A report commissioned by shareholders of wingnut media baron Conrad Black's Hollinger International, and chaired by former SEC chairman Richard Breedman, illuminates another neocon-job.
A one-time assistant U.S. defense secretary and a leading proponent of the neo-conservative movement, Perle is widely considered to have wielded significant policy influence in the Pentagon during the administration of President George W. Bush.
But Perle was an "abject failure" as an outside director at Hollinger International, where he had a responsibility to protect the interests of company shareholders, according to the report, commissioned by Hollinger International and prepared by a committee headed by Richard Breeden, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
More from today's Chicago Tribune:
Perle told investigators that he considered the executive committee reports simply a way to push through paperwork that would end up being reviewed by Hollinger International's full board of directors. In fact, the board signed off on a variety of financial misdeeds by Black and Radler, relying on assurances from the executive committee that all was well, the Breeden report said.
Perle "admitted that he generally did not even read [the documents he was signing] or understand the transactions to which they applied," the report said.
"It is difficult to imagine a more flagrant abdication of duty than a director rubber-stamping transactions that directly benefit a controlling shareholder without any thought, comprehension or analysis."
And Richard "Swine Before" Perle had his own hand in the til as well:
And while Perle was listed as an outside director, the report said, he actually wasn't independent of Black and Radler at all. Beginning in 1996, it said, Perle was an officer of Hollinger Digital, a venture-capital subsidiary of Hollinger International. In that role, he received millions of dollars in incentive payments.
As a result of those lucrative payments, the report found that "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, Black and Radler."
It's just a shame that the SCLM refuses to pay any attention to the band of thieves, idiots, and charlatans that Dubya has surrounded himself with, and who have been given carte blanc to form our nation's foreign policy.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0409010157sep01,1,6770854.story