Even as he advises the Pentagon on war matters, Richard N. Perle, chairman of the influential Defense Policy Board, has been retained by the telecommunications company Global Crossing to help overcome Defense Department resistance to its proposed sale to a foreign firm, Mr. Perle and lawyers involved in the case said today.
Mr. Perle, an assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration, is close to many senior officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who appointed him to lead the policy board in 2001. Though the board does not pay its members and is technically not a government agency, it wields tremendous influence in policy circles. And its chairman is considered a "special government employee," subject to federal ethics rules, including one that bars anyone from using public office for private gain.
[...]
According to lawyers involved in the review and a legal notice that Global Crossing is preparing to file soon in bankruptcy court, Mr. Perle is to be paid $725,000 by the company, including $600,000 if the government approves the sale of the company to a joint venture of Hutchison Whampoa, controlled by the Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, and Singapore Technologies Telemedia, a phone company controlled by the government of Singapore.
The influence of people like Perle is destroying America. The twisted illogic, the lying, the conniving, and, most of all, the pocket-lining reveal their complete lack of morality — and not in the prurient Republican sense. Surely the only way Perle or anyone in the administration could get a blow job would be to pay for it with the money of foreign industrialists.
Could this administration and its influence brokers be any more unseemly?
UPDATE: Later I found out that Atrios and RuminateThis and bloggy were already all over Perle today.
