{{Short description|Writer, professor, diplomat and accused spy}} {{Use mdy dates|date=September 2016}} {{Infobox person | name =Maurice Halperin | image = | caption = | birth_name = Maurice Hyman Halperin | birth_date = {{Birth date|1906|3|3}} | birth_place = Boston, Massachusetts | death_date = {{Death date and age|1995|2|9|1906|3|3}} | death_place =Royal Columbia Hospital, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates = | other_names = | known_for = | education = Harvard College, University of Oklahoma |alma_mater = Sorbonne | employer = OSS, State Department, Boston University, Simon Fraser University | occupation = Scholar, intelligence offer, diplomat | title = | term = | predecessor = | successor = | party = | boards = | spouse = | children = | parents = | relatives = | signature = | website = | footnotes = }} '''Maurice Hyman Halperin''' (1906–1995) was an American writer, professor, diplomat, and accused Soviet spy (NKVD code name "Hare").
==Biography==
Maurice Hyman Halperin was born on March 3, 1906, in Boston, Massachusetts.<ref name=NYTobitHalperin> {{cite news | first = James C. | last = McKinley Jr. | title = Maurice Halperin, 88, a Scholar Who Chronicled Castro's Career | newspaper = New York Times | url = https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/12/obituaries/maurice-halperin-88-a-scholar-who-chronicled-castro-s-career.html | page = 47 | date =12 February 1995 | access-date = 2 November 2020}}</ref><ref name=Hearings1948> {{cite book | title = Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the U.S. Government | publisher = US GPO | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=QBcWAAAAIAAJ | pages = 503–562 (Bentley testimony), 533 (Halperin bio) | date = 31 July 1948 | access-date = 2 November 2020}}</ref> In 1927, he received an A.B. from Harvard College, in 1939 an MA from the University of Oklahoma, and in 1931 a doctorate from the Sorbonne.<ref name=NYTobitHalperin/><ref name=Hearings1948/>
==Career==
===Academics===
In 1930, Halperin lectured at the Sorbonne while studying there.<ref name=Hearings1948/>
In 1935, he traveled to Cuba with the League of American Writers to investigate possible human rights abuses. Sometime during this period, he joined the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA).{{citation needed|date=November 2020}}
Halperin taught at the University of Oklahoma, with summer 1941 as visiting professor at the University of Florida.{{clarify|date=March 2025}}<ref name=Hearings1948/>
===Government===
In late summer 1941, Halperin began working for the US federal government as a Latin American specialist.<ref name=Hearings1948/> From 1941 to 1945, he served as division chief (Latin America) in the Office of the Coordinator of Information, soon the Research Division of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS),<ref name=Hearings1948/> and served as special assistant to Duncan Chapin Lee.<ref name=NYTobitHalperin/>
During this period, he may have become an espionage agent and agreed to provide intelligence for the Joseph Stalin-era Soviet intelligence service, the NKVD. Halperin's alleged NKVD codename was "Hare." He became a member of the ''Golos'' spy network (operated by the NKVD's chief of American operations Gaik Ovakimian).{{citation needed|date=November 2020}}
With access to the OSS cable room, Halperin could secure copies of secret U.S. reports from any part of the world. Through the Golos spy network, he provided Soviet intelligence with a large quantity of sensitive U.S. diplomatic dispatches, including reports from Ambassador John Gilbert Winant in London on the position of the Polish government-in-exile towards negotiations with Stalin, Turkey's foreign policy toward Romania, the State Department's instructions to the U.S. ambassador to Spain, the U.S. embassy in Morocco's reports on that country's government, reports on the U.S. government's relationship with Vichy and Free French factions and persons in exile, reports of peace feelers from dissident Germans passed to the Vatican, U.S. attitudes towards Josip Broz Tito's Communist Front activities in Yugoslavia, and discussions between the Greek government and the United States regarding Soviet ambitions in the Balkans. Halperin also distorted OSS reports with false information in order to reflect the views of Stalin, the Soviet Union, and the Communist Party of the United States.{{citation needed|date=November 2020}}
After the OSS was dissolved in 1945, Halperin transferred to the State Department and worked as an adviser to United States Secretary of State Dean Acheson, again on Latin American affairs.<ref name=Hearings1948/> Halperin was an advisor to the United Nations at the first conference in San Francisco (with Alger Hiss serving as acting secretary general). He helped establish a Hebrew language service for the UN, beamed to Palestine.<ref name=Hearings1948/>
