From the March 21, 2003 New York Times:

Pentagon Adviser Is Also Advising Global Crossing
By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, March 20 — 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.
    Mr. Perle and his lawyer said yesterday that his involvement with Global
Crossing did not violate the ethics rules.
    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.
    Lawyers said today that Mr. Perle had been helping Global Crossing for several
weeks. They said he was brought in as a prominent Republican with close ties to
the current officials. He has taken on a particularly important role, they said,
since the company recently pulled back its request for the government to clear
the sale in the face of opposition from the Defense Department and the Federal
Bureau of Investigation. Those agencies have said that the proposed deal
presents national security and law enforcement problems, because it would put
Global Crossing's worldwide fiber optics network — one used by the United States
government — under Chinese ownership.
    Mr. Perle and his lawyers were preparing to file an affidavit dated March 7 and
a legal notice dated today, March 20, that said he was uniquely qualified to
advise the company on the matter because of his job as head of the Defense
Policy Board.
    But after a reporter raised questions today about whether Mr. Perle was using
his job at the Defense Policy Board for the benefit of a client, they said the
references to his job should not have been in the legal papers and would be
deleted before they were filed in the bankruptcy proceeding.
    In the March 7 affidavit, Mr. Perle said, "As the chairman of the Defense Policy
Board, I have a unique perspective on and intimate knowledge of the national
defense and security issues that will be raised by the CFIUS review process that
is not and could not be available to the other CFIUS professionals." The company
used similar language in its legal notice.
    CFIUS refers to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a
government group that includes representatives from the Defense Department and
other agencies. It has been considering the deal and has the power to block it.
"CFIUS professionals" refers to the other lawyers and lobbyists who have been
trying to get the committee to approve the deal.
    Mr. Perle, in an interview late this afternoon, said that he had not noticed the
language in the affidavit and that it was an erroneous reference because the
Defense Policy Board has nothing to do with reviewing the sale of American
companies to foreign investors.
    "It was drafted by the lawyers, and I frankly didn't notice it," he said.
    Shortly after that interview, Mr. Perle called back and said that he remembered
that the language concerning the Defense Review Board had appeared in an earlier
draft of the affidavit and that he had struck it out because it was incorrect.
    "You have a draft that I never signed," he said.
    After consulting with a company lawyer, Mr. Perle called back and in a third
conversation said that he had taken the phrase out of the affidavit "because it
seemed inappropriate and irrelevant" but that someone put it back in the
document and he signed it without noticing it.
    "This was a clerical error, and not my clerical error," he said.
    An adviser involved with one of the parties in the case said tonight that Mr.
Perle had not read the affidavit closely and that he had, in fact, signed it but
that it would be changed before it was filed.
    Mr. Perle said he did not seek an ethics opinion as to whether he could work on
the Global Crossing matter, because he said it posed no legal problems.
    "I've abided by the rules," he said. "The question, I should think, is have I
recommended anything to the secretary or discussed this with the secretary, and
I haven't," he said, referring to Mr. Rumsfeld. "The alternative is if you are
on the board, you can't have any action before the Defense Department. That
isn't the rule. If that were the rule, I'd have to make a choice between being
on an unpaid advisory board and my business."
    Mr. Perle said that he was not engaged in lobbying with senior officials at the
Defense Department and that his role was to advise Global Crossing on the
process of gaining approval. He said his sole discussions with Pentagon
officials had been over what assurances they would need to satisfy themselves
that a deal would not pose any national security problems.
    "I'm not using public office for private gain because the Defense Policy Board
has nothing to do with the CFIUS process," he said.
    But other lawyers and advisers to the companies involved in the deal said that
Mr. Perle had been brought in precisely because he has access to top officials.
They noted that Mr. Perle's fee was largely contingent on the deal's being
approved, an unusual arrangement in Washington legal circles. And they noted
that he was retained after Global Crossing, which has a history of using
well-connected lobbyists, had realized that many of the other lawyers and
lobbyists had strong Democratic ties but no solid Republican ones.
    Among others who have been retained to gain approval of the proposed deal are
Thomas F. McLarty III, the former Clinton chief of staff; Stuart E. Eizenstat, a
former deputy Treasury secretary, and lawyers at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher &
Flom and Dewey Ballantine.
    Mr. Perle, who as chairman of the Defense Policy Board has been a leading
advocate of the United States' invasion of Iraq, spoke on Wednesday in a
conference call sponsored by Goldman Sachs, in which he advised participants on
possible investment opportunities arising from the war. The conference's title
was "Implications of an Imminent War: Iraq Now. North Korea Next?"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank God for the death of the UN
Its abject failure gave us only anarchy. The world needs order.

