Last week, Richard Perle resigned as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense
Policy Board. He had risen from staff worker for the late Senator "Scoop"
Jackson (D-Wash, 1912-1983) to one of the most influential adviser positions
in the Bush administration.
Set up in 1985, this Board is to give the Secretary of Defense "independent,
informed advice and opinion concerning matters of defense policy."
At his discretion, the Secretary, now Donald Rumsfeld, appoints and
dismisses its thirty members, an array of Washington insiders, such
as Republicans Henry Kissinger, Dan Quayle, and Newt Gingrich, and Democrats
Harold Brown and Tom Foley. Each of the Board's members while unpaid
nevertheless commands a large network of lucrative business connections.
Perle, an ardent Zionist, personal friend of Israeli prime minister
Ariel Sharon, and board member of the Jerusalem Post, left Senator Jackson's
staff to work for Soltam, the Israeli weapons manufacturer for whom
he arranged profitable deals with the Pentagon. President Reagan appointed
him assistant secretary of defense. During the Clinton years he helped
the Bosnian government buying arms and negotiating the 1995 Dayton peace
deal.
Secretary Rumsfeld asked Perle, also known in Washington as "The
Prince of Darkness," to chair the Defense Policy Board where he
spearheaded the drafting of a new, more assertive American foreign policy.
It would remake the Middle East, as Sharon envisions it. It proposed
the disarming of Iraq, the rejection of the land-for-peace formula,
the gradual reduction and minimization of the Palestinian population
in the "so-called" (according to Rumsfeld) occupied territories,
the transformation of the Muslim countries into American-style democracies,
and the development of a data bank on all Americans. Perle's concept
of America's foreign relations cares little for human rights, international
law, and the good name of the United States of America in the world.
Perle remains a member of the Defense Policy Board. He resigned as its
chairman only when his business dealings with Saudi arms dealers and
with Bermuda-based Global Crossing, the bankrupt telecommunications
firm, became widely known. He was also reported to advise clients of
Goldman Sachs on investment opportunities in postwar Iraq.
Perle's conflicts of interest, however, are only the tip of an iceberg
of collusions between members of the Defense Policy Board and defense
contractors. According to the Center for Public Integrity, at least
nine Board members have financially significant ties to large defense
contractors.
A few revealing examples may demonstrate the problem. Retired Marine
Corps General Jack Sheehan works for the engineering firm Bechtel, which
did $1 billion in projects for the Pentagon in 2002 and is now bidding
for contracts to rebuild Iraq. Retired Air Force General Ronald Fogelman
serves on boards of companies whose defense contracts amounted to more
than $900 million in 2002. Retired Admiral David Jeremiah is financially
tied to corporations that did $10 billion in defense business in 2002.
Retired Admiral William Owens serves on five corporate boards that last
year won $60 million in defense contracts.
Former defense secretary Harold Brown sits on the boards of two corporations
that obtained $229 in contracts last year. Former defense Secretary
James Schlesinger chairs the board of the Mitre Corporation whose contracts
in 2002 amounted to $474 million. Former CIA director James Woolsey
is vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, the strategy management consulting
firm, which gained government contracts worth over $680 million in 2002.
Rumsfeld's former assistant Chris Williams registered as lobbyists but
remains on the Defense Policy Board. Last year he earned $220,000 for
his work.
The voluminous details of the financial advantages which membership
on the Defense Policy Board can bring are public information but are
rarely brought to the public's attention. Suffice it to observe that
many of the designers of America's new, more aggressive foreign policy
are not only patriots, they are also profiteers.