Pentagon Nominee Denies Radical Links

Morton H. Halperin, his nomination to a top Pentagon job in limbo for eight months, Friday denied charges by conservative Republicans that he is a dangerous radical and declared: “There is no higher calling than to serve this nation.”

Halperin’s comments came at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that marked the first public action on his qualifications since his nomination in March by President Clinton for the new post of assistant secretary of defense for democracy and peacekeeping. Republicans on the panel had hoped to bottle up the appointment without ever bringing it to a vote.

Halperin’s chief accuser, Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), called him “a man of deeply flawed judgment” who supported a laundry list of radical causes as an employee of liberal think tanks and the American Civil Liberties Union.

A one-time Pentagon “whiz kid,” Halperin has been out of government since he resigned from Henry A. Kissinger’s National Security Council staff in 1970 to protest the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.

“Over the past several months, in an effort to suggest that I am not the right person for this position, a number of charges have been made about my beliefs and activities which are simply false,” Halperin said. “They are in some cases made out of whole cloth. In others, they result from wrenching sentences out of context and building tales around them.

“I have been accused of aiding Daniel Elsberg in the disclosure of the Pentagon papers,” he said. “That is false. I did not assist him and had no (advance) knowledge of his disclosure of the Pentagon papers.” The papers, a secret history of the Vietnam War, were leaked to newspapers in 1971 by Elsberg, a former Pentagon official.

“I have been accused of aiding Philip Agee in the disclosure of the identities of intelligence agents and advocating the disclosure of such identities,” he added. “That is false. I never assisted Philip Agee in these efforts and I have condemned such action by him and others.” Agee, a former CIA operative, wrote exposes of the intelligence organization in which he revealed the identities of many undercover agents.

“More recently, I have been accused of traveling abroad for secret meetings with terrorists,” he said. “That is false. I had no such meetings and I believe there are no documents in the CIA suggesting that I had.”

Thurmond, the senior Republican on the committee, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) opened the hearing by reciting Halperin’s activities in opposition to the Vietnam War and repeating statements, most of them from the 1970s, accusing the Pentagon and the CIA of illegal and improper activities.

“He has a distorted view of the nature of conflict and international affairs and has taken irresponsible positions well outside the mainstream of defense thinking,” Thurmond said.

“Since we are convinced (that) he already has and will in the future put American lives and interests in jeopardy, we have a constitutional and moral obligation to oppose him,” the lawmaker added.

Halperin, a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the mid-1960s at age 26, said that he originally sought a government career because of a belief “that the United States was different, that we had no desire to conquer or to exploit others, that we wanted only to live in a world in which all people shared our right to liberty and to opportunity.”

“I still believe that there is no higher calling than to serve this nation, to defend its interests and to promote its ideals,” he said.

Halperin may be best known for a 19-year-long legal battle with Kissinger. Shortly after resigning from Kissinger’s staff, Halperin filed a suit accusing his former boss of wiretapping his phone. He dropped the action, which never came to trial, after Kissinger issued an apology.