Zone of Interest: US Style

  

Zone of Interest: US Style

Peter Schultz

 

[The following is from Scorpions’ Dance, by Jefferson Morley]

 

                  “While Nixon brooded, Helms waltzed. He relished his job, ran laps in the basement of the CIA headquarters, played … tennis on the weekends, and got to bed early. Helms loved ballroom dancing. He and Cynthia attended parties of the Waltz Group, a network of like-minded couples in government, law, and the press. Once a month they put aside the business of power in favor of Brahms….Tom Hughes…recalled … ‘He was an excellent dancer and an avid gossip, always in control.’

 

                  “Other evenings, Dick and Cynthia read spy novels aloud to each other. Helms didn’t care for the fiction of John le Carre’ …, a former MI6 man whose dour tales of the Circus, a fictional version of the British service, did not glamorize the Cold War…. ‘He found Le Carre’ too dark and cynical,’ Cynthia said.

 

                  “Helms got his fill of the dark and cynical on page B7 of the Washington Post on January 18, 1971, where syndicated columnist Jack Anderson … published a nasty and all-too-accurate column headlined ‘6 Attempts to Kill Castro Laid to CIA.

 

                  “The shadow of JFK’s assassination fell on Dick Helms once again.”

 

                  “’Locked in the darkest recesses of the CIA is the story of six assassination attempts against Cuba’s Fidel Castro,’ Anderson’s column began. The story was true, as Helms knew better than anyone. Anderson was referring to [a] top-secret report of May 1967, which recounted the Mafia and AMLASH plots in dispassionate detail.” [135]

 

                  Helms: a cultured, gentlemanly assassin. The U.S. “zone of interest.” The morally decent, the cultured are comfortable, even proud of engaging in assassinations and other morally dubious and inhuman actions in the political arena.