# Richard Helms

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Richard Helms," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/richard-helms/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*CIA director who, per John Kiriakou, ordered the destruction of all MK-Ultra documents on the same day the Church Committee explicitly told him not to destroy them — and who, in Kiriakou's telling, illegally destroyed most of the agency's JFK material as well. He was held in contempt of Congress and fined a nominal sum that colleagues covered by passing a hat down the corridor to his office. Because of the destruction, only about 15% of the MK-Ultra record survives — largely financial records, from which the program had to be pieced back together.*

- **Role:** CIA Director
- **Per Kiriakou:** Ordered all [MK-Ultra](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mk-ultra) documents destroyed after Congress told him not to
- **Also destroyed:** Most of the agency's [JFK](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/jfk-assassination) material, illegally
- **Penalty:** Contempt of Congress; a fine of roughly $100, or "a few hundred dollars"
- **Consequence:** Only ~15% of the MK-Ultra record survives

**Richard Helms** was a director of the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia). [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) cites him as the figure responsible for the destruction of the [MK-Ultra](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mk-ultra) record.

## Destroying the MK-Ultra files

MK-Ultra came out, in Kiriakou's account, because the [Church Committee](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/church-committee) in the Senate and the [Pike Committee](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/pike-committee) in the House developed the information and then called the CIA's leadership to testify under oath in public hearings.[1][2] [Senator Frank Church](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/church-committee) told Helms explicitly not to destroy the documents. Helms returned to headquarters from that meeting and ordered everything destroyed: *"Senator Church told him, 'Do not destroy the documents,' and he went back to headquarters from that meeting and said, 'Destroy all the documents.' He understood the assignment."*[3][4][1][5] The destruction was, Kiriakou says elsewhere, plainly in violation of the law.[6][7]

Helms was held in contempt of Congress for the destruction. The fine was nominal — roughly $100 in one telling, a few hundred dollars in another — and was paid collectively. *"They fined him like $100, and everybody was chipping in a buck, two bucks in the hallway to pay the director's congressional fine."* In the fuller version, Helms came back to the agency after taking a plea to find a parade of CIA employees lining the corridor to his office, each throwing cash into a hat. Kiriakou's gloss: *"They all looked out for each other."*[4][8][9][10][11] He accepts, when it is put to him, that this is the behaviour of something like a *cult of intelligence* — a quasi-secret society whose members are bound to each other.[11]

## The attribution is not settled

Kiriakou most often tells this story without naming the director at all, and the occasions on which he has named him do not entirely agree. The *Cleared Hot* account above names Helms, as do the 2026 accounts of the Church and Pike hearings.[3][1][8] In a May 2026 [Fox News](https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-14-fox-news-you-liar-former-cia-official-calls-fauci-s-pa) appearance he gave the same sequence — an order from the [Church Committee](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/church-committee), a return to headquarters, the destruction of 85% of the [MK-Ultra](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mk-ultra) archive, contempt of Congress, and colleagues in the corridors paying the fine — but named the director as William Colby.[12] KiriPedia records both attributions rather than choosing between them; nothing in the corpus resolves which name Kiriakou intends as the settled one, though Helms is the name he has given more often.

## What survived

Because of the destruction order, only a fraction of the [MK-Ultra](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mk-ultra) record survives — about fifteen per cent in most of Kiriakou's tellings, about twenty per cent in others, with roughly eighty-five per cent destroyed. Everything publicly known about MK-Ultra comes from this remnant, which he characterizes as accidentally surviving material and therefore *"a sanitized version,"* and it is the reason so many questions about the program have no answer.[4][10][13][14][5] What did survive, he says, was largely financial records, from which the program had to be pieced back together.[15]

Even so, he holds that the surviving fraction is enough to establish the shape of the program, and that essentially every facet of it was illegal — extensive experimentation on American citizens without their knowledge or consent.[6]

