Stefan A. Halper | |
|---|---|
 Halper in 2010 | |
| Born | (1944-06-04)June 4, 1944 (age 81) |
| Education | Stanford University (BA) University of Oxford (PhD)[1] University of Cambridge (PhD)[1] |
| Occupation | Professor |
Stefan A. Halper (born June 4, 1944) is an Americanforeign policy scholar and retired senior fellow at theUniversity of Cambridge where he is a life fellow atMagdalene College.[2][1] He served as aWhite House official in theNixon,Ford, andReagan administrations, and was reportedly in charge of the spying operation by the1980 Ronald Reagan presidential campaign that became known as "Debategate". Through his decades of work for the CIA, Halper has had extensive ties to theBush family.[3] Through his work with SirRichard Billing Dearlove, he had ties to the British Secret Intelligence Service,MI6.
Halper acted as anFBI informant during the bureau's investigation intoRussian interference in the 2016 United States elections. A subsequent Inspector General report later named Halper as a "confidential human source", reporting on the conversations of officials within the Trump campaign.[4][5]
Halper[6] graduated fromStanford University in 1967.[7] He received a DPhil from theUniversity of Oxford in 2001. He was appointed director of American Studies at theUniversity of Cambridge's longstandingDepartment of Politics and International Studies in 2001.[2][7] He received a second Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2004.[7]
Halper began his United States government career in 1971 as a Special Assistant to the Director, Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention, part of theexecutive office of the president, serving until 1973.[7] He then served in theOffice of Management and Budget until 1976, when he moved to the Ford Administration'sOffice of the Press Secretary as Staff Assistant for Communications.[citation needed] In 1977, Halper became special counsel to theCongressional Joint Economic Committee and legislative assistant to SenatorWilliam Roth (R-Del.).[7] In 1979, he became national policy director forGeorge H. W. Bush's presidential campaign and then in 1980 he became director of policy coordination for the Reagan-Bush Presidential campaign.[7]
Halper played a central role in a scandal in the 1980 election. It was not until several years after Reagan's victory over Carter that this scandal emerged. In connection with his position Halper's name came up in the 1983/4 investigations into theDebategate affair, which was a spying scandal in whichCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials passed classified information aboutCarter administration's foreign policy to Reagan campaign officials in order to ensure the Reagan campaign knew of any foreign policy decisions that Carter was considering (Iran hostage crisis). Reagan Administration officials cited byThe New York Times described Halper as "the person in charge" of the operation.[8][9] Halper called the report "just absolutely untrue".[10]
In 1983,United Press International (UPI) suggested that Halper's handler for this operation was Reagan's vice presidential candidate, ex-CIA directorGeorge H. W. Bush, who worked with Halper's father-in-law, ex-CIA-Deputy-DirectorRay S. Cline.[10] After Reagan entered the White House, Halper became DeputyAssistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs.[7] Upon leaving the department in 1984, he remained a senior advisor to the Department of Defense and a senior advisor to the Department of Justice until 2001.[7][3][11]
From 1984 to 1990 Halper was chairman and majority shareholder of thePalmer National Bank of Washington, D.C., the National Bank of Northern Virginia and the George Washington National Bank.[7] Palmer National Bank was used to transfer money to Swiss Bank Accounts controlled by White House aidOliver North.[12]
According toPeter Dale Scott's bookThe Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in Reagan Era on theIran–Contra affair, Ray Cline's son-in-law Roger Fontaine "made at least two visits to Guatemala in 1980 ... (with General Sumner) drafting the May 1980 Santa Fe Statement, which said that World War III was already underway in Central America against the Soviets and that Nicaragua was the enemy. And some Reagan aides felt that Halper "was receiving information from the CIA."[13]
The Palmer National Bank, where Halper worked, was described as "the D.C. hub by which Lt. Col. Oliver North sent arms and money to the anti-Sandinista guerrilla Contras in Nicaragua. One of Palmer's founders, Stefan Halper, had no previous banking experience, but was George H.W. Bush's foreign policy director during Bush's unsuccessful 1980 presidential campaign.”[14]
