CIA Museum Receives a Special Letter from War-Ravaged Europe

The neighbors at the CIA received an unexpected gift recently on a historic day, "a message from a father to his 3-year-old son. The gold-embossed letterhead features a swastika and the name Adolf Hitler," according to The Washington Post.

The letter was written by Richard Helms, the CIA director from 1966-1973 during the Vietnam War and Watergate eras. He died in 2002. 

Helms was a young intelligence officer serving in Europe during World War II when he wrote the letter. "Right after Germany’s surrender, Lt. Helms ... sneaked into Hitler’s chancellery in Berlin and pilfered the fuhrer’s stationery. He dated the letter to his son “V-E day” for May 8, 1945," the Post reported.

The letter astounded the CIA museum’s curatorial staff when it was acquired in May — and not only because Helms wrote with such paternal tenderness. It also conveyed a certain historical intuition about the evil that one man could do. The letter happened to arrive at Langley the day after Osama bin Laden was killed in May, the Post said.

The son is Dennis Helms, now a 69-year-old intellectual-property lawyer in New Jersey.

The CIA wrote Dennis Helms asking for memorabilia of his father. "The letter was in an album of correspondence and photos from his home that he turned over for the museum’s new exhibit highlighting the history of the Office of Strategic Services, established during World War II." OSS was father to the CIA.

Dennis Helms said never knew how and when exactly his father was able to sneak into that compound to grab the stationery (along with a dinner plate). His dad never explained in full.

The letter is now part of the CIA museum. The museum is not open to the public. (We called once and asked to visit.)

But several other letters between the Helms father and son are available for public viewing at Georgetown University’s library, which obtained the father’s papers in 2008.

Read the full Washington Post story.