For the week of March 26 - April 1, 2003

In war, business and politics as usual

Commentary by PAT MURPHY

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Even hardened Washington cynics shook their heads over President Bush’s devious weekend budget high jinks, as well as being baffled by Defense Department adviser Richard Perle’s shameless efforts to cash in on the war.

First, about the President.

Late last Friday, March 21, White House budget director Mitch Daniels said President Bush was unable to tell Congress of possible war costs until "we really . . . . get a little better sense of what scenario we were facing."

But then, less than 72 hours later, on Monday, March 24, President Bush met with congressional leaders and told them—presto!—he’d need something like $75 billion in a supplemental budget for initial war costs, with more needed later.

Why did Bush’s budget director lie on Friday, then magically produce a war budget three days later on Monday?

The president feared, with good reason, that if Congress knew what he’d request for war funding, his $726 billion tax program would be in trouble. So he kept Congress in the dark until the House obediently approved the tax cuts on Friday.

Now, about Richard Perle:

As chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Perle—known around Washington as "The Prince of Darkness—co-authored the blueprint for a new Middle East order through regime changes in Arab states, and is considered an ideological architect of the U.S. pre-emptive military attack on Iraq.

But Perle also is a wheeling-and-dealing moonlighter extraordinaire.

In the 1983s, while assistant Secretary of Defense for President Ronald Reagan, Perle was exposed by The New York Times to have accepted a $50,000 fee from an Israeli weapons firm, whose products he suggested his Pentagon bosses purchase.

Now, Pulitzer Prize-wining writer Seymour Hersh writes in The New Yorker magazine that in January, Perle met over lunch in Marseilles, France, with notorious Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and Saudi industrialist Harb Saleh Zuhair to persuade them to invest tens of millions of dollars in his private company, Trireme Partners, which is involved in homeland security programs.

Although Perle frequently denounces Saudi Arabia, he has no inhibitions about soliciting millions from Saudi businessmen.

Saudi Arabia’s longtime ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandr bin Sultan, told reporter Hersh that Perle’s pitch for Saudi money had "the appearance of blackmail"—that if they invested in his firm, he’d persuade the U.S. government to ease up criticism of the oil kingdom, a charge Perle denies.

Then, again exploiting his Defense Department connections, Perle now has accepted a $725,000 fee from the giant bankrupt Global Crossing mega corporation to influence Defense officials with whom he works to approve Global Crossing’s sale to a foreign company in Singapore.

As if to keep big fees rolling in, Perle then appeared on a Goldman Sachs conference call with advice on investment opportunities growing out of the war in Iraq.

Perle is a man who obviously believes in making hay while others fight the war he promoted.

 

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