WASHINGTON REPORT: Helmsmen, What Quarry?
Getlein, Frank
probability of the extinction of homo sapiens--the socalled no-survivors myth. The fact is, says Clayton, that "barring some totally unknown mechanism, the effects of total warfare today . . ....
...I read the cutline...
...Now run it forward a minute...
...The reason Helms lied to the Senate, he has said, is that he took a mighty oath not to reveal CIA secrets...
...Clayton's advice is discomforting, and difficult to dismise even though it opens doors once again to the extremes of the fallout-shelter experience of the early 1960s and those hysterical debates about the sanctity of one's shelter and the morality of gunning down neighbors who might intrude and overcrowd it...
...Planning for survival after nuclear doomsday is in fact humane and practical...
...Probably Bell's funniest line--the whole act was hilarious, but there's always one topper--was the one in reply to Senator Church and Washington wags who thought it particularly good that Bell had sprung the head spook on Hallowe'en, that such criticisms "don't set well with me...
...A public aware of the alternatives to nuclear disarmament just might become the force necessary to help bring disarmament about...
...That hope turns Bell into Little Orphan Annie singing "Tomorrow...
...So, too, the Soviets, their preparations involving evacuation of large urban centers, underground, relocation of industry, and extensive shelter and food-storage systems...
...Will he tell the truth...
...Who was it said-why, it was Jimmy Carter accepting his party's nomination--"I see no reason why big-shot crooks should go free while the poor ones go to jail...
...The fact is, says Clayton, that "barring some totally unknown mechanism, the effects of total warfare today . . . would be unpleasant in the extreme but hardly terminal...
...For that matter, there is little doubt that ff that poor old ordinary citizen had told comparable lies and been found out he would have been up on perjury like a rocket, probably contempt as well...
...Immediately after the sentencing outside the courtroom, Helms said he was proud of lying to the Senate...
...What these two things seem to indicate is that Helms will lie his head off to the Senate he is supposed to tell the truth to, but sing like a mocking-bird in order to save his own ass...
...I picked up the Times with a start that Saturday morning...
...Granted that, all Bell had to do was shut up, perhaps go off to a law conference in Belgrade, at the very most say to the press, Look, fellows, the fix is in, Helms is being let off and that's all I'm going to say about it, go peddle your papers...
...Catch as these might echoes of 15 years ago, and threaten as they might more such nonsensical responses as then, they are serious topics...
...In a note accompanying Clayton's article he remarks that serious students of international affairs believe that building nuclear weapons without an equal emphasis on how to survive their effects "is like test flying an untried plane without a parachute...
...In effect, Bell is saying, "Look, Mr...
...Other questions for study might be crop resistance to ultraviolet exposure, the advisability of deep-soil farming, radiationproofing of houses, and the amounts and kinds of food to be best stockpiled...
...In doing the number again and again apparently without serious rehearsal, Bell got off quite a few schoolboy howlers...
...WAHHIHGTON REPORT HELMSMEN, WHAT QUARRY...
...Instead, flamboyantly betraying his own inner feelings of deep unease about the whole thing, Bell couldn't keep his mouth shut...
...If so, what will this do to agents and Chilean friends...
...Flee the country, seeking political asylum with those Chilean friends who now rule that unhappy land...
...Helms would be finished...
...The basic reasoning of the fix--or at least the basic reasoning of the story put out by Bell--is that if Helms had been put on trial, he would have been forced to reveal CIA secrets in order properly to defend himself...
...This argument persuaded both Washington's conservative papers, the Star and the Post, and any number of columnists of the wisdom of the deal...
...Questions, questions, questions, but one answer does seem true: Helms can learn a lot about criminal loyalty from Gordon Liddy...
...Now he sees the r e a s o n . It was, however, Attorney-General Griffin Bell who 25November I977:740 made the biggest ass of himself in the whole affair and did so completely unnecessarily...
...That's quite a transformation, when you consider the record...
...Will Helms lie at those trials...
...These groups are discounted, lampooned and worse, but they deserve credit for seeing the gravity of the problems and for trying to do something...
...It could be tactical as well, for by catching the public up in discussion and education on the hews and wherefores of survival, arms control and disarmament might be made more of a possibility...
...He kept bobbing up on television and in the press defending the indefensible, justifying the unjustifiable and generally carrying on like W. C. Fields explaining why he'd no sooner part with these gilt-edged certificates than sell his grandmother's paisley shawl...
...There was Spire Agnew again, one-column head shot at the top of column one, microphone in front of him~ mouth open to show the bottom teeth, querulous, complaining expression, as of one suffering from hemorrhoids...
...Lost a little weight since last seen...
...is in...
...Griffin Bell's Justice Department, as it is amusingly called, had agreed to try the Killer on a couple misdemeanors instead of the perjury charge that his lies to the United States Senate seem to the ordinary citizen to have richly merited...
