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He was present at the meeting with Dulles and President Kennedy at which the new President was briefed on covert action in Cuba, but neither Dulles nor Bissell mentioned the assassination operation that was underway.

The failures to make forthright disclosures to policymakers continued during the time that Richard Helms was DDP. Helms' failure to inform McCone about the underworld operation when it was reactivated under Harvey and poison pills were sent to Cuba was a grave error in judgment, and Helms' excuses are unpersuasive. In May of 1962, the Attorney General was told that the CIA's involvement in an assassination plot had terminated with the Bay of Pigs. Not only did Edwards, who had briefed the Attorney General, know that the operation had not been terminated, but Helms did not inform the Attorney General that the operation was still active when he learned that the Attorney General had been misled. Helms did not inform McCone of the plot until August 1962, and did so then in a manner which indicated that the plot had been terminated before McCone became Director. Helms' denial that AM/LASH had been involved in an assassination attempt in response to Secretary of State Rusk's inquiries was, as Helms testified, "not truthful".

When Helms briefed President Johnson on the Castro plots, he apparently described the activities that had occurred during prior administrations but did not describe the AM/LASH opera-

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