Richard Perle

Richard Norman Perle (born September 16, 1941) is an American political advisor who served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs under President Ronald Reagan. He began his political career as a senior staff member to Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson on the Senate Armed Services Committee in the 1970s. He served on the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee from 1987 to 2004 where he served as chairman from 2001 to 2003 under the Bush administration before resigning due to conflict of interests.

A key advisor to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in the Bush administration, Perle was an architect of the Iraq War. In March 2001, he claimed that the Saddam Hussein regime possessed weapons of mass destruction. He has been described as a neoconservative hawk on foreign policy issues. Martha Gloria and Jack Harold Perle. As a child, he moved to California, where he attended Hollywood High School in Los Angeles; his classmates including actor Mike Farrell, singer Ricky Nelson, and Joan Wohlstetter (the daughter of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter of the Rand Corporation).

Perle earned a B.A. in International Politics in 1964 from the University of Southern California. As an undergraduate he studied in Copenhagen at Denmark's International Study Program. He also studied at the London School of Economics and obtained a M.A. in political science from Princeton University in 1967.

Career

Office of Senator Henry Jackson From 1969 to 1980, Perle worked as a staffer for Democratic Senator Henry M. Jackson of Washington whom he met through Albert Wohlstetter. Perle recalls his early involvement with Wohlstetter: "Albert Wohlstetter phoned me one day. I was still a graduate student at Princeton... and he said, could you come to Washington for a few days and interview some people and draft a report on the current debate shaping up in the Senate over ballistic missile defense, which was a hot issue... And he said, I've asked somebody else to do this too, and maybe the two of you could work together. The someone else was Paul Wolfowitz. So Paul and I came to Washington as volunteers for a few days, to interview people, and one of the people we interviewed was Scoop Jackson and it was love at first sight... I was there for eleven years." He was considered an extremely knowledgeable and influential person in the Senate debates on arms control. By his own admission, Perle acquired the reputation of an influential figure who preferred to work in the background, a reputation that has followed him through the years in both the public and the private sectors. At some point (usually said to be during his time in the Reagan administration) Perle acquired the nickname "The Prince of Darkness" due to his hardline opposition to any arms control agreements, which has been used both as a slur by his critics and as a joke by supporters (Time, 23 March 1987, "Richard Perle: Farewell Dark Prince" ). However, he has been quoted: "I really resent being depicted as some sort of dark mystic or some demonic power.... All I can do is sit down and talk to someone...." (The New York Times, 4December 1977, Jackson Aide Stirs Criticism in Arms Debate, Richard L. Madden)

Opposition to nuclear arms reduction Perle was considered a hardliner in arms reduction negotiations with the Soviet Union and has stated that his opposition to arms control under the Carter administration had to do with his view that the U.S. was giving up too much at the negotiation table and not receiving nearly enough concessions from the Soviets. Perle called the arms talks under negotiation in the late 1970s "the rawest deal of the century".

Perle's objection to the arms talks between the Carter administration and the Soviet Union revolved primarily around Carter's agreement to halt all cruise missile development. Perle is widely credited for spearheading opposition to the treaty, which was never ratified by the Senate.

Perle, with fellow neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz, played a supporting role in the ballistic missile defense project that was launched in the 1980s called the Strategic Defense Initiative.("Star Wars") However, Jonathan Chait has pointed out that Perle vehemently opposed the INF Treaty when it was initially signed, calling it "flawed enough to require renegotiation with the Soviets" and arguing that "the treaty does not do many of the key things the Administration says it does."

Perle's book An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror which he coauthored with fellow neoconservative David Frum in 2004 criticizes American bureaucracy, civil service, and law. The book suggests that Americans must "overhaul the institutions of our government to ready them for a new kind of war against a new kind of enemy" including the FBI, CIA, armed forces, and State Department. Perle and Frum conclude: "For us, terrorism remains the great evil of our time, and the war against this evil, our generation's great cause.... There is no middle way for Americans: it is victory or holocaust." Flynt Leverett, a senior staff member of the Bush National Security Council states: "There were constant efforts to pressure the intelligence community to provide assessments that would support their views. If they couldn't get what they wanted out of the intelligence community, they simply created their own intelligence."

Iraq policy and Bush criticism The Senate Intelligence Committee eventually discovered that President Bush and his advisers heavily exaggerated the claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and terrorist ties to Al Qaeda which were not validated by U.S. intelligence units. Nevertheless, Perle vociferously defended the war in Iraq, arguing to the wife of a deployed soldier in a 2007 PBS film that to end the war now would be to dishonor those who had already died in the cause.

Disputed role in Bush administration Conservative commentator David Brooks has said that, in his opinion, Perle's influence in the Bush administration is exaggerated. In a 2004 New York Times article, Brooks wrote that; "There have been hundreds of references... to Richard Perle's insidious power over administration policy, but I've been told by senior administration officials that he has had no significant meetings with Bush or Cheney since they assumed office. If he's shaping their decisions, he must be microwaving his ideas into their fillings".