In 1946{{citation needed|date=November 2020}} (or 1949<ref name=NYTobitHalperin/>), Halperin resigned from the State Department to take the position of chair of Latin American studies at Boston University.<ref name=NYTobitHalperin/>
===HUAC investigation (1948)===
On July 31, 1948, ex-Soviet spy Elizabeth Bentley testified under subpoena before the House Un-American Activities Committee and related details which she first shared with the FBI in 1945.<ref name=Hearings1948/> In 1945, Bentley, who had inherited the Golos network, defected from the Soviet underground and sought out the Federal Bureau of Investigation. During questioning, Bentley told FBI agents that from 1942 to 1944, Halperin at OSS had delivered "to Mary Price and later to myself mimeographed bulletins and reports prepared by OSS on a variety of topics and also supplied excerpts from State Department cables to which he evidently had access." Bentley added that "some time early in 1945 'JACK', [Soviet agent Joseph Katz]<ref>{{cite book |title=The FBI-KGB War: A Special Agent's Story |last1=Lamphere |first1=Robert J. |author2=Tom Shachtman |year=1995 |publisher=Mercer University Press |location=Atlanta |isbn=0-86554-477-8 |page=296 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IB_ShD9fTcsC }}</ref> the Russian contact at that time, told me that Halperin had been accused by General William J. Donovan, the head of OSS, of being a Soviet agent..."<ref>Statement of Elizabeth Terrill Bentley, November 30, 1945, [http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/Silvermaster006.pdf FBI file: Silvermaster, Vol. 6] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120722181150/http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/Silvermaster006.pdf |date=July 22, 2012 }}, pp. 33–34 (PDF pp. 34–35)</ref> The next day, the FBI notified Harry S. Truman's White House that "according to a "highly confidential source," among those "employed by the government of the United States" who "have been furnishing data and information to persons outside the Federal government, who are in turn transmitting this information to espionage agents of the Soviet government," was "Maurice Halperin, Office of Strategic Services." Subsequent surveillance of Halperin disclosed that he was in contact with Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, Lauchlin Currie, Philip and Mary Jane Keeney, and others.{{citation needed|date=November 2020}}
===SISS investigation (1953)===
In 1953, after Soviet cables were secretly decrypted by U.S. counter-intelligence, Halperin was called before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee to defend himself on charges of espionage, at which time he lost his teaching position at Boston University.<ref name=NYTobitHalperin/> He denied the charges, but nevertheless fled to Mexico and taught at the National University of Mexico.<ref name=NYTobitHalperin/> To avoid extradition from Mexico,{{Citation needed|date=September 2011}} Halperin moved to the Soviet Union, where he studied and taught.<ref name=NYTobitHalperin/> Among the friends he made there were British defector Donald Maclean and Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara.{{citation needed|date=November 2020}}
===Remaining years===
Disenchanted with communism in the Soviet Union, Halperin accepted Guevara's invitation to come to Havana in 1962. There, he consulted to the Ministry of Trade in the Fidel Castro government for five years and taught at the University of Havana.<ref name=NYTobitHalperin/> Political tensions forced him to leave for Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.{{citation needed|date=November 2020}} In Vancouver, he became a political science professor at Simon Fraser University, and wrote several books critical of Castro's government and the socio-political situation in Cuba.<ref name=NYTobitHalperin/>
==Personal life and death==
Halperin married and had two surviving children.<ref name=NYTobitHalperin/>
Maurice Halperin died age 88 on February 9, 1995, of a stroke at the Royal Columbia Hospital just outside Vancouver, Canada.<ref name=NYTobitHalperin/>
==Legacy==
After Halperin's death, the release of the ''Venona project'' decryptions of coded Soviet cables, as well as information gleaned from Soviet KGB archives, revealed that he was involved in espionage activities on behalf of the Soviet Union while serving in an official capacity with the United States government.<ref>[http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page45.html Return to Responses, Reflections and Occasional Papers<!-- Bot generated title -->] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070721140118/http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page45.html |date=July 21, 2007 }}</ref><ref> Schecter, Jerrold and Leona, Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History, Potomac Press, 2002</ref><ref>Haynes, John Earl & Klehr, ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America'', Yale University Press, 2000</ref>
