‘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.
  10. 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.

  11. 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?
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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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Center for Security Policy

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