And the Ethics-Challenged Hits just keep on coming. . .
Richard Perle, NeoCon stalwart and war profiteer, seems to have, as a director of Hollinger International, looked the other way while Conrad Black looted the company of $400 million dollars. It was the least he could do in exchange for their helping finance his post 9/11 Homeland Security Venture Fund efforts.
And the SEC has informed him they're preparing to sue.
Here's what Bloomberg had to say:
The SEC warning adds to the scrutiny of Perle's business affairs. In 2003, members of Congress, including John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, questioned why Perle set up an investment fund and took consulting jobs from other companies while serving as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under President Bush. The advisory panel's members have included former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who is also a director at Hollinger International.
Perle said he didn't advise the Pentagon on matters in which he had a direct financial interest. He resigned in March from the policy board.
Pentagon Supplier
Perle has served on at least a dozen corporate boards since leaving the Reagan administration, including those of Berkshire England-based Morgan Crucible Co., a ceramics maker; Autonomy Corp., a U.K. maker of data-mining software; and Herndon, Virginia-based DigitalNet Holdings Inc., a Pentagon supplier of computer-network security software that was sold to London-based BAE Systems Plc last year.
At Hollinger, Perle was the only non-management member of the executive committee, which had wide authority to approve transactions. Perle approved deals that let Black and Radler buy Hollinger newspapers for themselves at below-market prices and loan money to companies they controlled, causing at least $10 million in losses, according to the report by Breeden.
Perle told the investigative panel that he viewed his role on the executive committee as a formality, according to the report. He would get packages of documents to sign and ``generally did not even read them or understand the transactions,'' it said.
`Flagrant Abdication'
``It is difficult to imagine a more flagrant abdication of duty,'' the report said. ``Perle clearly had a motive to abdicate his fiduciary duties as an executive committee member so as to accommodate the persons responsible for his huge Hollinger compensation.''
With the pathetic pandering of the Terri Schiavo legislation and grandstanding growing stale, it's new allegations like these that keep the Republican ethics scandal meter in the red zone. What will we find out next - that Donald Rumsfeld not only shook hands with Saddam Hussein in 1985, but had his secret love child? That Karl Rove personally intervened to make sure the son of the Kennedy-supporting Catholic girl who beat him up as a child got sent to Fallujah?
Not that we're complaining about all the recent scandalous revelations - this is the sort of news so tawdry and cheap that Fox can't help but cover the story, and the Fox Faithful will eventually learn what their leaders have really been up to. In the meantime, the progressive collapse of the Rovian empire under the burden of its own greed and arrogance is quality entertainment. Sit back, grab a refreshing beverage of your choice, and watch the show!