Word: plea
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...Watergate parable notwithstanding. Allowing the former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director to plead nolo contendre to two misdemeanor counts of failing to testify fully to Congress may have proven the most expeditious way of wrapping up the two-year-old investigation of Helms, but the circumstances surrounding the plea-bargain arrangement and its announcement has raised serious questions about the Justice Department's modus operandi that will ensure a lengthy epilogue to the entire story...
Bell and the Criminal Division of Justice settled for a compromise, hoping to provoke a storm that would blow over with the passing of a few weeks. They persuaded Helms to enter a plea of no contest to significantly reduced charges, thereby officially recording Helm's guilt without risking the disclosure of information in an open courtroom that could damage the country's national security interests. Or so the argument goes...
...Justice Department officials, in a departure from normal procedure, failed to notify reporters of Helms's day in court until after the former CIA director had entered the courtroom. Bell's post-mortems on the Helms affair informed reporters that he had first discussed the matter of a Helms plea bargain back on July 25 in an Oval Office meeting with Carter and assorted high-level administration officials. This statement is directly at odds with Carter's late September assertion that his knowledge of the case was confined to press reports he had scanned. And Benjamin Civiletti, the head...
...nonsense rebuke of Helms during the sentencing proceedings last Friday. Government prosecutors might well have moved to dismiss the case as feared, but the mere fact of sending the case to the branch of government in which it properly belongs would have avoided the cynicism that greeted the Helms plea in many quarters last week...
...Gerrity--still awaits action by Justice, and a complete account by Helms as government witness rather than defendant might yet salvage a bit of legitimacy for the leniency recently shown him. Given the suspended sentence meted out to Helms and his retention of pension rights despite his no contest plea, such cooperation with the government would furnish some limited evidence that Helms indeed recognizes the gravity of his misdeeds. Otherwise, the nation will be left with one lingering image of Richard Helms, that of a jaunty one-time Nixon hatchet man who views his nolo contendere...