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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| Richard Perle brands journalist Seymour Hesh a ter |
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| amatullah |
| 05/02/03 at 21:54:34 |
| Here is an interesting article on Bush ally Richard Perle attacking respected investigative reporter Seymour Hersh and calling him a terrorist. Hersh was the journalist who first broke the story of the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam (Powell's involvement) and has written several excellent and authoritative investigative books. Richard Perle brands journalist Seymour Hersh a Terrorist By Bill Vann 12 March 2003 A noted journalist's unearthing of evidence of profiteering by a leading architect of the Bush administration's war on Iraq has evoked an extraordinary response. Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, answered the exposure of his use of public office for private gain by denouncing veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh as a "terrorist." Hersh's article, appearing in this week's New Yorker magazine, alleges that Perle used his position on the Defense Policy Board and his influence on the Bush administration's war plans to seek millions of dollars in investments from Saudi businessmen for a venture capital firm where he is a managing partner. The firm, Trireme Partners, L.P., specializes in homeland security and defense. The New Yorker story centers on a January meeting in France between Perle and two prominent Saudi businessmen. One of them was Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi arms dealer with intimate ties both to the royal family in Riyadh and the CIA in Washington. He gained international notoriety in the 1980s for his role in the Iran-Contra conspiracy, and later was implicated in the spectacular collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). Khashoggi described himself to Hersh as a "go-between," who agreed to arrange the meeting after being solicited by a letter from one of Perle's associates in Trireme Partners, L.P. The letter boasted that three of Trireme's managers "advise the US Secretary of Defense by serving on the US Defense Policy Board and one of Trireme's principals, Richard Perle, is chairman of that board." The other two board members referred to were former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Gerald Hillman, a close business associate whom Perle had brought onto the Pentagon panel despite his lack of significant government or military experience. While Perle has publicly denounced the Saudi regime as bearing a major responsibility for terrorism, the aim of the meeting in France, according to the Hersh article, was to secure homeland security contracts with the Saudi ruling family. The other Saudi participant in the meeting was wealthy industrialist Saleh Al-Zuhair, who said he came with the aim of presenting Perle with a proposal for avoiding war with Iraq. Afterwards, Perle's associate Hillman sent Al-Zuhair a "12-point memorandum" asserting that if Saddam Hussein admitted to possessing weapons of mass destruction and agreed to resign and leave Iraq with his sons and some of his ministers, the US "would not have to go to war against Iraq." Hillman's letter was leaked to the Saudi and Lebanese press, where it was portrayed as a plan, backed by Perle, being negotiated with the Saudi government. Asked by Hersh about the meeting, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar Sultan, dismissed the claim about peace feelers, saying it was a cover for a shakedown operation aimed at the Saudi regime. "There is a split personality to Perle," he said. "Here he is, on the one hand, trying to make a hundred-million-dollar deal, and, on the other hand, there were elements of the appearance of blackmail—‘If we get in business, he'll back off on Saudi Arabia'—as I have been informed by participants in the meeting." This is not the first time that Perle has been accused of a conflict of interest. He is one of a number of leading figures in and around the Bush administration who are closely identified with Israel, and specifically with the right-wing Likud Party of Ariel Sharon. They include the second- and third-ranking officials in the Pentagon's civilian leadership—Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. In 1983, when he was an assistant secretary of defense, Perle came under scrutiny in relation to charges that he recommended that the Army buy weapons from an Israeli company whose owners had paid him a $50,000 fee just two years earlier. He has also been accused of funneling classified information to the Israeli embassy in the early 1970s, when he was an aide to Senator Henry Jackson (Democrat of Washington) Going back to the mid-1990s, the Defense Policy Board chairman has been among the most vociferous proponents of a war to topple Saddam Hussein. He was among those claiming—long after administration officials knew that the story was fabricated—that the alleged leader of the September 11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta, met an Iraqi official in Prague. Perle's contemptible accusation against Hersh came in a television interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer broadcast March 9. Blitzer read from the concluding paragraph of Hersh's New Yorker article: "There is no question that Perle believes that removing Saddam from power is the right thing to do. At the same time, he has set up a company that may gain