Richard Perle
Friday March 21, 2003
The Guardian
 

Saddam Hussein's reign of terror is about to end. He will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony, he will take the UN down with him. Well, not the whole UN. The "good works" part will survive, the low-risk peacekeeping bureaucracies will remain, the chatterbox on the Hudson will continue to bleat. What will die is the fantasy of the UN as the foundation of a new world order. As we sift the debris, it will be important to preserve, the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions.     As free Iraqis document the quarter-century nightmare of Saddam's rule, let us not forget who held that the moral authority of the international community was enshrined in a plea for more time for inspectors, and who marched against "regime change". In the spirit of postwar reconciliation that diplomats are always eager to engender, we must not reconcile the timid, blighted notion that world order requires us to recoil before rogue states that terrorise their own citizens and menace ours.     A few days ago, Shirley Williams argued on television against a coalition of the willing using force to liberate Iraq. Decent, thoughtful and high-minded, she must surely have been moved into opposition by an argument so convincing that it overpowered the obvious moral case for removing Saddam's regime. For Lady Williams (and many others), the thumb on the scale of judgment about this war is the idea that only the UN security council can legitimise the use of force. It matters not if troops are used only to enforce the UN's own demands. A willing coalition of liberal democracies isn't good enough. If any institution or coalition other than the UN security council uses force, even as a last resort, "anarchy", rather than international law, would prevail, destroying any hope for world order.     This is a dangerously wrong idea that leads inexorably to handing great moral and even existential politico-military decisions, to the likes of Syria, Cameroon, Angola, Russia, China and France. When challenged with the argument that if a policy is right with the approbation of the security council, how can it be wrong just because communist China or Russia or France or a gaggle of minor dictatorships withhold their assent, she fell back on the primacy of "order" versus "anarchy".     But is the security council capable of ensuring order and saving us from anarchy? History suggests not. The UN arose from the ashes of a war that the League of Nations was unable to avert. It was simply not up to confronting Italy in Abyssinia, much less - had it survived that debacle - to taking on Nazi Germany.     In the heady aftermath of the allied victory, the hope that security could be made collective was embodied in the UN security council - with abject results. During the cold war the security council was hopelessly paralysed. The Soviet empire was wrestled to the ground, and eastern Europe liberated, not by the UN, but by the mother of all coalitions, Nato. Apart from minor skirmishes and sporadic peacekeeping missions, the only case of the security council acting during the cold war was its use of force to halt the invasion of South Korea - and that was only possible because the Soviets were not in the chamber to veto it. It was a mistake they did not make again.     Facing Milosevic's multiple aggressions, the UN could not stop the Balkan wars or even protect its victims. It took a coalition of the willing to save Bosnia from extinction. And when the war was over, peace was made in Dayton, Ohio, not in the UN. The rescue of Muslims in Kosovo was not a UN action: their cause never gained security council approval. The United Kingdom, not the United Nations, saved the Falklands.     This new century now challenges the hopes for a new world order in new ways. We will not defeat or even contain fanatical terror unless we can carry the war to the territories from which it is launched. This will sometimes require that we use force against states that harbour terrorists, as we did in destroying the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.     The most dangerous of these states are those that also possess weapons of mass destruction. Iraq is one, but there are others. Whatever hope there is that they can be persuaded to withdraw support or sanctuary from terrorists rests on the certainty and effectiveness with which they are confronted. The chronic failure of the security council to enforce its own resolutions is unmistakable: it is simply not up to the task. We are left with coalitions of the willing. Far from disparaging them as a threat to a new world order, we should recognise that they are, by default, the best hope for that order, and the true alternative to the anarchy of the abject failure of the UN.   Richard Perle is chairman of the defence policy board, an advisory panel to the Pentagon. This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in this week's Spectator.

