Former Republican NC Sen. Jesse Helms dies at 86

"When he wrote his book, 'Here's Where I Stand,' I felt no book was needed," said North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who won Helms' seat after he retired in 2002. "(My husband) Bob would say, 'You don't have to look under the table for Jesse. You always knew where Jesse is.'"

But Helms wasn't entirely inflexible, especially in his later years in the Senate, where he worked with Democrats to restructure the foreign policy bureaucracy and pay back debts to the United Nations, an organization he disdained for most of his career. After years of clashes with gay activists, he softened his views on AIDS and advocated greater federal funding to fight the disease in Africa and elsewhere overseas, and in doing so, struck up an enduring and unlikely friendship with U2 frontman Bono.

"There was trouble in my band for even having the meeting with the senator," Bono said in a 2008 documentary, recalling the objections of his bandmate, Edge. "And I said, 'It's worse than that, Edge. He's coming to the gig.' He said, 'There's no way Jesse Helms is coming to the U2 show and I said, 'He is.'"

At the show, Helms marveled at the U2 fans waving their hands like a field of corn blowing in the wind. "He said, 'I had to turn my hearing aid down, in fact I had to turn it off,'" Bono said.

Helms served as chairman of the Agriculture and Foreign Relations committees at times when the GOP held the Senate majority. He used the posts to protect his state's tobacco growers and other farmers, and placed his stamp on foreign policy with a strident opposition to Communism.

"Under his leadership, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was a powerful force for freedom," said President Bush. "And today, from Central America to Central Europe and beyond, people remember: in the dark days when the forces of tyranny seemed on the rise, Jesse Helms took their side."

He took a dim view of many arms control treaties, and supported the contras in Nicaragua as well as the right-wing government of El Salvador. He opposed the Panama Canal treaties that then-President Carter pushed through a reluctant Senate in 1977.

As Fidel Castro's fierce critic, Helms helped create legislation in 1996 to strengthen U.S. restrictions against the Caribbean island's communist government. The Helms-Burton law bars the United States from normalizing relations with Cuba as long as Castro or his brother Raul--who has been president since February--are involved in the island nation's government.

In his memoirs, Helms made clear that his opinions on other issues had hardly moderated since he left office. He likened abortion to the Holocaust and the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

"I will never be silent about the death of those who cannot speak for themselves," he wrote in "Here's Where I Stand."