## The JFK files

Kiriakou extends the same charge to the [Kennedy assassination](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/jfk-assassination) records. Asked what the promised JFK releases would show, his answer was that the focus would be CIA surveillance activity in Mexico City in October and November 1963 — but that when Helms was director he ordered most of those documents illegally destroyed. *"If there happened to be any smoking gun, I think it was chewed up in an industrial grinder a lot of years ago."* He notes that CIA headquarters is powered by its own furnace, off the local grid: they simply burn it.[16] His expectation, accordingly, was that the new tranche of ten or fifteen thousand pages would be largely material already released, with fewer redactions, and no revelation.[7]

## See also

- [MK-Ultra](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mk-ultra)
- [Church Committee](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/church-committee)
- [Pike Committee](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/pike-committee)
- [JFK assassination](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/jfk-assassination)
- [Operation Midnight Climax](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/operation-midnight-climax)
- [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)

## Sources

1. John Kiriakou Unleashed: The Real CIA History, Sexpionage, Black Ops & More (2026-05-08), at 1:11:41. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ZPb1UuC7k&t=4301s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-08-jay-dyer-real-cia-history/
2. John Kiriakou New Posdcast (2026-05-31), at 30:35. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbsiT-LgFJg&t=1835s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-31-john-kiriakou-podcast-john-kiriakou-new-posdcast-12-secrets-that-have/
3. The Cost of Telling the Truth | John Kiriakou | Ep. 446 (2026-05-04), at 37:28. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JeTlw4Zy3o&t=2248s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-04-cleared-hot-446-cost-of-truth/
4. The Cost of Telling the Truth | John Kiriakou | Ep. 446 (2026-05-04), at 37:58. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JeTlw4Zy3o&t=2278s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-04-cleared-hot-446-cost-of-truth/
5. "They Want the Crazy Ones" — Why the CIA Recruits Sociopaths (2026-07-02), at 21:59. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y939VG16MCY&t=1319s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-07-02-jack-neel/
6. #278 — MK Ultra, USAID, Overthrowing Governments (2025-02-25), at 19:22. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CFWmuIgQIE&t=1162s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-02-25-mk-ultra-usaid-overthrowing-governments/
7. CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou on UAP Crash Retrieval & Government Se (2025-02-28), at 55:09. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aud34e6ef8d&t=3309s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-02-28-lehto-files-investigating-uaps-cia-whistleblower-john-kiriakou-on-uap-crash/
8. John Kiriakou: THEY Really Did THIS — Jay Dyer Show (2026-04-29), at 1:18:05. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqx0uSr1yYk&t=4685s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-04-29-jay-dyer-they-really-did-this/
9. John Kiriakou: THEY Really Did THIS — Jay Dyer Show (2026-04-29), at 1:18:37. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqx0uSr1yYk&t=4717s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-04-29-jay-dyer-they-really-did-this/
10. John Kiriakou Unleashed: The Real CIA History, Sexpionage, Black Ops & More (2026-05-08), at 1:12:14. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ZPb1UuC7k&t=4334s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-08-jay-dyer-real-cia-history/
11. John Kiriakou Unleashed: The Real CIA History, Sexpionage, Black Ops & More (2026-05-08), at 1:12:45. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ZPb1UuC7k&t=4365s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-08-jay-dyer-real-cia-history/
12. 'YOU LIAR': Former CIA official calls Fauci's pardon 'unacceptable' (2026-05-14), at 02:33. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egmGLaf76DM&t=153s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-14-fox-news-you-liar-former-cia-official-calls-fauci-s-pa/
13. John Kiriakou New Posdcast (2026-05-31), at 31:08. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbsiT-LgFJg&t=1868s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-31-john-kiriakou-podcast-john-kiriakou-new-posdcast-12-secrets-that-have/
14. The Honest Talk (2026-01-25), at 09:54. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQoQ1BC7FFA&t=594s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-25-the-honest-talk-the-honest-talk/
15. The Jimmy Dore Show (2025-09-25), at 18:39. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74IHPW5CWRk&t=1119s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-25-the-jimmy-dore-show-the-jimmy-dore-show/
16. CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Predicts JFK Files (2025-02-26), at 00:00. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvGjGpacN2I&t=0s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-02-26-katie-halper-cia-whistleblower-john-kiriakou-predicts-jfk/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/richard-helms/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt