The “Halperin Syndrome”: Clinton Appointees’ Antipathy To CIA, Military Sets Stage For Debacles In Haiti, Beyond

The world is now being treated to the spectacle of a U.S. president determinedly pursuing a policy toward Haiti predicated upon a man whom the American intelligence community believes to be a psychotic manic depressive and involving a use of the armed forces opposed by senior military commanders. Unfortunately, the bizarre overinvestment by the Clinton Administration in Jean-Bertrand Aristide is not an isolated incident. Rather, it seems the product of a dangerous predisposition shared by many of Mr. Clinton’s senior security policy advisors, and perhaps by the President himself.

While much of the focus to date has been on a dubious commitment to multilateralism that is rife in the senior echelons of the Clinton Administration, another — arguably more insidious — mindset appears to be at work: a deep-seated mistrust of, if not outright contempt for, the Central Intelligence Agency, its sister organizations and the American military. Unless there are wholesale changes in the Administration’s foreign and defense policy team, it is predictable that such a predisposition will produce even more serious and expensive debacles for the United States than that entailed in trying to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power and to assure his survival once there.

The Halperin Syndrome

For want of a better term, this mindset might be called the "Halperin syndrome" since Morton Halperin, Mr. Clinton’s nominee to become the top Pentagon policy-maker responsible for democracy-building and peacekeeping in places like Somalia and Haiti, epitomizes the phenomenon. In over two decades of public advocacy and agitation prior to beginning work on the Clinton Defense transition team in 1992, Halperin repeatedly and unambiguously made clear his low regard for what he has called the "massive undemocratic national security structure [that] was erected during the Cold War."

In particular, Halperin has consistently excoriated the U.S. intelligence community. To cite but a few illustrative examples from Halperin’s copious writings, public statements and congressional testimony on the subject (emphasis added throughout):

"Using secret intelligence agencies to defend a constitutional republic is akin to the ancient medical practice of employing leeches to take blood from feverish patients. The intent is therapeutic, but in the long run the cure is more deadly than the disease. Secret intelligence agencies are designed to act routinely in ways that violate the laws or standards of society." (The Lawless State: The Crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies, 1976)

 

"You can never preclude abuses by intelligence agencies and, therefore, that is a risk that you run if you decide to have intelligence agencies. I think there is a very real tension between a clandestine intelligence agency and a free society. I think we accepted it for the first time during the Cold War period and I think in light of the end of the Cold War we need to assess a variety of things at home, including secret intelligence agencies, and make sure that we end the Cold War at home as we end it abroad." (MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, July 23, 1991)

 

Halperin concluded a favorable review of CIA turncoat Philip Agee’s book Inside the Company: CIA Diary by pronouncing: "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." (Center for National Security Studies newsletter First Principles, September 1975)

Halperin as Policy-maker

Even though Morton Halperin has yet to be confirmed as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Democracy and Peacekeeping, he has been one of the principal authors of the Clinton policy toward Haiti. It is hardly surprising that a man with such a low opinion of the U.S. intelligence community would be inclined to give short shrift to warning signs produced by that community.

What is more, Halperin has recently been implicated in two decisions that suggest an equally cavalier attitude toward the American military. Notwithstanding formal denials by Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, there are persistent reports that Halperin contributed to the decision not to approve the repeated requests for additional armor to support U.S. armed forces deployed in Somalia on the grounds that doing so would not square with the Administration’s political agenda. This decision contributed to the loss of 18 American servicemen in Mogadishu on 3 October.

While Halperin’s exact pre-confirmation role in that tragic episode remains a matter of dispute, his reported involvement in the Somalia decision is of a piece with another confirmed instance of subordinating military requirements to a perceived political agenda: According to yesterday’s Washington Times, Halperin has acknowledged asking that a joint U.S.-Guatemalan exercise be terminated prematurely to protest the alleged involvement of Guatemala’s military in the escape of an individual convicted of killing an American. This direction was, properly, ignored by the U.S. military as it came outside of the normal chain of command and from someone who — by virtue of being only a consultant — had no authority to issue such guidance.

The Halperin Syndrome and Clinton Policy Toward Haiti

Morton Halperin’s disdainful attitude toward the U.S. intelligence community and the American military appears to be shared by other Administration officials, as well. At the very least, such widely shared sentiments seem to be driving factors regarding the Clinton policy toward Haiti.

As President Clinton, himself, put it on 22 October: "The CIA would be the first to tell you that they get a lot of information. It’s not always accurate. It’s not always determinable." The unsaid implication of this statement: In the case of the intelligence community’s assessment of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, its information is simply inaccurate.

