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ASPIN'S DANGEROUS PENTAGON CHOICE -- [FROM HUMAN EVENTS, FEB. 13, 1993] (Extension of Remarks - March 17, 1993)

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• Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, throughout his campaign, President Clinton portrayed himself as a New Democrat. He claimed that he was leading a new generation of Democrats who had abandoned the tax-and-spend economics and dovish military policies of their predecessors, and who were ready to defend American interests around the world and pave the way for a sustained economic expansion.

• While this new breed may yet emerge, it is important that the American people know that Clinton has yet to change his stripes. Instead of new blood to bring fresh ideas to his administration, Clinton has appointed a huge number of Washington insiders and Carter-era retreads.

• An appointment that causes me great concern is that of Morton Halperin as a top assistant to Secretary of Defense Les Aspin. Were Halperin only a Carter retread, his nomination would not be nearly so disturbing. Unfortunately, it appears that he has devoted his life to activities which are unacceptable for an official of the Department of Defense.

• I urge the Senate to take a close hard look at Halperin's career before taking action on his nomination. I believe it is likely that they will not like what they see. I have submitted for the Record an article from the February 13, 1993, edition of Human Events, which provides a brief synopsis of his exploits, including efforts to end all U.S. intelligence gathering activities, congressional testimony on behalf of radical leftwing groups, and involvement in a case where a U.S. agent was assassinated shortly after being exposed by Halperin's magazine.

• Halperin's nomination raises serious questions, and should be reviewed very carefully. Either Halperin has become a new man, or President Clinton's new Democrat looks an awful lot like the old one.

Defense Secretary Les Aspin, in his effort to reshape the Pentagon's policymaking machinery, has picked the curious figure of Morton Halperin to be one of his top assistants. Halperin, however, is no `New Democrat,' but a far-left civil libertarian who made his mark during the Cold War attempting to undermine America's key national security agencies, including the CIA, the FBI and the Pentagon.

Until recently the director of the ACLU's Washington office, Halperin has championed the activities of Philip Agee, the pro-Communist CIA renegade, testified on behalf of `Pentagon Papers' leaker Daniel Ellsberg and generally waged an unholy war against America's intelligence community.

`If confirmed by the Senate for the job of assistant secretary dealing with democracy and human rights,' reported the Washington Post, `Halperin would handle questions such as how and when the Administration should employ force specifically to promote democracy or humanitarian aims.'

But judging from the folks he's been running around with, Halperin could very well be pushing policies to `employ force' against what he considers to be `right-wing' governments, even though friendly to the United States, or on behalf of left-wing groups such as Nelson Mandela's African National Congress.

Moreover, many in the national security field are outraged that Halperin--who was backed the most brazen and damaging intelligence leaks and leakers--will now have access to our most super-sensitive Pentagon secrets.

Halperin's embrace of Agee, who teamed up with the Communists to `expose' the CIA and its agents, is a case in point. As Francis J. McNamara noted in our Dec. 29, 1984, issue, Halperin favorably reviewed Agee's virulently anti-CIA book, Inside the Company: A CIA Diary, without even revealing that Agee thanked the Cuban Communist party for the assistance it had given him in preparing his book.

Nor did he reveal that the book--as part of Agee's effort to `out' CIA agents everywhere and thus render them both ineffective and vulnerable to foreign pressures--contained the names and identities of over 700 people in all parts of the world who Agee insisted were CIA officers, agents and cooperators.

Halperin has called for dissolving the CIA covert career service, tagged the CIA as `the subverter of everybody else's freedom' and declared it `an open question' whether the CIA and other U.S. intelligence services would turn to assassinating American citizens.

In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in 1978, Halperin assailed the CIA for its handling of the news about the December 1975 murder of Athens station chief Richard Welch, committed shortly after the magazine CounterSpy had identified Welch as a CIA intelligence officer.

Halperin claimed the CIA had waged a `disinformation' campaign against both Agee and CounterSpy, then Agee's principal weapon to expose covert U.S. intelligence personnel in foreign lands. He not only denied CounterSpy played any role in Welch's assassination, but said `it is difficult to condemn people' who expose our agents.

Agee, McNamara wrote, `was in hot water after the assassination of * * * Welch. He was afraid to return to the U.S. and he was being expelled from one European country after another because of his continuing contacts with Communist-bloc intelligence agents.'

Nevertheless, McNamara went on, `Halperin traveled to London early in 1977 in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Agee's deportation from England. While there, he said he hoped to arrange a U.S. speaking tour for Agee if he returned to this country.