The govt-military-industrial-mass media circuit is now complete. Congratulations, America!  -Adolf Hitler

====================

Published on Wednesday, March 19, 2003 by the Chicago Tribune
<http://www.chicagotribune.com/>

Media Giant's Rally Sponsorship Raises Questions
by Tim Jones

Some of the biggest rallies this month have endorsed President Bush's
strategy against Saddam Hussein, and the common thread linking most of them
is Clear Channel Worldwide Inc., the nation's largest owner of radio
stations.
    In a move that has raised eyebrows in some legal and journalistic circles,
Clear Channel radio stations in Atlanta, Cleveland, San Antonio, Cincinnati
and other cities have sponsored rallies attended by up to 20,000 people. The
events have served as a loud rebuttal to the more numerous but generally
smaller anti-war rallies.
    The sponsorship of large rallies by Clear Channel stations is unique among
major media companies, which have confined their activities in the war
debate to reporting and occasionally commenting on the news. The San
Antonio-based broadcaster owns more than 1,200 stations in 50 states and the
District of Columbia.
    While labor unions and special interest groups have organized and hosted
rallies for decades, the involvement of a big publicly regulated
broadcasting company breaks new ground in public demonstrations.
    "I think this is pretty extraordinary," said former Federal Communications
Commissioner Glen Robinson, who teaches law at the University of Virginia.
"I can't say that this violates any of a broadcaster's obligations, but it
sounds like borderline manufacturing of the news."
    A spokeswoman for Clear Channel said the rallies, called "Rally for
America," are the idea of Glenn Beck, a Philadelphia talk show host whose
program is syndicated by Premier Radio Networks, a Clear Channel subsidiary.

`Just patriotic rallies'
A weekend rally in Atlanta drew an estimated 20,000 people, with some
carrying signs reading "God Bless the USA" and other signs condemning France
and the group Dixie Chicks, one of whose members recently criticized
President Bush.
    "They're not intended to be pro-military. It's more of a thank you to the
troops. They're just patriotic rallies," said Clear Channel spokeswoman Lisa
Dollinger.
    Rallies sponsored by Clear Channel radio stations are scheduled for this
weekend in Sacramento, Charleston, S.C., and Richmond, Va. Although Clear
Channel promoted two of the recent rallies on its corporate Web site,
Dollinger said there is no corporate directive that stations organize
rallies.
    "Any rallies that our stations have been a part of have been of their own
initiative and in response to the expressed desires of their listeners and
communities," Dollinger said.
    Clear Channel is by far the largest owner of radio stations in the nation.
The company owned only 43 in 1995, but when Congress removed many of the
ownership limits in 1996, Clear Channel was quickly on the highway to radio
dominance. The company owns and operates 1,233 radio stations (including six
in Chicago) and claims 100 million listeners. Clear Channel generated about
20 percent of the radio industry's $16 billion in 2001 revenues.
Size sparks criticism
    The media giant's size also has generated criticism. Some recording artists
have charged that Clear Channel's dominance in radio and concert promotions
is hurting the recording industry. Congress is investigating the effects of
radio consolidation. And the FCC is considering ownership rule changes,
among them changes that could allow Clear Channel to expand its reach.
Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) has introduced a bill that could halt further
deregulation in the radio industry and limit each company's audience share
and percent of advertising dollars. These measures could limit Clear
Channel's meteoric growth and hinder its future profitability.
    Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of
Minnesota, said the company's support of the Bush administration's policy
toward Iraq makes it "hard to escape the concern that this may in part be
motivated by issues that Clear Channel has before the FCC and Congress."
Dollinger denied there is a connection between the rallies and the company's
pending regulatory matters.
    Rick Morris, an associate professor of communications at Northwestern
University, said these actions by Clear Channel stations are a logical
extension of changes in the radio industry over the last 20 years, including
the blurring of lines between journalism and entertainment.
    From a business perspective, Morris said, the rallies are a natural fit for
many stations, especially talk-radio stations where hosts usually espouse
politically conservative views.
    "Nobody should be surprised by this," Morris said.
    In 1987 the FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters
to cover controversial issues in their community and to do so by offering
balancing views. With that obligation gone, Morris said, "radio can behave
more like newspapers, with opinion pages and editorials."
    "They've just begun stretching their legs, being more politically active,"
Morris said.

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