Richard Helms, however, did not feel the same way. Helms was known as “the man who kept the secrets,” the title of his biography.[144] He was a master of the possibilities beneath plausible deniability, exemplified by his command and control of the CIA’s plots to kill Castro. As Helms demonstrated in his Church Committee testimony, he and other CIA Cold War veterans thought they knew the president’s mind better than the president did himself. This assumed responsibility became a problem for the CIA and its Pentagon allies when President Kennedy acted with a mind of his own and decided to end
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