NOMINATION OF DR. MORTON H. HALPERIN (Senate - July 01, 1993)
 

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Mr. BOREN. Mr. President, I understand that the Senate will shortly be receiving from President Clinton the nomination of Dr. Morton H. Halperin to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for Democracy and Peacekeeping. I welcome this impending nomination, I hope and expect that Dr. Halperin will be swiftly confirmed by the Senate, and look forward to working with him.

Dr. Halperin, a former Defense Department and National Security Council official, is currently a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. As many of my colleagues know, Dr. Halperin was for many years an official of the American Civil Liberties Union responsible for their work on issues at the intersection between national security and civil liberties.

In that capacity, Dr. Halperin worked closely with the Senate Intelligence Committee, which I chaired from 1987 through the beginning of this year. During my period as chairman, our committee and staff were in regular contact with Dr. Halperin and his colleagues. We found that he brought to the issues a determination to solve difficult problems in a nonideological manner that reflected commitments not only to the defense of individual liberty but also the requirements of national security.

Over the years, Dr. Halperin has worked with the intelligence oversight committees and with Republican and Democratic administrations in support of critical intelligence legislation including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Classified Information Procedures Act, the Central Intelligence Agency Information Act, and the Intelligence Oversight Act. In each of these cases, with the active involvement of Dr. Halperin, legislation was crafted which had the support of both the intelligence agencies and champions of individuals' rights. He gained not only my respect and that of other committee members, but also the respect of many executive branch officials with responsibility for intelligence law and policy.

Dr. Halperin is a graduate of Columbia College and Yale University. He has taught at both of those institutions, as well as at Harvard, MIT, and the George Washington University.

Dr. Halperin is a person of strong integrity as well as intellect. I believe he would bring to the post of Assistant Secretary for Democracy and Peacekeeping these qualities as well as a commitment to look in an open-minded way for fresh solutions to defense policy issues.

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