From 1986 to 2000, Halper wrote a national security and foreign policy-focused weekly newspaper column, syndicated to 30 newspapers.[7] Halper has worked as a senior foreign policy advisor to various think-tanks and research institutions, including the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and TheCenter for the National Interest, where he is a Distinguished Fellow. He has served on the Advisory Board of Directors of thePaul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and contributed to various magazines, journals, newspapers and media outlets. These include:The Washington Post,Los Angeles Times,The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, CNN, SKY NEWS, ABC, CBS, NBC, C-Span, and a range of radio outlets. As a professor,[1] Halper is a member of theCosmos Club in Washington D.C., and theTravellers Club in London.[citation needed]
Halper produced academic research on the political development ofneoconservatism.[15]
From 2012 to 2016 Halper received $1 million in contracts for “social sciences and humanities” research from theDefense department'sOffice of Net Assessment, some of which Halper subcontracted to other researchers. Forty percent of the money had been awarded before Trump announced his candidacy in 2015.[16] However, declassified FBI documents reveal that $70,000 was paid to Halper by the FBI from August 2016 through February 2017 and a total of $1,181,064.44 from 1991 into early 2017.[17]
TheNew York Times reported that for Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign, Halper was the "person in charge" of running a "highly secretive" operation to get "inside information" about the Carter Administration's foreign policy and pass it to the Reagan campaign. Halper was running the operation out of Reagan's campaign headquarters according to Reagan Administrative officials. Those sources also said that several other retired Central Intelligence Agency officials were involved in the operation.Halper had been the deputy director of the State Department'sBureau of Political-Military Affairs shortly before taking on the operation research assignment. Halper was officially a campaign aide responsible for providing 24 hour news updates and policy ideas.Halper, worked underRobert Garrick, the director of campaign operations, who in a telephone interview said that Halper was "supposed to help with communications, but I kind of thought he had another agenda going -he was always on the phone with the door closed, and he never called me in and discussed it with me."David Prosperi, another Reagan campaign aide, said, "He provided us with wire stories and Carter speeches, but people talked about his having a network that was keeping track of things inside the Government, mostly in relation to the October Surprise."Ray S. Cline, Halper's then father-in-law and a former senior Central Intelligence official, dismissed the Reagan aides' disclosures as a "romantic fallacy."[18]
Halper acted as anFBI informant forCrossfire Hurricane, the FBI's investigation intoRussian interference in the 2016 United States elections, and was a subject of theSpygate conspiracy theory initiated by President Donald Trump in May 2018. His FBI handler, initially identified only as "Case Agent 1", was later identified as Stephen M. Somma, a counterintelligence investigator.[19] Trump's theory falsely alleges that the Obama administration implanted a paid spy in the 2016 Trump campaign "for political purposes" to gather information in support of Hillary Clinton's candidacy.[20][21] Beginning in summer 2016, Halper spoke separately to three Trump campaign advisers –Carter Page,Sam Clovis andGeorge Papadopoulos – but there is no evidence that Halper had actually joined Trump's campaign. Halper first metCarter Page at a symposium at the University of Cambridge organized bySteven Schrage.[22]
Page said that he "had extensive discussions" with Halper on "a bunch of different foreign-policy-related topics", ending in September 2017.[23] A former federal law enforcement official toldThe New York Times that their initial encounter at a London symposium on July 11–12, 2016 was a coincidence, rather than at the direction of the FBI.[24][23] Clovis's attorney said that Clovis and Halper had discussed China during their sole meeting on August 31 or September 1, 2016.[23] On September 2, 2016, Halper contacted Papadopoulos, inviting him to London and to write a paper on Mediterranean oil fields, which he did.[23] On September 15, 2016, Halper asked Papadopoulos if he knew of any Russian efforts to disrupt the election campaign; Papadopoulos twice denied he did, despiteJoseph Mifsud telling him the previous April that Russians had embarrassing Hillary Clinton emails, and Papadopoulos bragging about it toAlexander Downer in May.The New York Times reported in April 2019 that the FBI had asked Halper to approach Page and Papadopoulos, although it was not clear if he had been asked to contact Clovis.[25] In May 2019, theTimes reported that Page had urged Halper to meet with Clovis and that the FBI was aware of the meeting but had not instructed Halper to ask Clovis about Russia matters. TheTimes also reported that the FBI also sent an investigator using the name Azra Turk to meet with Papadopoulos, while posing as Halper's assistant. TheTimes stated that the FBI considered it essential to add a trained and trusted investigator like Turk as a "layer of oversight", in the event the investigation was ultimately prosecuted and the government needed the credible testimony of such an individual, without exposing Halper as a longtime confidential informant.[26]
