Given the secret nature of his work, it is not surprising that Stefan Halper’s exact role in these scandals is still debated by insiders and historians.
In the late summer of 2016, Stefan A. Halper met with at least three of Donald Trump’s associates in England and the United States, bragging about his friendship with Russian spies who “can be very helpful to us at this time.”
As they listened to his tales of foreign intrigue and promises of illegal foreign help, what George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, and Sam Clovis did not know was that Halper was not who he said he was. He was, indeed, a spy, but his handler was not the Kremlin – it was the FBI. Armed with leading questions and on at least two occasions a hidden tape recorder, Halper had been tasked by the bureau with finding dirt on the Trump campaign.
Halper’s undercover operation, which was documented in a report by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, would prove largely a bust. Transcripts between Halper and Trump campaign officials would show that none of them took the bait, or appeared to otherwise be soliciting Russia’s help in the 2016 presidential campaign
Even now, it might seem odd that the FBI made Halper, then a septuagenarian Cambridge University professor, a linchpin of its top-secret counterintelligence probe codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane.” But a closer look at Halper’s life and work makes that decision seem inevitable. Stefan Halper is the Zelig of modern American political scandal – a chameleon-like figure who keeps appearing when mischief is afoot.
A Wide Resume, and Questions About It
The former son-in-law of a top CIA official, Halper cut his teeth in the Nixon White House during Watergate. The New York Times identified him as the Reagan campaign’s point man in an alleged effort to spy on President Jimmy Carter. He was later chairman of a bank that helped provide money to surreptitiously fund Nicaragua’s pro-American contra rebels during the 1980s. In the run-up to his subterfuge in the Trump-Russia caper, Halper was paid more than $1 million by a Pentagon office that produced work deemed of such little value that Sen. Charles Grassley recently identified it as a prime example of the government’s “systemic failure to manage and oversee” spending.
Given the secret nature of his work, it is not surprising that Halper’s exact role in these scandals is still debated by insiders and historians. An examination of long-ignored records by RealClearInvestigations, however, shows that Halper has added to the mystery by appearing to consistently misrepresent his background and experience on resumes.
From Halper resume posted on Institute of World Politics website (removed 2020).
There is, for example, no public evidence for his claim, on a resume he submitted to the Ford White House, that he was class president at Stanford University in 1967 or a Fulbright scholar. Nor is there any for the claim on another resume that he held the prestigious position in the Ford administration listed.
Halper declined to speak with RCI when asked for an interview in person at his Virginia home. He also declined to respond to a letter from...
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