1997 News & Observer File photo - Scott Sharpe
Senator Jesse Helms speaks to a meeting of the N.C. Broadcasters Association at the North Raleigh Hilton on Nov. 3, 1997.
Newly released FBI files say Jesse Helms was a "contact" for the FBI, willing to offer to the law enforcement agency the facilities of TV station WRAL, where he was a broadcast executive until the early 1970s.
Helms "is most cooperative and has offered the facilities of his station to assist the FBI at any time," according to an FBI memo from 1971. "He is a great admirer of the Director (J. Edgar Hoover) and the FBI and for a long period of time has been a staunch defender of the Director and his policies."
Helms, a five-term U.S. senator and one of the iconic figures of American conservatism, died on July 4, 2008. His death triggered the release of the FBI files, which are largely investigations into roughly 20 death threats and extortion attempts against the senator.
Prior to his election, Helms was an executive vice president and assistant CEO of the Capitol Broadcasting Company, which operates WRAL. He was known for his fiery editorials on the station's news broadcasts.
Steve Hammel, WRAL's vice president and general manager, said he is not aware of the station ever being used to assist the FBI. The FBI report was the first time he learned of the relationship.
"I have read the same report that you have read and I have no knowledge that the television station was used in any capacity like that," he said.
The FBI files sheds little light as to how Helms or the TV station may have assisted the agency. A 1973 FBI memo makes reference to "several telephonic contacts," between Helms and an FBI official, but does not mention any subjects. By then, the files show he had been "deleted" as a contact by virtue of his election to the U.S. Senate.
Like other conservative Southern journalists, Helms followed Hoover's lead in trying to discredit civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and his movement as communist-influenced.
In numerous Viewpoint editorials broadcast on WRAL, Helms tied King to communism.
In December, 1964, when Hoover described King as the most notorious liar in the country, Helms defended Hoover and criticized King's wild statements according to Helms' biographer William A. Link.
The files also contain a few instances where the FBI was called upon to investigate matters pertaining to Helms' campaigns and his political activities.
In 1978, the FBI received third-hand information that Helms' campaign was paying blacks $50 not to vote. The information suggested that former Raleigh Mayor Clarence Lightner had handled some of the money.
Lightner died in 2002. His son, Bruce, who has seen the investigative file, called the allegations "ridiculous."
"The one thing that you need to keep in mind is that black folks would not do anything to help Helms," Bruce Lightner said.
Carter Wrenn, a political consultant who managed the 1978 campaign, laughed when he heard the allegations. "That's a fairy tale," he said.
Two years earlier, the FBI had looked into a newspaper report that Helms had illegally used a congressional room for a fundraiser on behalf of a Montana U.S. Senate candidate, Stanley C. Burger. The FBI launched a "preliminary inquiry," and the files indicate it ended there.
The files also show that Helms sought the FBI's help in determining whether he was spied on by U.S. intelligence agencies when he made an official visit to Chile in 1986. The country was at the time governed by a controversial dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who Helms supported.
The files did not indicate that the FBI confirmed the spying.
