Samuel Halpern

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Samuel Halpern was a CIA officer from 1947 to 1974.[1]

Halpern's father Hennoch Halpern was an Austro-Hungarian and a prominent Zionist prior to the First World War, working with David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett. He emigrated to the US in 1909, where he remained involved in Zionist causes until his death in 1965.[2]

Halpern served in the Office of Strategic Services and the Strategic Services Unit before joining the CIA.[3] He was deputy head of the agency's Cuba desk in around 1962.[3]

He served as Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director for Plans for seven years. He retired in December 1974.[3]According to Seymour Hersh, Halpern "was under seemingly constant investigation" by James Angleton because of his Jewish background.[2]

"Jim looked at me real hard," Halpern recalled with a laugh, "but I told him, 'I'm not going to muck up your desk.' The Israelis never approached me."[2]

At the inaugural meeting of the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence in April 1979, Halpern presented an essay on clandestine collection (spying) which argued, in Roy Godson's summary, that "collection capabilities had been seriously damaged by the Freedom of Information Act, the Congress, and the attitudes and guidelines adopted by recent Directors of Central Intelligence.[3]

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Notes

  1. DEATH OF NOTE, Weekly Intelligence Notes, Association of Former Intelligence Officers, 7 March 2005.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Seymour M. Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel, America and the Bomb, Faber and Faber, 1993, p.146.
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Roy Godson, ed., Intelligence requirements for the 1980s: Elements of Intelligence, National Strategy Information Center, 1983, p.13.