Pucker up.

• Author: Johnson, Loch

RICHARD HELMS WAS THE most debonair of the nation's 18 Directors of Central Intelligence (DCIs). Tall, smartly dressed, fluent in French and German, a specialist in European affairs, he was a natural for the spy business. Like many who would rise to the top echelon of American espionage, Helms started out as a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II precursor to the CIA, whose initials, insiders joked, also stood for "Oh, So Social" due to the social climbers who filled its ranks.

This memoir, written by Helms shortly before he passed away last year, takes the reader from his OSS days through his battles with Congress over intelligence abuses and his own misleading testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 1970s.

Settling old scores is often a prime motivation for writing one's memoir, and Helms has a list of betes noires: President Richard M. Nixon, former CIA Director William E. Colby, Sens. Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Smart Symington (D-Mo.), and Rep. Otis Pike (D-N.Y., among others. Much of his book is given over to rebutting and defending those who attacked the CIA during his tenure. In this regard, few compare to Nixon, whose animosity toward the CIA was no secret. Nixon considered it an enclave of left-leaning, Ivy League aristocrats who looked down at him and, worse still, secretly aided John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election. While there is no truth to the latter allegation, Helms reveals that Nixon dismissed the CIA's reporting as "worthless," and the agency in turn seldom sought his advice, even banishing him for a time from meetings of the National Security Council. The president later tried to drag the CIA into the Watergate cover-up but Helms blocked him. Nixon then fired Helms shortly before his mandatory retirement after promising not to do so. Not surprisingly, Helms's portrayal of Nixon in this book is hardly flattering.

Colby's sin was cooperating too fully with investigative committees after The New York Times published reports in 1974 about alleged domestic spying and questionable covert action in Chile. Both the Ford administration and Congress established panels of inquiry. As Helms's successor, Colby faced two options: He could stonewall until investigators ran out of time, money, and patience, or he could cooperate in hopes of winning their goodwill and avoiding a draconian response. Helms instinctually advocated the former approach; Colby chose the latter...