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10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Morton H. Halperin.md
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summary: "Close aide to Kissinger on the NSC staff who recalled Kissinger's belief that Israel and Japan would be better off with nuclear weapons."
born: 1938-06-13
location: "Brooklyn, New York, USA"
updated: 2026-10-14
relations:
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Halperin v. Kissinger]]"
role: "plaintiff"
fn: 2
---
Morton H. Halperin was a close aide to [[Henry A. Kissinger]] on the [[National Security Council]] staff. He recalled that Kissinger believed it was good to spread nuclear weapons around the world and that if he were the Israelis, he would get nuclear weapons. Kissinger did not believe that the [[United States]] should try to talk them out of it. Halperin also noted that Kissinger believed [[Japan]], as well as [[Israel]], would be better off with the bomb than without it, viewing nuclear weapons as essential to their national security.[^1]
### FBI Wiretap, 1969
On April 25, 1969, [[Richard Nixon]] met Kissinger, Attorney General [[John N. Mitchell]] and FBI Director [[J. Edgar Hoover]] to discuss methods of controlling leaks, and Mitchell, Hoover and Nixon developed a program that included wiretaps on private telephones. After a [[New York Times]] article of May 9, 1969 reported the bombing of [[Cambodia]], Hoover told Kissinger that Halperin, then an NSC staff member, was the "prime suspect," although Halperin had no access to the information in the article. Hoover and Kissinger spoke four times by telephone that day, and the wiretap on Halperin's home telephone was in place by evening.[^2]
FBI officials and Colonel [[Alexander M. Haig, Jr.]] worked out procedures on the following day to conduct the surveillance "with no record maintained" in normal FBI files, and "at first the FBI logs were kept at the Bureau in special files, where Kissinger and Haig reviewed them."[^2] The FBI observed in May and June 1969 that the tap was not producing evidence of a leak, and Kissinger requested that it continue. Halperin resigned from the NSC staff on September 19, 1969, continued as a consultant until May 1970, and the tap remained in place until February 10, 1971. Plaintiffs cited FBI logs showing that agents overheard more than 600 calls, of which 28 percent were between Halperin and people outside his family.[^2] The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities placed the wiretap among seventeen taps on journalists and government employees that lasted from May 1969 to February 1971, and found that the program did not reveal the source of any leak of classified data.[^3]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 16.
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 16.
[^2]: *Halperin v. Kissinger*, 606 F.2d 1192 (D.C. Cir. 1979). Caselaw Access Project text, F.2d volume 606, case 1192. https://static.case.law/f2d/606/cases/1192-01.json
[^3]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans*, Book II, S. Rept. 94-755 (1976), PDF pages 215-216 and 222-223. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_II.pdf