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NOMINATION OF MORTON HALPERIN -- HON. GERALD B.H. SOLOMON (Extension of Remarks - September 21, 1993)

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• Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, President Clinton has made a very ill-advised decision to nominate Morton Halperin to be Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy and Peacekeeping. A review of Mr. Halperin's record clearly displays that he is not one of the President's `New Democrats.' Indeed, Mr. Halperin is a typical new leftist, meaning, a far-left type.

• This can be seen in a 35-page pamphlet prepared by the Center for Security Policy, which exposes the reader to Mr. Halperin's thinking by quoting his past works. The dozens of quotations contained in this pamphlet leave no doubt as to Mr. Halperin's ultra-left leanings.

• Mr. Halperin has embraced all of the standard far-left causes and has associated with all of the standard far-left people and organizations of the past few decades. Many of his statements and activities seem downright dangerous for national security. I have no doubt in my mind that if Mr. Halperin were to apply for a security clearance through the normal procedures, he would be rejected. Yet in this position he will gain automatic access to our most sensitive material. This is reason enough to oppose this nomination.

• And in addition, Mr. Speaker, Morton Halperin and his ilk got it wrong on the cold war. Plain and simple, they got it wrong.

• It is not that Mr. Halperin got it wrong on one issue or had his facts wrong once or twice, it is that he and his leftist friends fundamentally misunderstood the forces that shaped our world during the cold war. He misunderstood the Soviet Union and its intentions. He misunderstood the Third World and the desires of people there. And he misunderstood his own country's role in that war.

• He saw our role as pernicious and immoral. But history has shown that our role was critical in containing and then rolling back the most destructive force in this century: international communism. Mr. Speaker, I believe it is more than proper to question the leadership ability of someone whose record shows such a lack of judgment and proportion. Today's world is actually more complex that the cold war era. If Mr. Halperin couldn't understand the world then, isn't it only prudent to question his ability to interpret the world today.

• Mr. Speaker, the President ought to withdraw his nomination, in the best interests of the entire country. Barring that, Mr. Halperin should be rejected by the Senate.

• I thank the Speaker for the time and would like to insert a few pages of quotes from Mr. Halperin for the Record.

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`The Soviet Union apparently never even contemplated the overt use of military force against Western Europe * * *. The Soviet posture toward Western Europe has been, and continues to be, a defensive and deterrent one. The positioning of Soviet ground forces in Eastern Europe and the limited logistical capability of these forces suggests an orientation primarily toward defense against a Western attack.' (Defense Strategies for the Seventies, 1971, p. 60)

`* * * Every action which the Soviet Union and Cuba have taken in Africa has been consistent with the principles of international law. The Cubans have come in only when invited by a government and have remained only at their request * * *. The American public needs to understand that Soviet conduct in Africa violates no Soviet-American agreements nor any accepted principles of international behavior. It reflects simply a different Soviet estimate of what should happen in the African continent and a genuine conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union.' (`American Military Intervention: Is It Ever Justified?', The Nation, June 9, 1979, p. 668)

`One of the great disappointments of the Carter Administration is that it has failed to give any systematic reconsideration to the security commitments of the United States. [For example, President Carter's] decision to withdraw [U.S. ground forces from Korea] was accompanied by a commitment to keep air and naval units in and around Korea--a strong reaffirmation by the United States of its security commitment to Korea. This action prevented a careful consideration of whether the United States wished to remain committed to the security of Korea * * *. Even if a commitment is maintained, a request for American military intervention should not be routinely honored.' (The Nation, June 9, 1979, p. 670)

`All of the genuine security needs of the United States can be met by a simple rule which permits us to intervene [only] when invited to do so by a foreign government * * *. The principle of proportion would require that American intervention be no greater than the intervention by other outside powers in the local conflict. We should not assume that once we intervene we are free to commit whatever destruction is necessary in order to secure our objectives.' (The Nation, June 9, 1979, p. 670)

`The United States should explicitly surrender the right to intervene unilaterally in the internal affairs of other countries by overt military means or by covert operations. Such self restraint would bar interventions like those in Grenada and Panama, unless the United States first gained the explicit consent of the international community acting through the Security Council or a regional organization. The United States would, however, retain the right granted under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter to act unilaterally if necessary to meet threats to international peace and security involving aggression across borders (such as those in Kuwait and in Bosnia-Herzegovina.) (`Guaranteeing Democracy, Summer 1993 Foreign Policy, p. 120)

`President George Bush's act of putting U.S. troops in a position where conflict could erupt at any moment (Operation Desert Shield), violated an unambiguous constitutional principle * * *' (Co-authored with Jeanne wood, `Ending The Cold War At Home,' Foreign Policy, Winter 1990-91)

Referring to the Reagan defense buildup: `Are we now buying the forces to meet the real threats to our security? Unfortunately, there is little reason to be confident that we are.' (New York Times, June 7, 1981, p. 1)

`In the name of protecting liberty from communism, a massive undemocratic national security structure was erected during the Cold War, which continues to exist even though the Cold War is over. Now, with the Gulf War having commenced, we are seeing further unjustified limitations of constitutional rights using the powers granted to the executive branch during the Cold War.'

