‘HOLD EVERYTHING’: SENATE’S DEFERRAL OF ACTION ON TALBOTT SHOULD FOCUS NEW ATTENTION ON HALPERIN
(Washington, D.C.): The U.S. Senate
today agreed to postpone floor debate on
the controversial nomination of Strobe
Talbott to become Deputy Secretary of
State until after the upcoming
congressional recess. By so doing, the
Senate has afforded critics not only a
important new opportunity to contest this
appointment. It has also provided a focus
for revisiting unfinished business
concerning an even more deplorable
presidential appointment — that of
Morton Halperin to become a Senior
Director for Democracy at the National
Security Council.
Every Administration utilizes
different bureaucratic arrangements to
develop national security policy. Some
prove more conducive to maintaining a
strong defense posture and effective
foreign policy than others. Rarely,
however, has there been an Administration
as ill-equipped and ill-disposed
to such priorities as the present one.
This is due in no small measure to the
disproportionate influence enjoyed by the
Clinton National Security Council and
State Department. As a practical
matter, the Pentagon is being relegated
to the back-benches of security
policy-making, a phenomenon greatly
exacerbated by the ascension of a technocrat
as Secretary of Defense. Consequently,
concerns about the judgment and policy
recommendations of the personnel assigned
to the NSC and State Department take on
increased importance and require
intensified scrutiny from the Congress
and the public.
Talbott Does Not Pass
Muster
Unfortunately, Strobe Talbott’s
judgment about major security policy
issues has been seriously flawed for many
years, notably with respect to his
reflexive deference to the Soviet Union
and contempt for Israel. Over the first
year of the Clinton Administration,
moreover, Talbott has been closely
associated with policy recommendations
that have reduced American power and
influence in the world and led to serious
reverses for U.S. interests overseas.
In addition, Talbott’s commitment to
genuine democracy is — to put it
charitably — a “sometime
thing.” It is bizarre, and possibly
dangerous, to reward such an individual
with a position of enormous
responsibility in the American
government.
Mort Halperin: Cut From the
Same Cloth
Even more appalling is the prospect
that an individual with Dr. Halperin’s
dubious judgment, deplorable record of
misbegotten policy recommendations and
general untrustworthiness might be
permitted to continue to contribute to
Clinton security decisions. This is
especially so given that he will
now be doing so from a position whose
activities are largely concealed from
public scrutiny and congressional
oversight.
In fact, the Center for Security
Policy believes that the
implications of President Clinton’s
appointment of Morton Halperin to such a
post on the National Security Council are
so grave as to require an immediate
reopening by the Senate of lines of
inquiry broken off when Dr. Halperin
asked that his nomination to become an
Assistant Secretary of Defense be
withdrawn. These include the
following issue areas:
- Halperin’s lack of
candor: Halperin
reinforced Senators’
apprehensions about his
truthfulness repeatedly in the
course of his nine-hour hearing
before the Senate Armed Services
Committee last November. Indeed,
Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS)
established that Halperin had
dissembled to the Committee in
declaring in response to written
questions that he had taken no
personnel actions while awaiting
confirmation. In fact, he had
done so on at least one occasion.(1) - Halperin’s pattern of
dissembling: As with his
implausible explanations of his
position on covert operations,
Halperin was reduced again and
again to asserting that the clear
meaning of his published writings
and public statements was being
misunderstood or misconstrued.
After listening to this absurd
contention repeatedly, an
exasperated Sen. Lott finally
responded by saying the problem
was not that Halperin’s views
were being misperceived, but
rather that they were being
understood too well. - Halperin’s disregard for
government policies and
regulations: Sen. Nunn
also established that Halperin
had, while awaiting confirmation,
routinely conducted himself in a
manner flagrantly inconsistent
with government-wide regulations,
Defense Department procedures and
the Committee’s explicit
direction regarding
pre-confirmation activity.
Although Halperin testified that
“Since May, I have been
scrupulous in following the
expanded guidelines provided by
the General Counsel of the
Department,” there is ample
evidence to the contrary. - Halperin’s
misrepresentations concerning his
involvement with a notorious
traitor, Philip Agee:
During the hearing, Halperin
egregiously misrepresented his
relationship with Philip Agee,
the CIA turncoat who made a
career out of revealing the
identities of U.S. covert
operatives. At one point,
Halperin declared that he had had
no personal or professional
relationship with Agee apart from
once testifying on his behalf at
a British deportation hearing. - Halperin’s
misrepresentations concerning his
role in the ‘Pentagon Papers’
Affair: No less
disingenuous was Halperin’s flat
assertion to the Committee that
he had nothing to do with the
disclosure by Daniel Ellsberg of
highly classified materials
concerning the Vietnam war. At
the very least, Halperin was
aware that Ellsberg — who was
living in his house for part of
the period in question — was
leaking information about the
Pentagon Papers, and did
nothing to stop it. Halperin
went on to spend over five months
leading a team of 40 lawyers in
defending Ellsberg against
federal prosecution for this
leak. - Halperin’s dubious policy
recommendations: It
appears that the Clinton
Administration cynically
manipulated the Senate Armed
Services Committee’s access to
official documents bearing on the
Halperin candidacy so as to
prevent them from being properly
considered as part of the
advise-and-consent process. For
example, many of these documents
— which had been sought by the
Committee for weeks — were only
made available to it at 9:00
p.m. the evening before
Halperin’s hearing. - The holes in Halperin’s
biography: A
particularly troubling aspect of
the Halperin candidacy to hold
high office is the fact that he
formerly led such dubious
organizations as the Campaign to
Stop Government Spying, the
Campaign for Political Rights and
the Project on National Security
and Civil Liberties. No less
disturbing is his failure to
mention those past incarnations
in the biography circulated on
his behalf by the Pentagon. The
question must be asked: Could he
have been similarly selective in
submitting information required
to obtain a security clearance
and access to highly sensitive
information? - Halperin’s apparent
ethical misconduct: There
is also evidence that Halperin
may have engaged in unethical
behavior while awaiting Senate
confirmation to the Defense
Department job. It has been
reported in the press that an
individual who played a prominent
role as an advocate for the
Halperin candidacy for that
position, Arnold Kanter, was
awarded an $82,000 contract last
May to do some work at the RAND
Corporation on peacekeeping and
related policy issues. The
awarding office at the Pentagon
was none other than Morton
Halperin’s Democracy and
Peacekeeping shop. What is more,
Kanter had two other contract
proposals worth $860,000 pending
with the Democracy and
Peacekeeping organization during
the period of his advocacy on
Halperin’s behalf.