On Iraq Study Group proposals In a December 2006 interview with Die Zeit, Perle strongly criticized the Iraq Study Group proposals, saying: "I have never seen such a foolish report.... A report that begins with false premises ends with nothing."

Other views on foreign policy

United Nations

Perle is a frequent critic of the United Nations, stating that it is an embodiment of "...the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions.... " He has also attacked the United Nations Security Council veto power as a flawed concept, arguing that the only time the U.N. utilized force during the Cold War was when "...the Soviets were not in the chamber to veto it". He also argued that there was "no practical mechanism consistent with the rules of the UN for dealing with Saddam Hussein". At the time, these comments provoked controversy among critics of the war, who argued that they contradicted the U.S.'s official stance on the legality of the invasion.

Business interests and controversies

Bribery accusations and alleged conflicts of interest

Perle has on occasion been accused of being an Israeli agent of influence. It has been reported that, while he was working for Jackson, "An FBI summary of a 1970 wiretap recorded Perle discussing classified information with someone at the Israeli embassy. He came under fire in 1983 when newspapers reported he received substantial payments to represent the interests of an Israeli weapons company. Perle denied conflict of interest, insisting that, although he received payment for these services after he had assumed his position in the Defense Department, he was between government jobs when he worked for the Israeli firm."

From 1981 to 1987, Perle was Assistant Secretary of Defense for international security policy in the Reagan administration. In a New York Times article, Perle was criticized for recommending that the Army purchase an armaments system from an Israeli company that a year earlier had paid him $50,000 in consulting fees. Perle acknowledged receiving the payment the same month he joined the Reagan administration, but said the payment was for work done before joining the government and that he had informed the Army of this prior consulting work. Perle was never indicted for anything related to the incident.

In March 2004, another New York Times article reported that, while chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Perle had contracted with the troubled telecommunications giant Global Crossing to help overcome opposition from the FBI and the Pentagon to the sale of its assets to Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa. Since the military employed the company's fiber optics network for communications, the brass argued that sale to a foreign-owned, especially Chinese, corporation would compromise national security. Perle was to be paid $125,000 to promote the deal, with an extra $600,000 contingent fee on its approval. This controversy led to accusations of bribery, and Perle resigned as chairman on March 27, 2003, though he remained on the board.

Perle is also known to have demanded payment for press interviews while he was the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a practice that has raised accusations of not only ethical but legal impropriety.

Unresolved legal issues In 1978, while working with the Senate Armed Services Committee, Perle was caught in a security breach on a wiretap of the Israeli embassy, by CIA director Stansfield Turner. a formal warning that the S.E.C.'s enforcement staff had found sufficient evidence of wrongdoing to bring a civil lawsuit.

Seymour Hersh and "Lunch with the Chairman" In July 2001, George W. Bush appointed Perle chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, which advises the Department of Defense. Two years later a newspaper article accused Perle of a conflict of interest, claiming Perle stood to profit financially by influencing government policy. The article alleged that Perle had business dealings with Saudi investors and linked him to the intelligence-related computer firm Trireme Partners LLP, which he claimed stood to profit from the war in Iraq.

That same day, Perle was being interviewed on the issue of Iraq by CNN's Wolf Blitzer. Shortly before the interview ended, Blitzer quoted the aforementioned news article and asked for Perle's response. Perle dismissed the premise of the article and argued that it lacked "any consistent theme". Added Perle: "Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist, frankly."

On March 11, Perle told the New York Sun as regards Hersh's article that "I intend to launch legal action in the United Kingdom. I'm talking to Queen's Counsel right now". He claimed it was easier to win libel cases in England, and that therefore made it a better location. In the end, Perle did not file any legal case. Instead, on March 27, 2003, he resigned as chairman of the Defense Policy Board, although he still remained a member of the board.

Adviser to Muammar al-Gaddafi As a member of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based consulting firm Monitor Group, Perle was an advisor to Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi in 2006. "Perle traveled to Libya twice in 2006 and met with Vice President Dick Cheney after the trips." According to Monitor documents, Perle traveled to Libya with several other advisers to hold lectures and workshops, and promote the image of Libya and its ruler.

Works Perle is author of many articles and three books: An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (with David Frum, 2003) Hard Line (1992) Reshaping Western Security (ed.) (1991)

In 1992 he produced the PBS feature The Gulf Crisis: The Road to War.

In 2007, Perle presented the documentary "The Case for War: In Defense of Freedom", articulating his view of the challenges facing the U.S. after 9/11, and debating with his critics including Richard Holbrooke, Simon Jenkins, and Abdel Bari Atwan. The film was broadcast by PBS in their series America at a Crossroads, which generated considerable controversy.