And yet, the information being thus discounted is compelling. According to press accounts of the congressional briefings presented in recent days by a 30-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (who has served for the past three years as its senior national intelligence officer for Latin America), Aristide takes medicine to treat "psychotic manic depression" which can have such symptoms as suicidal tendencies, delusions of persecution and hallucinations. The briefing also confirmed reports that while president of Haiti, Aristide encouraged the "necklacing" of his political opponents, the practice of lighting gasoline-laden tires placed around the victim’s neck. Aristide said of necklacing:

"What a beautiful tool, what a beautiful instrument, what a beautiful device, it’s beautiful, yes, it’s beautiful, it’s cute, it’s pretty, it has a good smell. Wherever you go you want to inhale it."(1)

 

Importantly, according to the 24 October edition of the Washington Post, the briefing represented "the consensus judgment of the entire spy community, including the Intelligence and Research branch of the State Department." On Thursday, CIA Director James Woolsey endorsed the conclusions of the briefing before members of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Speaking on ABC-TV’s "This Week" on Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole said that the CIA briefing unearthed "very disturbing" information about Aristide’s mental stability, his treatment of political opponents and his "commitment to democracy." Sen. Dole averred that, in light of what he had heard, he "certainly wouldn’t risk one American life to put him back in power."

Don’t Bother Me With the Facts

Two particularly noteworthy manifestations of the Halperin syndrome have recently been reported. According to the 25 October edition of U.S. News and World Report, Phil Peters, a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Inter-American Affairs called the CIA accusations about Aristide’s mental health part of "a full-scale attack on the President’s policy." According to Peters, the Pentagon (i.e., the uniformed military — as opposed to Halperin and the civilian leadership) and other agencies "don’t think it is worth doing anything to reinstate Aristide, despite the fact that President Clinton decided on that course."

Meanwhile, syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak reported yesterday that Deputy National Security Adviser Sandy Berger angrily ordered the Pentagon to proceed to deploy the USS Harlan County to Haiti three weeks ago over the objections of senior military commanders who were recommending a postponement of its embarkation. Berger is said to have overruled the military — setting the stage for the ensuing embarrassing withdrawal of the vessel in the face of a small number of armed protesters — on the grounds that "We committed ourselves publicly in the campaign, and we’re going to do it."

If Michael Barnes Says It’s So…

Such is the influence of the Halperin syndrome that Clinton Administration officials who exhibit its symptoms are prepared to rely upon the self-serving judgments of interested parties — rather than the findings of U.S. intelligence. As President Clinton himself put it on 22 October: "No one knows whether [the CIA’s allegations about President Aristide’s mental illness] were true or not" but that the "sustained experience" of U.S. advisers working with Mr. Aristide "tended to undermine those reports."

One of those advisers upon whom the President and his staff are apparently relying is the former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, Michael Barnes. Rep. Barnes has recently been playing a highly visible role as a witness to President Aristide’s mental fitness. He has gone so far as to claim that Mr. Aristide "has not suffered from nor been treated for any mental problems." Rep. Barnes may have at least as compelling — and certainly a far more tangible — stake than Mr. Clinton in arriving at such a conclusion, however: He is reportedly receiving $50,000 per month to serve as counsel for President Aristide.

The Bottom Line

What has become evident in both the Somalia and Haiti debacles is that the Clinton Administration is prepared to discount the advice of the U.S. intelligence community and the military, a modus operandi that has already had tragically fatal consequences in the first case and humiliating effects in the second. Unless a thorough housecleaning of those prone to such attitudes is accomplished at once, it seems inevitable that additional — and probably more serious — disasters lie ahead.

This is not to say that the intelligence community is infallible or that civilian control of the military should not be exercised. It is, however, to say that the nation is poorly served by an Administration staffed in key positions by those who have an ill-concealed, visceral and apparently immutable distrust of the U.S. intelligence agencies and the armed forces as institutions and of their activities. Such individuals are unlikely to be able either to utilize the products of intelligence properly or to exercise the kind of effective civilian control of the military that is clearly required.

The Center for Security Policy believes, in addition, that an urgent effort should be made to declassify — and present publicly — the CIA analysis of Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s mental health and his record with regard to democracy during his brief presidency. The fullest possible transparency is in order before the American people are asked to entrust additional American lives, treasure and prestige to policy-makers who have already demonstrated proclivities that could result in a further squandering of these precious assets.

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1. Incredibly, some of Aristide’s defenders contend that this statement was actually made in reference to the Haitian constitution adopted during his brief presidency.