==Works==
Aside from an early literary study, Halperin published three books critical of Castro: * ''Roman de Tristan et Iseut dans la littérature anglo-américaine au XIXe et au XXe siècles'' (1931)<ref> {{cite book | first = Maurice | last = Halperin | author-link = Maurice Halperin | title = Roman de Tristan et Iseut dans la littérature anglo-américaine au XIXe et au XXe siècles | publisher = Jouve | date = 1931 | lccn = 33007755 }}</ref> * ''Rise and Decline of Fidel Castro: An Essay in Contemporary History'' (1972)<ref> {{cite book | first = Maurice | last = Halperin | author-link = Maurice Halperin | title = Rise and Decline of Fidel Castro: An Essay in Contemporary History | publisher = University of California Press | date = 1972 | isbn = 9780520021822 | lccn = 77182794 }}</ref> * ''The Taming of Fidel Castro'' (1981)<ref> {{cite book | first = Maurice | last = Halperin | author-link = Maurice Halperin | title = The Taming of Fidel Castro | publisher = University of California Press | date = 1981 | isbn = 9780520041844 | lccn = 80018581 }}</ref> * ''Return to Havana'' (1994)<ref> {{cite book | first = Maurice | last = Halperin | author-link = Maurice Halperin | title = Return to Havana: The Decline of Cuban Society Under Castro | publisher = Vanderbilt University Press | date = 1994 | isbn =0-8265-1250-X| lccn = 93041059 }}</ref>
==See also== *NKVD * Elizabeth Bentley * Silvermaster Group * Perlo Group * Venona project
== References ==
{{reflist}}
==External links== *[https://web.archive.org/web/20070721140118/http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page45.html Alexander Vassiliev's notes from KGB Archival Records] *Haynes, John E. and Klehr, Harvey, ''In Denial: Historians, Communism, & Espionage'', Encounter Press (2003) *Haynes, John Earl & Klehr, ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America'', Yale University Press, 2000. {{ISBN|0-300-08462-5}}. *{{cite book |author1=Haynes, John Earl |author2=Klehr, Harvey | title=Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America | publisher=Yale University Press | year=2000 | isbn=0-300-08462-5}} (ed. available via [https://books.google.com/books?id=M8p00bTFvRkC&dq=%22&pg=PP1 books.google]) *Peake, Hayden B., OSS and the Venona Decrypts. Intelligence and National Security (Great Britain) 12, no. 3 (July 1997): 14–34. *CIA Publications, ''The Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency'', no date. *Kirschner, Don S.,''Cold War Exile: The Unclosed Case of Maurice Halperin'' Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1995 *Schecter, Jerrold and Leona, ''Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History'', Potomac Press, 2002 *CIA Publications, The Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency, no date. * [https://web.archive.org/web/20070624173001/http://www.peak.sfu.ca/the-peak/95-1/issue9/halp.html The Peak obituary] *Warner, Michael, ''The Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency'' Chapter: X-2. Central Intelligence Agency Publications (2000). "Research & Analysis Latin America specialist Maurice Halperin, nevertheless passed information to Moscow." *[http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/moynihan/foreword.html Chairman's Forward, Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy] (1997) *[http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/moynihan/appa7.html Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, Appendix A, 7. The Cold War] (1997) * [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications//oss/art07.htm X-2]{{dead link|date=January 2025|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}} * [http://foia.fbi.gov/venona/venona.pdf FBI Venona FOIA, p. 53]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Halperin, Maurice}} Category:1906 births Category:1995 deaths Category:Members of the Communist Party USA Category:American spies for the Soviet Union Category:World War II spies for the Soviet Union Category:American diplomats Category:Latin Americanists Category:Boston University faculty Category:Academic staff of Simon Fraser University Category:American people in the Venona papers Category:People of the Office of Strategic Services Category:20th-century American writers Category:American expatriates in Cuba Category:University of Oklahoma alumni Category:Harvard College alumni Category:Academic staff of University of Havana Category:20th-century American male writers