WASHINGTON -- A senior State Department official whose laptop computer has turned up missing was suspected by the State Department during the Cold War of being a communist agent, WorldNetDaily has learned.

The foreign-affairs agency, besieged by recent reports of security breaches and Russian spying, has discovered three laptops to be missing. One was signed out to Morton H. Halperin, the assistant secretary of state for policy planning.

Halperin, according to a well-respected former State official, was suspected of working for the communists in the '60s and '70s.

"He was a person we knew to be pro-Soviet and not a person to be trusted," said the official, who worked in intelligence during the height of the Cold War.

"Halperin has been known on embassy (briefing) cards as a Soviet or communist agent," added the official, who was an expert on the Soviet Union, in an exclusive interview with WorldNetDaily.

A Democrat-controlled Senate denied Halperin confirmation as President Clinton's nominee as assistant secretary of defense in large part because of his radical leftist views. His current post did not require confirmation. Books have linked Halperin to the KGB.

But this is the first time a State official has confirmed Halperin's alleged communist ties.

Halperin did not respond to requests to discuss the allegations or the missing laptop.

But a staffer in the policy planning office of State's main Washington building defended her boss, arguing that the charges against Halperin have never been proven.

"This is a very old story, and I don't think you'll find it has any legs," said the staffer, who insisted on going unnamed.

The former State official, who also wished to remain anonymous, was "horrified" upon hearing the news of Halperin's missing laptop.

Halperin's aide asserted that it "wasn't his laptop," but "was assigned to the policy planning staff of which he heads."

On April 30, 1999, Clinton issued a secret Presidential Decision Directive -- PDD 68 -- ordering the creation of the International Public Information group. IPI is a new propaganda organ designed to "influence foreign audiences" and gain control over "international military information."

Clinton put Halperin, who favors unilateral nuclear disarmament, in charge of setting up IPI. Some fear IPI will be used as a propaganda weapon against Americans. Foreign press coverage of the U.S. often washes back into America.

Who is Morton Halperin?

After earning a masters and Ph.D. from Yale University, he taught at Harvard throughout much of the '60s.

From 1975 to 1992, he headed the Center for National Security Studies in Washington. CNSS is a spinoff of the Institute for Policy Studies, a pro-Marxist think tank that has supported Soviet and Cuban operations in Third World countries.

IPS was founded in 1963 with seed money from the Samuel Rubin Foundation. Rubin was a member of the Communist Party.

In 1977, Halperin flew to London to help defend CIA agent Philip Agee when he was being deported from Britain as a security risk for collaborating with Cuban and Soviet intelligence.

Halperin, 61, was also director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington office from 1985 to 1992.

From 1994 to 1996, he worked in the White House as Clinton's National Security Council adviser on "human rights."