Features > March 21, 2003

Richard Perle: It Pays To Be the Prince of Darkness

By Frida Berrigan

Richard Perle is a busy guy these days, what with his long-desired war against Iraq in full swing, plus a lucrative consulting business on the side. As the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Perle is a close adviser to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, with an insider’s perspective on the Pentagon, the war in Iraq and the ongoing war on terrorism. As a major investor in a number of defense companies, he stands to reap considerable benefits from war and homeland security contracts. Apparently his dual roles as a major policy adviser to the Pentagon and a business dealmaker can be a bit confusing at times.

A few weeks ago, Perle was hired by Global Crossing, the bankrupt telecommunications giant that is trying to sell itself to a Chinese consortium. The Pentagon and FBI are against the sale because it would put the company’s fiber optics network, which is used by the U.S. government, in Chinese hands. Perle’s job is to change their minds. And if anyone can, it is the “Prince of Darkness,” as Perle is known by friend and foe in Washington.

As he said in an affidavit dated March 7, his position as chairman of the Defense Policy Board gives him a “unique perspective on and intimate knowledge of the national defense and security issues that will be raised by the CFIUS review process.” The CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, has the power to block the deal. Global Crossing is paying Perle $750,000 for this “unique perspective” and “intimate knowledge.” Perle’s incentive: $600,000 of his fee is contingent on government approval of the deal.

But this little phrase led to a funny exchange with New York Times reporter Stephen Labaton. Perle insisted, “I’m not using public office for private gain, because the Defense Policy Board has nothing to do with the CFIUS process.” But when asked about his “unique perspective” and “intimate knowledge,” Perle claimed he had not noticed that phrase, saying it “was drafted by lawyers, and frankly I did not notice it.” He is a busy man, we understand.

But then, he called Labaton back to clarify, saying that the problematic phrase was in an earlier draft, he had noticed it and crossed it out. “You have a draft that I never signed,” he said. OK?

After consulting with Global Crossing’s lawyers, Perle called Labaton again to say that he had told the lawyers to strike the phrase because it “seemed inappropriate and irrelevant.” But then someone put the phrase back in, and Perle signed it without noticing. “It is a clerical error,” he explained, “and not my clerical error.” When in doubt, blame the lawyers.

So the final version will be submitted without referring to Perle’s “unique perspective” and “intimate knowledge.” But that doesn’t mean those are not what Global Crossing is paying him for.

———————————-

This is not the first time someone has questioned Perle’s ethics. Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh, writing in the March 17 issue of The New Yorker, cited possible “conflicts of interest” in Trireme Partners, Perle’s venture capital company. The company, which invests in companies dealing in homeland security and defense products, has raised $45 million in capital so far—almost half of that coming from U.S. defense giant Boeing. When asked about the article in a TV interview, Perle declared that “Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist, frankly.”

There is also the matter of Autonomy Corporation, where Perle is a director, with 75,000 shares of stock. The firm has developed a high-tech eavesdropping software that is capable of monitoring hundreds of thousands of e-mail and phone conversations at the same time. In October 2002, the Department of Homeland Security granted the company a huge contract. A few months later, Autonomy was granted $1 million in contracts from a number of government agencies, including the Secret Service and National Security Agency.

As a former Clinton adviser observed with admiration, Perle “enjoys all the benefits of being an insider without any of the constraints.”

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• Reader Comments

  It shows how the progressively elite beltway politicians can a make a profit from the American economy that’s limping along at the requests of the skiddish investors from such coporate giants behaving badly with investors cash.

  Posted by Bobbsters on Mar 22, 2003 at 3:11 AM

  Thank you Frida Berrigan and In These Times. We are starved for true and relevant information these days. Are you any relation to the Pastors for Peace guy? Be proud if you are. Folks with any sense of ethical behavior at all have no oportunity for justice in this system. Perhaps we should all abandon moral behavior entirely - we would merely be following the leaders, and leveling the playing field. Oh, except they have all the weapons of mass destruction and the itch to use them…

  Or did we abandon hope already and I was just too busy writing to my Senators to notice?

  Posted by Jerome Millay on Mar 22, 2003 at 11:39 AM

  How could you write about Dick Perle and neglect to mention the reason he’s called the Prince of Darkness?  In the 1980s, this character demanded a US nuclear strike on the USSR, which would have started the Big One and killed everybody.  Only the Evil One himself hates humanity more than Richard Perle does.

  Posted by Tikhon Gilson on Mar 22, 2003 at 3:20 PM

  Would that Mr. Perele would slip
  quietly into the sunset so that a
  year from now, in Primaries Season,we should not be subjected to the incessant banter of the talking heads squawking."Perle", “Global Crossing","What did the president know and..” yada yada ad nauseam.
  

  Posted by john ruddy on Mar 22, 2003 at 8:13 PM

  I lived in Las Vegas for fifteen yrs. and people would say organized crime no longer exist there. Im sure O.C. just branched out to Wall St. & D.C. Im sure they were always there too, but never shined as brightly out in the open as they do now. 

  Posted by Richard Guseman on Mar 24, 2003 at 11:55 AM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 41 posts.

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