...But the Judgemwhose concern for justice was greater than that of the Justice Departmentmhad exacted from Helms the promise to tell the truth at upcoming trials...
...Criticism is what makes it work...
...Shock and horror...
...Bell's patsy in the case, Benjamin R. Civiletti, head of the Criminal Division, lodged the misdemeanor charge and Helms was allowed to plead nolo contendere, in the style made famous by Spiro Agnew and Richard Kleindienst, another Attorney-General who knew the reason big-shot crooks go free while poor ones go to jail...
...AttorneyGeneral, and if you'll just turn to the wall and raise your arms, I'U calm my trembling by lifting the Constitution you carelessly carry around in your money belt and while I'm at it, I'll slip out your false teeth thus getting rid of your bite and, oh, yes, I double-parked while pulling this heist and r d like to plead nolo contendere to the ticket...
...Right now, whether out of blind ignorance or blind trust, the public is disturbingly passive on the consequences of nuclear war--with only a handful of exceptions: Philip Berrigan, Elizabeth McAlister and other small groups such as theirs...
...Bell also stated his belief several times that Helms's example would make honest, truth-telling, law-abiding men of all future CIA directors...
...Suppression of criticism is what turns it into something else, as the "Chilean friends" Helms lied allegedly to protect demonstrate daily...
...Who wants to live in a wasteland...
...Well, that was hard cheese on Dickie, all right, but he couldn't complain that the government hadn't done its best to carry out its part of the deal...
...Future Director, you better obey the law 'euz if you don't you'll have to plead nolo contendere to a matched pair of misdemeanors, so watch it, Jack...
...Besides turning into Spiro Agnew, poor Helms is also turning into one of those endearing old eccentrics in Trollope's alms house, clinging to the pension he's entitled to...
...What could the old nabob be nattering about now...
...As long as these arsenals exist, there is the threat of their use, whatever the pledges and noble intentions, whatever the careful checks and balances...
...In one essential respect those groups cannot be faulted: the primary challenge is not in surviving after doomsday, but in eliminating the very possibility of a nuclear-weapous doomsday through the dismantling of nuclear arsenals...
...Certainly they are not lightly dismissed by Bernard T. Felt, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin...
...It is the situation the U.S...
...It wasn't Agnew at all, it was Richard "Killer" Helms "leaving courthouse," as the caption said, after being socked with a $2,000 fine and two years suspended but on probation and, worse, forced to agree to tell the truth at upcoming trials and investigations into the interesting activities he and his colleagues indulged in when he was cape d/ tutti capi of the CIA...
...O. K. for a while, but suppose democracy gets back in...
...If so, can he be put in jail for violating probation...
...One was his opinion that by pleading nolo contendere Helms had "saluted the law...
...moreover, revealing those secrets would imperil the lives of agents and of some of "our Chilean friends," then working feverishly for the overthrow of that country's elected government, the installation of a good old reliable military dictator...
...It's the stupidity more than the arrogance that appalls...
...However, because a national nuclear-defense program was botched then does not mean that a sane, sensible plan should not be developed now for surviving in what will undoubtedly be an acutely radioactive or high-level ultraviolent environment for years, more likely generations, should nuclear war eventuate...
...For instance, it may be necessary, says Clayton, to switch to nocturnal farming and to adopt Arab-like protective clothing...
...Good grief, if criticism doesn't set well with you, don't pull deals that people are naturally going to criticize...
...Herman Kahn, for one, lists more than a dozen scenarios by which a nation might be drawn into thermonuclear war...
...As Attorney General, Bell has a lot to learn about equal justice for all, but as an official of any kind, he has a lot to learn about democracy...
...Let us take it as given that the fix was in, Helms's wrist-slap reprimand agreed to by all parties for reasons now clear to Jimmy Carter if not to the rest of us...
...Granted that Bell was certainly not going to prosecute Helms on any serious charge, what could Helms have done that would not show his respect for the law, as Bell insists the liar, perjurer and bon vivant has done...
...Bell's minions hustled Helms into court hugger-mugger, with no notice to press or public...
...But back that up a minute...
...It's come to that...
...He saluted the law all right, in the classic salute of the thumb to the nose...
...FRANK GETLEIN Commonweal: 741...
...His point: the United States should institute programs of survival research aimed at preserving life and making it more possible for people to cope in a hostile post-nuclear-war environment...
...The Swiss are working in this direction...
...And besides, he'd forfeit his pension, the saving of which seems to have been the principal concern of Carter, Bell, Helms himself, of course, and most of the Washington press corps that has so deliriously sung the praises of the big shot and those who have let him go free for their Solomonie wisdom...
...To which, if the past predicts the future, the reply: "I'm terrified, Mr...
...Or, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, go back to Georgia, where courthouse loungers have always known the reason why big shot crooks go free...
...However, until disarmament is a reality, the unfortunate question of surviving possible use of The Bomb cannot be ducked...
Vol. 104 • November 1977 • No. 24
