Maurice Halperin

Maurice Halperin died age 88 on February 9, 1995, of a stroke at the Royal Columbia Hospital just outside Vancouver, Canada.

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. Political tensions forced him to leave for Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 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.

In 1953, after Soviet cables were secretly decrypted by U.S. counter-intelligence, Maurice 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. Halperin denied the charges, but nevertheless fled to Mexico and taught at the National University of Mexico. To avoid extradition from Mexico, Halperin moved to the Soviet Union, where he studied and taught. Among the friends he made there was the British defector, Donald Maclean as well as Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara.

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. 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] 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..." 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.

In 1946 (or 1949), Halperin resigned from the State Department to take the position of chair of Latin American studies at Boston University.

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. 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.

Halperin taught at the University of Oklahoma, with summer 1941 as visiting professor at the University of Florida.

In late summer 1941, Halperin began working for the US federal government as a Latin American specialist. From 1941 to 1945, 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), and served as special assistant to Duncan Chapin Lee.

In 1935, Halperin traveled to Cuba with the League of American Writers to investigate possible human rights abuses. Sometime during this period, Halperin joined the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA).

In 1930, Halperin lectured at the Sorbonne while studying there.

Maurice Hyman Halperin (1906–1995) was an American writer, professor, diplomat, and accused Soviet spy (NKVD code name "Hare").

Maurice Hyman Halperin was born on March 3, 1906, in Boston, Massachusetts. 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.