‘RETURN TO SENDER’: THIRTEEN REASONS WHY CLINTON SHOULD TAKE SENATE’S HINT, DROP HALPERIN NOMINATION

(Washington, D.C.): President Clinton
has been offered a face-saving mechanism
for cutting his losses on the
preposterous nomination of Morton
Halperin to a senior Defense Department
post: The Senate has returned the
nominee’s paperwork to the White House
prior to its departure for the end-of-
year recess. This is a procedure
sometimes used when the upper house of
Congress recesses for longer than thirty
days without having completed action on a
presidential appointment.

In the wake of Friday’s hearing on the
Halperin nomination, the Center for
Security Policy believes Mr.
Clinton would be well advised to seize
this opportunity to spare his presidency
the further damage sure to flow from this
appointment by declining to resubmit it
when Congress reconvenes in January.
Consider the following, illustrative
“baker’s dozen” reasons for
such a tactical retreat:

1. Halperin’s performance:
   In nine hours of often grueling
   cross-examination, the nominee
   failed to allay serious concerns
   about his past judgment, his
   future policy recommendations and
   his integrity in accurately
   representing both. Clearly, if
   the nomination is resubmitted,
   much more of the same is in store
   for Dr. Halperin.
2. The votes aren’t there
   for confirmation: Only
   two Committee Democrats
   expressed strong support for the
   Halperin nomination, Sens. Ted
   Kennedy of Massachusetts and Carl
   Levin of Michigan. Meanwhile, all
   ten Republicans on the panel
   evinced serious reservations
   about Halperin in statements,
   questions or both.
3. Sen. Nunn ‘broke the
   code’: In a particularly
   telling exchange, the Armed
   Services Committee’s influential
   chairman, Sen. Sam Nunn (D-GA),
   conveyed deep skepticism about
   Halperin’s representations as the
   nominee sought to explain away
   his repeated, categorical
   denunciations of covert
   operations.
4. Halperin’s misconduct
   while awaiting confirmation:
   Sen. Nunn also established that
   Halperin had conducted himself in
   a manner flagrantly inconsistent
   with government-wide regulations,
   departmental procedures and the
   Committee’s direction regarding
   pre-confirmation activity.
5. Halperin caught in at
   least one lie: Sen.
   Trent Lott (R-MS) demonstrated
   that Halperin had lied to the
   Committee in declaring in
   response to written questions
   that he had taken no personnel
   actions while awaiting
   confirmation when, in fact, he
   had on at least one
   occasion.
6. Pattern of tortured
   explanations of stances:
   As with his explanations of his
   position on covert operations,
   Halperin was repeatedly reduced
   to asserting that the clear
   meaning of his statements was
   being misunderstood or
   misconstrued. After listening to
   this absurd contention again and
   again, 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.
7. The Agee Connection:
   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. In
   fact, Halperin and Agee had
   myriad 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.
8. Halperin’s Involvement 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.
9. The Documents Problem:
   Halperin underwent withering
   cross-examination by Sen. Dirk
   Kempthorne (R-ID) about documents
   that had belatedly been supplied
   to the Senate in the days leading
   up to Friday’s hearing. In
   response to question after
   question 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.

Worse yet for the nominee, the
Senate’s deferral for at least
two months of any further action
on the Halperin nomination makes
it likely that the pounding Sen.
Kempthorne gave Morton Halperin
is just a foretaste of what is to
come. The Administration appears
to have calculatedly withheld
many of the documents requested
by the Armed Services Committee
over the past few months until
9:07 the night before the hearing
in order to prevent senators from
asking questions about their
contents. With ample time now
provided for a close examination
of these documents, more
difficulties are sure to arise.

10. The ‘Musical Chairs’
    Problem: As several
    senators pointed out, as a result
    of legislative action taken by
    the Congress in connection with
    the FY 1994 defense bills, there
    are now three Assistant Secretary
    of Defense (ASD) nominations for
    two available ASD billets.
    Halperin had no convincing answer
    to the obvious question: How can
    we confirm you when it is not
    clear you will have a position to
    fill?
11. The ‘Why in the
    Pentagon?’ Problem: A
    related question was raised by
    several crucial Democratic
    senators, notably Sens. John
    Glenn of Ohio and Joseph
    Lieberman of Connecticut: Why
    should there be a senior post for
    “Democracy and
    Peacekeeping” in the Defense
    Department, instead of the State
    Department where such matters are
    traditionally handled? Both
    members seemed to find
    unpersuasive Halperin’s rationale
    about the imperatives of
    bureaucratic politics.
12. The Holes in Halperin’s
    Biography: A
    particularly troubling aspect of
    the Halperin candidacy received
    only oblique treatment as part of
    the tough questioning engaged in
    by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)
    concerning the Halperin-Agee
    connection. It is safe to bet,
    however, that Halperin’s
    leadership position in such
    dubious organizations as the
    Campaign to Stop Government
    Spying, the Campaign for
    Political Rights and the Project
    on National Security and Civil
    Liberties — and his failure to
    mention those responsibilities in
    the biography circulated on his
    behalf by the Pentagon — will
    feature prominently in any future
    hearings.
13. The Kanter Scandal:
    Also scarcely addressed in this
    hearing, but sure to be a focus
    for future Senate deliberations,
    was a revelation in Friday’s Washington
    Times. The paper reported
    that one of Halperin’s principal
    advocates — Arnold Kanter — is
    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. This
    apparent, egregious conflict of
    interest should be the subject of
    a Defense Department Inspector
    General’s investigation before
    the Committee is asked to
    consider this nomination further.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
believes that the foregoing provide ample
basis for the Clinton Administration to
wish to avoid further Senate
consideration of this nomination. If
Morton Halperin does not have the good
sense — or grace — to spare President
Clinton and Secretary of Defense Les
Aspin the bloodletting sure to follow
from this first hearing, he should be
asked by them (or their advisors) to have
his name withdrawn.

There is, of course, the danger that
the Clinton Administration will make the
same mistake that Halperin has urged upon
the Senate — namely to listen only
to his friends in evaluating his
record, rather than those who are in a
position more dispassionately to evaluate
his judgment and recommendations. Should
the Administration do so, the opposition
to this nomination will only intensify
and the personal costs to President
Clinton will likewise increase
dramatically.

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