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Perle: 'Prince of Darkness' in the
spotlight
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Is civil war about to break out
among the neo-conservatives who have championed the
imperial trajectory of the Bush administration's foreign
policy?
It's still too early to tell, but
analysts are raising eyebrows over news that Richard
Perle, the single most powerful hawk outside the
administration, has been retained by Global Crossing to
help ensure that Hutchison Whampoa, widely regarded by
his fellow hawks as a front for China's People's
Liberation Army, can buy a majority share in the
bankrupt telecommunications company.
It's the
latest in a series of revelations of Perle's business
dealings that, at the very least, make clear why he
decided against taking an official position in the
administration of President George W Bush. It seems that
Perle, for all his hawkishness, wants to get rich in
ways that government service may not permit.
Those business dealings, which include interests
in companies selling advanced computer eavesdropping
systems and other "homeland security"-related systems to
foreign intelligence and security agencies, have raised
ethical questions about whether he is using his unpaid
position as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy
Board (DPB) for personal gain. While the latest
disclosure about his relationship with Global Crossing
also raises ethical issues, the fact that China is
involved - Beijing being considered by most neo-cons the
power most likely to challenge US regional dominance in
Asia - makes the case even more remarkable.
According to a notice submitted by Global
Crossing, Perle would be paid US$726,000 by the company,
including $600,000 if the sale goes through. Whether it
will remains unclear, however. Both the Defense
Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
have raised some "national security" problems with the
deal because it would put Global Crossing's global
fiber-optics network, which is used by the Pentagon
itself, under Hutchison Whampoa's control.
What
is particularly remarkable - not to say mind-boggling -
is that one of Perle's closest neo-conservatives
proteges, soulmates and veteran collaborators, Frank
Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), has
been screaming about the dangers posed by the Hong
Kong-based company to US national security ever since
Panama awarded it a 25-year renewable contract to lease
and operate the ports at both ends of the Panama Canal
Zone in 1997.
Gaffney began working for Perle
way back in the 1970s when they were both on the staff
of Washington state senator Henry M "Scoop" Jackson, the
"Senator from Boeing", devoted to derailing detente with
the Soviet Union. Their bureaucratic machinations with
then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and another Perle
protege, Paul Wolfowitz, to frustrate a new arms-control
agreement negotiated with Moscow by secretary of state
Henry Kissinger earned Perle his famous nickname, the
Prince of Darkness.
Under president Ronald
Reagan, Perle became an assistant secretary of defense
and named Gaffney as his deputy. In the 1990s, they
worked hand-in-glove - Perle at the neo-conservative
American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and Gaffney at CSP.
Perle serves on CSP's board of advisors; they serve
together on the boards of the US Committee for a Free
Lebanon and the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq,
and several other neo-conservative-dominated interest
and lobby groups.
Gaffney, who warned that the
Panama leases would put Beijing in a position to cut off
the canal to US warships, if not take control of the
strategic waterway altogether, led a bizarre campaign
backed by extreme right-wingers in Congress and former
defense secretary Caspar Weinberger to force the
Panamanians to cancel the deal before the canal reverted
to Panamanian sovereignty on January 1, 2000.
As
recently as last August, Gaffney was insisting that
Hutchison, which is owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li
Ka-shing, is simply a cat's paw for China to further its
strategic designs against Washington. In addition to the
Panama Canal leases, he wrote in the Washington Times,
Hutchison "is currently hard at work acquiring a
presence for China at other strategic 'choke points'
around the world, including notably the Caribbean's
Bahamas, the Mediterranean's Malta, and the Persian
Gulf's Straits of Hormuz. At a moment inconvenient to
the United States, such access could translate into
physical or other obstacles to our use of such
waterways."
But while these geostrategic
maneuvers were worrisome enough, the main point of
Gaffney's article last October was precisely to point
out the threat posed by Hutchison's purchase of a 61.5
percent majority interest in Global Crossing, the winner
of a 10-year, $450 million contract to operate a
high-speed classified research network for Pentagon
scientists.
Gaffney had a message for those who
would support the deal going through. "Trade uber
alles means, by definition, subordinating
national-security considerations to the ambitions of
those who seek profits through commerce. In a time of
war like the present," he warned, "we simply cannot
afford to pursue such a policy to its illogical, and
potentially highly destructive conclusion."
Yet
it appears that Perle has been retained to achieve
precisely that result.
The deal adds to the
growing perception that Perle is using his position as
DPB chairman, and possibly his longtime friendship and
influence with Rumsfeld, to further his own financial
interests. Rumsfeld appointed him to the post within a
few months of the administration's inauguration, and he
has used it as a platform for almost continuous public
exhortation for Washington to invade Iraq as a first
step in transforming the entire Arab Middle East.
Perle's private interests first came to light in
a controversial New Yorker article this month by veteran
investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. He reported that
Perle met with Saudi businessmen, including Adnan
Khashoggi, in Marseilles two months ago as part of an
effort to raise investment cash for Perle's Trireme
Partners LP, a company specializing in homeland security
and defense. Perle denied that the conversation had
anything to do with Trireme and called Hersh a
"terrorist".
Last week, The Guardian of London
reported that Perle was also a director of a UK-based
company, Autonomy Corp, with an option on 75,000 of the
company's shares. The company, according to the Guardian
account, is selling advanced computer eavesdropping
systems to intelligence agencies around the world. Perle
told the newspaper that he advises the company on market
opportunities but that he has no input into specific
procurement by US agencies, a point he also made with
respect to the Global Crossing arrangement, which was
reported by the New York Times on Friday.
The
Times also reported that Perle participated last
Wednesday in a conference call sponsored by Goldman
Sachs on the subject of "Implications of an Imminent
War: Iraq Now. North Korea Next?" which apparently
discussed investment opportunities. It did not disclose
whether Perle was paid for his participation or made
specific recommendations about companies in which he has
an interest.
As DPB chairman, Perle is not
formally part of the US administration, and is thus not
required to divest himself of commercial interests. But
his influence and power with the administration are well
known. Not only does he have a long-standing
relationship with Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, but he also
has worked closely as a lobbyist for Turkey and the
Israeli arms industry with Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's
Undersecretary for Policy, as well as other senior
Pentagon officials.
Perle himself has strongly
denied that he was using his influence as DPB chairman
to help Global Crossing. He told the Financial Times
that he was only advising the company on the approval
process and not lobbying on its behalf.
But a
number of analysts say the contract's fee contingency,
which is unusual in the Washington legal community,
suggests that lobbying is precisely what Global Crossing
had in mind. "The fee structure is especially smelly
because $600,000 of the windfall is contingent on
government approval of the sale," wrote the Times'
Maureen Dowd on Sunday.
"This is a conflict of
interest," Larry Noble, director of the Center for
Responsible Politics, told the Financial Times. "He's
using his position on the board to win business."
But to Gaffney, who has yet to be heard from on
the issue, and his fellow members of the anti-China
"Blue Team", Perle's role in expediting the sale of
Global Crossing to Hutchison must come as a major
disappointment, to put it mildly.
After all, it
was only three years ago that Perle joined with Gaffney
and 15 other anti-China hawks from the Project for the
New American Century in calling for unequivocal support
for Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.
And
in another public statement that could have been written
by Gaffney, Perle charged that Beijing "is laying the
foundations for an aggressive claim to preeminence in
the Pacific. It ought to be very clear that this is a
catastrophe for all of us, and could foreshadow a Cold
War as bad as the last."
Of course, this is the
same Richard Perle who recently called for Washington to
pursue a strategy of "containment" against France but
has no intention of giving up his summer home there.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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