from a war." He asked Perle to respond to the accusation of a conflict of interest. Perle made no attempt to refute the substance of Hersh's report, merely claiming that any suggestion that he would seek personal profit from promoting war is "complete nonsense." Asserting his belief that the US invasion of Iraq will "diminish the threat of terrorism," Perle defended his quest for investments, saying that they were for "homeland defense, which I think are vital and are necessary." Then he added, "Look, Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist, frankly." An incredulous Blitzer repeatedly asked Perle why he would call Hersh a terrorist, and Perle defended the remark. He denounced the journalist as "irresponsible," adding that he was a "terrorist" because "he sets out to do damage and he will do it by whatever innuendo, whatever distortion he can." Hersh is one of the most accomplished US investigative reporters, having established his reputation by exposing the US massacre of 600 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in 1968. He is the recipient of over a dozen major journalism awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and four George Polk Awards. To call Hersh a "terrorist" is not merely hyperbole. Perle's statement is indicative of the fascistic inclinations of an entire layer that exercises enormous influence within the Bush administration. It has to be considered in light of the Bush administration's ongoing attack on democratic rights. This is an administration that has asserted near dictatorial powers in the name of fighting the "war on terrorism." Bush and other administration officials have frequently spoken of the "home front" in this war. Attorney General John Ashcroft, in testimony before Congress, defended the sweeping curtailments of civil liberties in the Patriot Act passed after 9/11 on the grounds that Bush, as a war-time president, has license to take any measures he deems necessary to uphold national security. The Bush administration has made a practice of detaining alleged terrorists without charges and holding them indefinitely without a hearing or trial. It claims it has no obligation to even admit that such people have been seized, creating conditions for the "disappearance" of people, as under the Latin American dictatorships of the 1970s. In the recently disclosed draft of the Justice Department's Domestic Security Enhancement Act, often referred to as "Patriot Act II," the designation "terrorist" is extended to domestic opponents of the government. This proposed measure would grant the president or attorney general the power to label someone a "terrorist" and strip him of his US citizenship. Perle's statement about Hersh stands as a chilling warning of how these police state statutes could be put to use. Those who challenged the policies of the government, or even the filthy business practices of individual officials, could face being labeled "terrorists" and thrown into a military prison. http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0303/09/le.00.html BLITZER: All right. Tom, hold on a minute. You know, we are basically all out of time for this segment. But before you go, Richard, I want to give you a chance to respond. There's an article in the New Yorker magazine by Seymour Hersh that's just coming out today in which he makes a serious accusation against you that you have a conflict of interest in this because you're involved in some business that deals with homeland security, you potentially could make some money if, in fact, there is this kind of climate that he accuses you of proposing. Let me read a quote from the New Yorker article, the March 17th issue, just out now. "There is no question that Perle believes that removing Saddam from power is the right thing to do. At the same time, he has set up a company that may gain from a war." PERLE: I don't believe that a company would gain from a war. On the contrary, I believe that the successful removal of Saddam Hussein, and I've said this over and over again, will diminish the threat of terrorism. And what he's talking about is investments in homeland defense, which I think are vital and are necessary. Look, Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist, frankly. BLITZER: Well, on the basis of -- why do you say that? A terrorist? PERLE: Because he's widely irresponsible. If you read the article, it's first of all, impossible to find any consistent theme in it. But the suggestion that my views are somehow related for the potential for investments in homeland defense is complete nonsense. BLITZER: But I don't understand. Why do you accuse him of being a terrorist? PERLE: Because he sets out to do damage and he will do it by whatever innuendo, whatever distortion he can -- look, he hasn't written a serious piece since Maylie (ph). BLITZER: All right. We're going to leave it right there. Author of “axis of evil” line, Frum, defends Perle: Washington Post Perle Threatens Lawsuit Over Hersh Article In New Yorker By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 14, 2003; Page C01 Seymour Hersh has a knack for arousing strong reactions in the people he investigates. Richard Perle, his latest target, has gone nuclear in recent days, likening the New Yorker reporter to a "terrorist." Why the incendiary language? "He ignites bombs and I don't think he cares whether the victims are innocent civilians," the former assistant defense secretary declares. New Yorker Editor David Remnick calls Perle's attack "disgusting." Hersh says that Perle, a businessman who is also chairman of President Bush's Defense Policy Board, hasn't cited a single inaccuracy in this week's New Yorker piece. "It's not about me and Richard. It's about what Richard did," Hersh says. What Perle did, according to the magazine, is to have lunched in January with controversial Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi and a Saudi industrialist. The industrialist, Harb Saleh Zuhair, was interested in investing in a venture capital firm, Trireme Partners, of which Perle is a managing partner. Nothing ever came of the lunch in Marseilles; no investment was made. But the Hersh piece suggests that Perle, a longtime critic of the Saudi regime, was inappropriately mixing business and politics. Khashoggi, a former arms broker who says he lost $10 million as a middleman between the White House and Iran in the 1980s arms-for-hostages deal, told Hersh: "It was normal for us to see Perle. We in the Middle East are accustomed to politicians who use their offices for whatever business they want." The piece contains this extraordinary quote from Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States: "There were elements of the appearance of blackmail -- 'If we get in business, he'll back off on Saudi Arabia' -- as I have been informed by participants in the meeting." "Just preposterous," Perle says, adding that "my views are completely unchanged about the appalling record of the Saudis in making money available to extremist groups. . . . That accusation is so monstrous -- that my view is for sale -- and there is not a shred of anything to support that." This is, at bottom, a clash between two old Washington warriors who have tangled over the years. Perle, 61, is a tenacious infighter who so strongly opposed arms control with the Soviets when he worked in the Reagan administration that he was dubbed the Prince of Darkness. From his office in suburban Maryland, he wields considerable clout as a hawkish adviser on Iraq, in part through his chairmanship of the Pentagon advisory board, a blue-chip assortment of former officials. Hersh, 65, who won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, is a bulldog journalist and former New York Times reporter who takes on powerful people and thorny subjects. He drew criticism for initially accepting a bogus batch of Kennedy papers while researching his 1997 book "The Dark Side of Camelot," but has scored repeatedly with stories about U.S. intelligence and military matters. Three years ago, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, then the White House drug czar, denounced a piece that Hersh was writing about his role in alleged brutality during the Persian Gulf War, sparking a war of words even before the article was published. Perle, a frequent talk show guest, has been one of the leading voices demanding the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Because Trireme, which was founded in 2001, specializes in homeland security and defense, Hersh writes that Perle "has set up a company that may gain from a war." Perle calls the piece "inaccurate" but doesn't dispute that the lunch took place. He says he will likely sue Hersh in Britain, where libel cases face a lesser burden of proof. Perle says he has a four-page letter -- he won't say whether it's from Khashoggi or Zuhair -- complaining of "egregious misquotes and flagrant errors derived from my interview with Mr. Hersh," along with "reckless, grotesque renditions and innuendos." Remnick says he believes the letter is from Khashoggi and that "those quotes were all gone over carefully with Khashoggi." He says that when Perle called him Wednesday, he replied that there was nothing for the New Yorker to retract. Perle launched his counterattack Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition," declaring that Hersh is "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist." "He should know better," Remnick says. "The only loose talk I know of where this entire story is concerned is coming from Mr. Perle. That story was deeply and well reported and thoroughly checked, with Mr. Perle's cooperation." In Perle's telling -- which also appears in the Hersh article -- he was invited to meet with Zuhair, who had recently been in Baghdad and was said to have information about Hussein being willing to step down. "I went there as a private citizen to hear what this man had to say," Perle says. "There was never any business discussed." Salon columnist Joe Conason says Perle "arguably should be required to resign" from the Defense Policy Board "because of his grossly intemperate public attack on Hersh." But former Bush speechwriter David Frum writes in National Review Online: "Would such an investment have been improper if it had been discussed? Despite Hersh's heavy breathing, the article has to concede that the answer is once more no: Richard Perle is a private citizen, who serves the U.S. government without pay, and is entitled to earn a living so long as he avoids conflicts of interest -- of which Hersh could show none." Hersh says he has "immense respect" for Perle for being willing to talk to the press. But, he says, "if Richard Perle having a private lunch in Marseilles with Adnan Khashoggi about a business deal -- or about politics -- isn't a story, I've been in the wrong business for 40 years. It's a story, period. That's what I do for a living. I write stories." © 2003 The Washington Post Company |
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