Accept No Substitutes: The Senate Must Determine The Truth About The Halperin-Agee Relationship

At today’s hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on President Clinton’s nomination of Morton Halperin to become the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Democracy and Peacekeeping, one fact looms large: The nominee aided and abetted a man who was arguably this century’s most notorious American traitor — Philip Agee — and is determined to conceal that fact.

Insofar as this odious chapter in Mr. Halperin’s past bears directly on the three aspects of his candidacy that will likely determine whether he is deemed suitable for such a highly sensitive Defense Department post — his judgment, his policy predilections and his integrity and trustworthiness — the Committee must insist upon the truth, and nothing but the truth, about the Halperin-Agee connection.

Halperin’s Assertions

The point of departure for such an inquiry should be representations made by the Department of Defense, and by Mr. Halperin himself, to the effect that the nominee crossed paths with the CIA-turncoat on only one occasion. For example, a document circulated on Mr. Halperin’s behalf by the Pentagon last August said:

"Halperin did nothing to aid and abet Philip Agee and others in their efforts to reveal the identities of covert agents. He expressed opposition to ‘naming names’ and support for legislation to make such actions criminal….The only time Halperin can be said to have assisted Agee was in 1975(1) when he travelled to England at the request of the Agee’s ACLU lawyer, to testify at his deportation hearing…." (Emphasis added.)

 

The Truth

The following data, however, provide irrefutable evidence that this statement and similar ones issued by Mr. Halperin and his defenders (like Jeremy Stone, Alton Frye and Arnold Kanter(2)) are erroneous and seriously misleading:

• CounterSpy Magazine was founded by Philip Agee and published by his organization, the Organizing Committee for the Fifth Estate (CO-5). In its 1975 annual report, CO-5 declared that it "had been instrumental in organizing several other organizations," one of which was "the Public Education Project on the Intelligence Community (PEPIC) — a year-long effort." Morton Halperin was listed as a member of PEPIC’s speakers bureau, all of whose members "will be donating their time, energy and fees to PEPIC to ensure its survival."

 

• The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in its 1977 annual report identified PEPIC as one of "several fronts" set up by Agee’ OC-5 to accomplish its objective of finding "those individuals with research or organizing abilities to join the Counter-Spy Team."

 

• As the attached article by Joshua Muravchik — a long-time Social Democrat who was a prominent supporter of Bill Clinton in his "New Democrat" candidate phase — makes clear, in September 1975, Morton Halperin favorably reviewed Agee’s first book Inside the Company: A CIA Diary. In this review, Mr. Halperin never mentioned that Agee thanked the Cuban Communist Party and government agencies for the "important encouragement" and "special assistance" they gave him in writing it.

 

• Nor did he mention that the book contained the names and identities of over 425 people all over the world alleged to be officers, agents or collaborators with the CIA. One of those named in Agee publications was Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens, who was murdered on 23 December 1975.

   

 

• Instead, Mr. Halperin gave full credence to Agee’s allegations of criminal misconduct by U.S. intelligence operatives overseas, asserting: "The only way to stop all of this is to dissolve the CIA covert career service and to bar the CIA from at least developing and allied nations."

   

• On 23 January 1977, Morton Halperin wrote an op.ed. for the Washington Post entitled "CIA News Management." The thrust of this article was to absolve Agee and CounterSpy of any blame for the murder of Richard Welch. The blame, according to Mr. Halperin, should have rested with the CIA and Welch, himself, for having failed properly to appreciate and act upon threats to his safety arising from his choice of residence.

 

• This exculpatory op.ed. was subsequently reprinted with permission in Agee’s second book entitled, Dirty Work.

 

• Then, in February 1977, Morton Halperin travelled to London to testify on Agee’s behalf in a proceeding that resulted — despite Mr. Halperin’s efforts — in Agee’s deportation from England. In his 1987 book, On the Run, Agee said, "Halperin concentrated [in this testimony] on the positive results brought by my revelations and those of others, and on the traditional abuse of the ‘national security’ cloak by security services."

 

• Morton Halperin, however, puts a much more benign face on his defense of Philip Agee. In the same August 1993 Defense Department document cited above, he contends that his "testimony was limited to urging the [British] citizen panel to look beyond the government’s assertion of harm to national security if Agee was allowed to remain in England, in order to determine what the actual reasons were [for the effort to deport him]."

   

• Halperin appeared at the House Intelligence Committee on 4 January 1978 at a hearing entitled "CIA and the Media." He used the occasion once again to blame Welch and the CIA for Welch’s murder and to whitewash Agee and CounterSpy.

 

• The Campaign for Political Rights (CPR, formerly the Campaign to Stop Government Spying) — chaired by Morton Halperin — included in the press kit for its 27 May 1982 public forum on "Covert Operations Against Nicaragua" an order form for both Dirty World and White Paper? Whitewash!, Agee’s third book.

 

• The CPR in its 16-page "Materials List," published in December 1978, under "Sources of Information" listed Agee’s Covert Action Information Bulletin as one valuable source.

 

• Organizing Notes (ON), a periodical published by CPR routinely included in its "Update" section a summary of the contents of Agee’s current issues of the Covert Action Information Bulletin (CAIB, the successor to CounterSpy Magazine). For example, see ON issues from July-August 1980, p. 12.; November 1980, p. 14; and July-August 1981, p. 14.

 

• Notably, ON featured an attack on the Supreme Court’s 29 June 1981 decision upholding the U.S. government’s denial of a passport to Philip Agee.

 

• Repeated claims by the nominee and his defenders to the contrary notwithstanding, Morton Halperin systematically opposed legislation designed to protect the identities of U.S. intelligence agents by criminalizing behavior like that engaged in by Philip Agee and his collaborators.(3)

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy believes that this record of involvement with and assistance to Philip Agee on the part of Mr. Halperin and the organizations he ran is directly relevant to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s deliberations today. This record bespeaks a chronic failure of judgment that should be sufficient to disqualify the nominee from so important a Pentagon post.

What is more, it suggests a reflexive predisposition to advocate policies that excessively favor the rights of individuals over the needs of the nation and its security. These may be laudable qualities in the director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. Such a predisposition is not, however, one to be sought in a senior Defense Department policy-maker.

Perhaps most troubling, however, is what Morton Halperin’s current efforts — and those of his partisans — to conceal or dissemble about his record of defending, assisting, publicizing or otherwise promoting Philip Agee’s treasonous activities says about the nominee’s integrity. If nothing else were sufficient to assure Mr. Halperin’s rejection by the Armed Services Committee and the Senate, his manifest dishonesty and unreliability surely should.

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1. Actually, this event occurred in 1977.

2. Today’s Washington Post reveals that Mr. Kanter — who thanks to his credentials as a former Bush Administration official has played a pivotal role in the effort to repackage Morton Halperin’s record — has what appears to be a serious conflict of interest. He is reportedly working at the Rand Corporation on an $82,000 contract with Mr. Halperin’s Pentagon office and has two other contract proposals worth $860,000 pending with the Democracy and Peacekeeping organization.

3. See in this regard, Morton Halperin’s testimony before the House Intelligence Committee 30 January 1980 (p.66) in opposition to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, H.R. 5615; his testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence of 25 June 1980 (p.87) in opposition to S.2216; his testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence of 5 September 1980 (p.119), in opposition to S.2216; his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee of 28 April 1981 (p.73) in opposition to H.R. 4, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act; and his testimony of 8 MAy 1981 before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (p.70) in opposition to S.391, the Intelligence Protection Act of 1981.