Perle Goes—Cheney Far Behind?
The first of the leading neo-con manipulators of the Bush Presidency is out, with the forced resignation of Richard Perle—sometime "Prince of Darkness," now under a very bright light of exposure and investigation—from the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board which he headed until last year.
Perle's picture can be "X-ed off" in the famous Children of Satan pamphlets which have circulated by the LaRouche campaign in millions of copies and two editions all over the world since May, 2003. Those pamphlets made the epithet "Straussian liars" into a clear image for governments, leading figures, and organizations from Berlin to Moscow to Seoul to Washington, D.C., which showed them what they detested and dreaded about this Cheney-run Presidency.
Let's not diminish the significance of Perle himself, and bringing him to justice. How is this neo-con power broker of Washington and Tel Aviv corrupt? Let us count the ways. For 25 years, Richard Perle has seemed to survive against impossible odds, whenever he was caught in shady business dealings, and webs of intrigue and espionage. Only the most recent:
- In March 2003, New Yorker published an article by Seymour Hersh which exposed the activities of a Perle company created after 9/11, called Trireme Partners. Other articles reported that Perle was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions, for private business deals directly related to the topics he took up and classified access he enjoyed at the DPB.
- $20 million from Boeing? To beat Airbus for contracts for the refueling tankers for the U.S. Air Force, Boeing paid millions to Pentagon denizens. Perle got a $20-million investment promise from Boeing for Trireme, and actually received millions. In August 2003, he wrote an op-ed defending the Boeing tanker deal. Some top Boeing executives were fired and forced to resign for possibly bribing the DoD officials.
- Perle got about $7 million from Hollinger International directly, and, indirectly through Hillman Partners—Greg Hillman is a partner in Trireme and a member of the Defense Policy Board—up to $17.5 million of the contested payouts that the inner circle of the Conrad Black crowd was dishing out. The Black payouts are being investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
- Perle and his company sold on "axis of evil" countries to Goldman Sachs, on the topic, "Implications of an Imminent War: Iraq Now, North Korea Next?" Rep. John Conyers asked the DoD to investigate if this was a conflict of interest, but "no conflict" was found, based only on the technicality that Perle did not work for the U.S. government for the required 60 days a year.
- The bankrupt telecomm giant Global Crossing paid Perle $125,000 to help it overcome Pentagon national-security objections to its being bought up by a Chinese company—with a bonus of $600,000 if Perle succeeded. He pulled out of the deal, and "donated the money to charity," when the contract was exposed and a letter to Global Crossing came to light, promoting Perle's influence as a member of the DPB.
- Perle consorted with State Department-listed terrorists, the Mujahideen E-Khalq (MEK) organization, at a Jan. 24 fundraising event. Perle would not say how much he was paid, and said that he didn't know the sponsor was really the MEK—although he's a self-described terrorism expert; and although Rep. Bob Ney (R-Oh.) had publically asked the Justice Department to shut down the Jan. 24 event. The Washington Post reported on Jan. 29, "FBI agents attended [the rally] and as part of a continuing investigation, the Treasury Dept. on Monday froze the assets of the event's prime organizer."
- Add to all that, Perle's role in promoting Ahmed Chalabi and the INC.
A prototype and major player of the Cheney synarchist circle. Now, the image of the neo-con "Straussian liar" is focussed on Cheney himself, toward whom are leading all the investigations of chicanery, profiteering, and outright lying to Congress and the American citizenry.
The Perle resignation will have repercussions globally. The world knows that LaRouche has made these neo-cons—and Cheney the "lead duck in the flight"—his target, moving Democrats and even parts of the Republican Party against them. If Perle's out, can Cheney be far behind?