`Agee's second book, Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe, reprinted an anti-CIA pro-CounterSpy article,

• `CIA News Management,' Halperin had written for the Washington Post. Halperin has testified against all bills that would criminalize Agee's activities in exposing the identities of U.S. intelligence personnel, including the one finally enacted in 1982.'

• But Halperin has done more to damage U.S. intelligence gathering. The following passage from McNamara's 1984 article suggests just how much damage he did--or was willing to do:

• `In 1970, the ACLU decided to undertake a nationwide drive against U.S. intelligence agencies and operations. That same year, it created the Committee for Public Justice (CPJ) to spearhead the drive against the FBI and Department of Justice. The CPJ was headed by playwright Lillian Hellman, the unrepentant `ex'-Communist and whitewasher of the CP who, when she died, left part of her $4-million estate for the establishment of a fund for Communist writers. Halperin has served on the CPJ's executive council, newsletter committee and written for its newsletter.

• `Early in 1974, the ACLU Foundation and the Fund for Peace jointly set up in Washington the Center for National Security Studies (CNSS) as the research, information and documentation center for its national anti-intelligence campaign. Its first director was Robert Borosage of the pro-Marxist think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). He soon returned to the IPS, however, and Halperin succeeded him as director of the CNSS, a post he has held ever since.

• `The ACLU next created a Project on National Security and Civil Liberties as the litigating arm of its anti-intelligence campaign. Halperin became * * * the director of that project.

• `In 1975, still another instrument was created, a monthly, First Principles, to serve as a news, propaganda and agitation weapon for the campaign. Halperin became its chief editorial writer. Technically, it is published by the CNSS, which Halperin directs.

• `Something more was needed to round out the ACLU anti-security operation--a nationwide coalition or `united front' of anti-intelligence groups to exert political pressure on both the local and national levels.

• `Borosage, supported by the IPS, ACLU, CNSS and the Communist National Lawyers Guild, set about organizing one in 1976. It emerged in 1977 as the Campaign to Stop Government Spying, with almost 50 member and cooperating groups. Halperin emerged as its chairperson and it soon began publishing a monthly, Organizing Notes, very similar in format and style to Halperin's First Principles.

• `In late 1978, the `Stop Government Spying' group changed its name to the more palatable `Campaign for Political Rights' (CPR). CPR member groups included a number of officially cited Communist fronts, as well as CounterSpy

`Halperin, as CNSS director, has filed numerous FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests in efforts to pry secrets out of the files of the CIA, NSA, DIA, FBI, National Security Council and other U.S. intelligence-security agencies. He has followed many of them up with lawsuits, and has encouraged others to do the same. He has followed the same course in the field of constitutional torts, suing for huge sums for alleged constitutional violations on the part of intelligence agencies and officials in the course of carrying out their information-gathering duties and has sought bans on their intelligence operations.

`Representing the CNSS and ACLU, Halperin has testified against virtually every bill introduced in the last decade to improve or strengthen American intelligence and for every bill that would have the opposite effect. It is doubtful that anyone in the nation--including the highest intelligence officials--have testified before Congress as frequently as he has on such national security issues. * * *

`Halperin would strip the intelligence agencies of the weapon which the courts, Congress and the executive have found to be essential to the achievement of their mission--secrecy. He would make public their budgets, ties with academics and other sources, control of proprietaries, etc. He would go so far as to compel disclosure not only of diplomatic negotiations, but all research on new weapons systems (such as the supersecret Manhattan Project which developed the A-bomb during World War II, saving untold numbers of American lives) and would even oppose CIA covert action taken to prevent Libyan director Muammar Qaddafi from sneaking nuclear weapons into New York harbor. All covert action by the CIA and other agencies would be brought to a halt.

`The FBI, if Halperin had his way, would not be allowed to investigate anything but crime. All domestic intelligence collection would cease--by law. All wiretapping, too, would be brought to a halt, even that used to catch spies and learn the intentions, plans and plots of nations hostile to this country.'

Halperin left his ACLU position and the Center for National Security Studies at the end of October 1992 to accept a post as senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a professorship at George Washington University. He remained as chairman of the CNSS Advisory Committee, though he will, presumably, leave that post now that he's been tapped by the Clinton Administration.

The question is, however, should such a person--who did so much in conjunction with the far left to cripple our national security--now be entitled to help implement it?

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