Trump's Spygate allegations were rebutted,[26][27][28] despite renewed interest in April 2019 after Attorney GeneralWilliam Barr testified to Congress that "spying did occur" on the Trump campaign, although his characterization of "spying" was ambiguous and he was not specific. Prior to his 2016 activities, Halper had a February 2014 encounter at a London intelligence conference withMichael Flynn, then the head of theDefense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and later a Trump supporter and first national security advisor. Halper became so alarmed by Flynn's close association with a Russian woman that a Halper associate expressed concerns to American authorities that Flynn may have been compromised by Russian intelligence. Flynn was forced out of the DIA six months later, although public accounts at the time cited other reasons for his removal, including his management style and views on Islam.[29]
In April 2025, FBI Director Kash Patel released documents related to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. The FBI records reveal that agents found Stefan Halper’s claims about Michael Flynn to be “not plausible” and “not accurate,”[30][31][32][33]
The "Russian" woman, former Cambridge academic Svetlana Lokhova sued Halper in 2019 for $25 million,[34] alleging he had conspired with multiple news outlets to spread the false and salacious narrative that she had seduced Flynn on orders from the Russian government.[35] Halper filed a response to the lawsuit in which he declared that he is entitled to thequalified immunity ordinarily afforded to federal agents, "even if the lawsuit's allegations are true". Halper's motion to dismiss stated in part: "Private individuals who participate in FBI investigations are subject to the federal common law qualified immunity applicable to government agents."[36] The suit was dismissed by a three-judge panel of theFourth Circuit Court of Appeals in April 2021.[37]
A 2019 Department of Justice report, according to the New York Times, reports that an undercover F.B.I. agent posed as Mr. Halper's assistant during a 2016 London meeting withGeorge Papadopoulos. However, the report's author, Michael Horowitz, did not find any evidence that Mr. Halper tried to infiltrate the Trump campaign.Russia Inquiry Review Is Expected to Undercut Trump Claim of F.B.I. Spying
Axios reported in May 2018 that duringthe transition Trump top trade advisorPeter Navarro had recommended Halper for an ambassadorship.[38]
Halper's former wife, Sibyl Cline, is the daughter of the former CIA deputy director for intelligence,Ray S. Cline.[9] He retired from Cambridge University in 2015, and now lives inVirginia. He consults for Crossword Cybersecurity chaired by SirRichard Dearlove, the former head of MI6.[39]
He is the co-author of the bestselling bookAmerica Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order, published by theCambridge University Press in 2004, and also co-author ofThe Silence of the Rational Center: Why American Foreign Policy is Failing (2007). In April 2010, his bookThe Beijing Consensus: Legitimizing Authoritarianism in Our Time was published by Basic Books. Also a bestseller, it has been published in Japan, Taiwan, China, South Korea, and France.[citation needed]
Halper is a recipient of the State Department'sSuperior Honor Award,[40] the Justice Department's Director's Award,[citation needed] and the Defense Department's Superior Honor Award.[citation needed]
An operation to collect inside information on Carter Administration foreign policy was run in Ronald Reagan's campaign headquarters in the 1980 Presidential campaign, according to present and former Reagan Administration officials. ... The sources identified Stefan A. Halper, a campaign aide involved in providing 24-hour news updates and policy ideas to the traveling Reagan party, as the person in charge. Mr. Halper, until recently deputy director of the State Department's Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs and now chairman of the Palmer National Bank in Washington, was out of town today and could not be reached. But Ray S. Cline, his father-in-law, a former senior Central Intelligence official, rejected the account as aromantic fallacy.
Reports are there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president. It took place very early on, and long before the phony Russia Hoax became a "hot" Fake News story. If true - all time biggest political scandal!
