Soviet Union and international communism seemed to threaten the security of the United States, most Americans did not care to look too closely at the nitty-gritty of what the agency actually did.