Even the Armed Services
Committee’s influential chairman,
Sen. Sam Nunn (D-GA), was moved
to express deep skepticism about
Halperin’s representations after
listening to Halperin try to
explain away his repeated,
categorical denunciations of
covert operations: “Nobody
reading this article would ever
conclude that you had exceptions
to [your stated opposition to
these operations]. It just goes
on and on about secrecy and the
covert operation, and I think
that is what causes so many
people a problem.”
As a matter of fact,
Halperin’s behavior on this score
is the subject of an ongoing
official investigation by the
Defense Department’s Inspector
General. The conclusions of that
investigation should be made
public forthwith.
In fact, Halperin and Agee had
several connections, not the
least being the involvement of
Agee’s CounterSpy
Magazine as a member of the
Steering Committee of the
Campaign to Stop Government
Spying, an organization chaired
by Morton Halperin. Such
associations — and what they say
about Halperin’s judgment —
clearly make him unsuited for a
sensitive position at the NSC.
This was hardly the only
incident in which Halperin’s
handling of classified
information was a matter of
concern. In fact, he was
repeatedly investigated during
his previous stint of government
service in connection with leaks
of such information — and was
suspected of routinely doing so
by those responsible for
safeguarding that data. Insofar
as a position on the Clinton NSC
staff would give Halperin access
to extremely sensitive data, past
concerns about his protection of
classified materials take on new
relevance.
When, despite this
sandbagging, Sen. Dirk Kempthorne
(R-ID) closely questioned
Halperin about improper actions
or questionable policy
recommendations apparently
revealed by these
(as-yet-unreleased) documents,
Halperin was reduced to promising
to provide formal responses and
explanations for the record. To
date, none of the promised
materials has been made public.
They should be before Halperin is
permitted to spend one more day
on the government payroll taking
further official actions and
making still further policy
recommendations.
Unsuitable for Any
National Security Position
Had Morton Halperin’s nomination
papers been returned to the Senate Armed
Services Committee when the Senate
reconvened last month, it is clear that
this nominee would not
have been confirmed. Among the judgments
made of Mr. Halperin by senior members of
the Committee were the following:
- Sen. Thurmond:
“In the case of Mr.
Halperin, there is a compelling prima
facie case that he is
unsuited for any position in the
Pentagon….The cumulative weight
of his long record persuades me
and many others, including some
in his own party, that he is a
man of deeply flawed
judgment….Mr. Halperin has not
created an impression of
reliability or trustworthiness.
He has given evasive, incomplete,
misleading, and disingenuous
answers to our questions.” - Sen. McCain:
“Our concerns do not arise
out of personal, ideological, or
partisan political differences.
Rather they are the result of
profoundly disturbing questions
about Dr. Halperin’s judgment,
his credibility, and his
suitability to hold a position of
responsibility dealing with the
national security policy of the
United States.” - Sen. John Warner (R-VA):
“I do not perceive in you a
real solid center of gravity, or
to put it in the way of a sailor,
you do not have a centerboard.
You just do not have something
that keeps you right on a true
course. You swing back and forth.
Depending on the wind that blows,
you move. And it seems to me that
that legitimately puts in
question your qualifications to
take on these responsibilities
for the welfare of the men and
women of the Department of
Defense.” - Following the resignation
announcement of Secretary Les
Aspin, Sen. Nunn
intimated a distinct lack of
enthusiasm for resuming
consideration of the Halperin
nomination when he told a 16
December press conference that he
would expect that “the new
Secretary of Defense would want
to select some of his own
people.”
The Bottom Line
While the outright defeat of Strobe
Talbott’s nomination is warranted, at the
very least Senate action on it should
have been delayed as long as
Halperin remains on the government
payroll. By so doing, conscientious
Senators would simultaneously have
limited the damage the former could do —
while creating new leverage clearly
needed to prevent the latter from being
able to do any at all.
With its decision to postpone debate
on the Talbott nomination — but to set a
time certain for on 22 February for
conducting it — however, the Senate has
at least given its members and their
constituents a fresh opportunity to
review both men’s judgment, records and
conduct to date. For the country’s sake,
we can only hope that such a review does
indeed occur, and spares us further
government disservice by Strobe
Talbott and Morton Halperin.
– 30 –
1. Halperin’s
reply to the Senator was instructive:
“It is my signature. I did sign it.
I do not recall it. And I would certainly
characterize it as inconsistent with the
directives, and I think it falls within
the category of actions which I now
understand exceeded the authority and
appropriate behavior of a
consultant.”
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