`The military should have no role in the surveillance of American citizens.' 1

(`Controlling the Intelligence Agencies,' Center for National Security Studies newsletter First Principles, October 1975, p. 16)

1 N.B. Halperin's prospective responsibilities would include oversight of drug policy in the Pentagon including the U.S. military's activities in the area of drug surveillance and interdiction operations.

`Using secret intelligence agencies to defend a constitutional republic is akin to the ancient medical practice of employing leeches to take blood from feverish patients. The intent is therapeutic, but in the long run the care is more deadly than the disease. Secret intelligence agencies are designed to act routinely in ways that violate the laws or standards of society.' (Co-authored with Jerry Berman, Robert Borosage and Christine Marwick, The Lawless State: The crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies, Center for National Security Studies, Washington, D.C., 1976, p. 5)

• `The FBI should be limited to the investigation of crime; it should be prohibited from conducting `intelligence' investigations on groups or individuals not suspected of crimes.' (`Controlling the Intelligence Agencies,' First Principles, October 1975)

• `The National Security Agency should monitor international communications in a way that avoids recording of the communications of Americans.' (`Controlling the Intelligence Agencies,' First Principles, October 1975, p. 16)

• `It should be made a crime for any official of an intelligence organization to knowingly violate and/or to order or request an action which would violate the congressional limitations or public regulations concerning the activities of the agencies. Failing to report such violations should also have criminal sanctions * * *.

• `The policing of the crimes of the intelligence [agencies] should be in the hands of a single official. . . . He or she should have access to all intelligence community files and should be empowered to release any information necessary to prosecute a criminal offense * * * Civil remedies patterned after those now available for illegal wiretaps should back up these criminal penalties by allowing anyone whose rights have been violated by the intelligence organizations to sue. Such penalties should be set out in a statute and there should be no need to prove actual damage.' (`Controlling the Intelligence Agencies,' First Principles, October 1975, p. 15)

• Halperin favorably reviewed Philip Agee's book Inside the Company: CIA Diary saying that in it `we learn in devastating detail what is done in the name of the United States.' The review made no mention of the fact that the book contained some thirty pages of names of U.S. covert operatives overseas or that the author acknowledges in his preface the help he received from the Cuban Communist Party.

Halperin concluded the review by pronouncing: `The only way to stop all of this is to dissolve the CIA covert career service and to bar the CIA from at least developing any allied nations.' (First Principles, September 1975, p. 13)

[The following excerpts are taken from a pamphlet published by the Center for National Security Studies in 1976 and entitled `CIA Covert Action: Threat to the Constitution.' Morton Halperin is listed as a `participant' in the Center's activities; at the time he was also the Chief Editorial Writer for the CNSS' publication, First Principles. Subsequently, Halperin became the organization's deputy director and then served from 1984 to 1992 as its director.]

`In the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, the question must be faced: Should the U.S. government continue to engage in clandestine operations? We at the Center for National Security Studies believe that the answer is `No'; that the CIA's covert action programs should be ended immediately. The risks and costs of maintaining a clandestine underworld are too great, and covert action cannot be justified on either pragmatic or moral grounds.'

Halperin: `Well, I think that's the issue. I think we certainly need to know about the Soviet Union.'

Wattenberg: `What about other nations?'

Halperin: `Other nations--I think it's much more questionable as to whether we need that information and whether the price for it is worth paying.' (`Two Cheers for the CIA,' broadcast 15 June 1978)

`Under the First Amendment, Americans have every right to seek to `impede or impair' the functions of any federal agency, whether it is the FTC or the CIA, by publishing information acquired from unclassified sources.' (`The CIA's Distemper: How Can We Unleash the Agency When It Hasn't Yet Been Leashed?', The New Republic, February 9, 1980, p. 23)

`Lawful dissent and opposition to a government should not call down upon an individual any surveillance at all and certainly not surveillance as intrusive as a wiretap.' (`National Security and Civil Liberties,' Foreign Policy, Winter 1975-76, p. 151)

In opposition to draft legislation setting heavy criminal penalties for Americans who deliberately identify undercover U.S. intelligence agents: `[Such legislation] will chill public debate on important intelligence issues and is unconstitutional. * * * What we have is a bill which is merely symbolic in its protection of agents but which does violence to the principles of the First Amendment.' (UPI, April 8, 1981)

In criticizing scientists who `refused to help the lawyers representing The Progressive and its editors' in fighting government efforts to halt the magazine's publication of detailed information about the design and manufacturing of nuclear weapons: `They failed to understand that the question of whether publishing the `secret of the H-bomb' would help or hinder non-proliferation efforts was beside the point. The real question was whether the government had the right to decide what information should be published. If the government could stop publication of [this] article, it could, in theory, prevent publication of any other material that it thought would stimulate proliferation.' (`Secrecy and National Security,' The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, August 1985, p. 116)

In response to government attempts to close down the Washington offices of the PLO: `It is clearly a violation of the rights of free speech and association to bar American citizens from acting as agents seeking to advance the political ideology of any organization, even if that organization is based abroad. Notwithstanding criminal acts in which the PLO may have been involved, a ban on advocacy of all components of the PLO's efforts will not withstand constitutional scrutiny.' (The Nation, October 10, 1987)

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