Richard Perle, stood up, instead, for Richard Perle.

http://nytimes.com/2004/09/06/business/media/06perle.html
Perle Asserts Hollinger's Conrad Black Misled Him

September 6, 2004

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 - Last fall, as the board of Hollinger International prepared to oust its founding executive, Conrad M. Black, the director most protective and supportive of him turned to a friend and balked.

"This is a kangaroo court," a person recalled the director, Richard N. Perle, as saying in defense of Lord Black, who had been accused by investors of improperly siphoning millions of dollars to other companies he controlled.

But last week, Mr. Perle's view of Lord Black changed. Issuing his first public statements since being heavily criticized in an internal report for rubber-stamping transactions that company investigators say led to the plundering of the company, Mr. Perle now says he was duped . . .

. . . The Breeden report said that because Mr. Perle was a "faithless fiduciary," the company would seek to compel him to return the $5.4 million in payments he received as a director . . .

. . . In the last few months, Mr. Perle, 62, has also alienated former allies at the Pentagon for his continued defense of Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi opposition leader who has recently come under suspicion of leaking important intelligence information to Iran. Mr. Perle was forced to step down from the Pentagon advisory board after disclosures about his plans to work for Global Crossing and his meeting with a Saudi businessman, Adnan Khashoggi.

Mr. Perle's friends say that he is the victim of unjustified attacks that are motivated more by policy vendettas than substance.

"It is not surprising that the attacks on Richard have accompanied his rise to influence," said Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, who served as ambassador to the United Nations in the Reagan administration. She first met Mr. Perle when the two were advising Senator Henry M. Jackson, a Washington Democrat and staunch conservative on foreign-policy matters. She emphasized that she knew nothing of his business dealings, but was speaking about the criticism Mr. Perle has encountered over his policy positions.

Other friends say they are confident that he will be vindicated.

"Over the years, endless accusations have been made against him," said Michael A. Ledeen, a friend since the 1970's and colleague of Mr. Perle's at the American Enterprise Institute. "All have proven false, and I'm certain this one will be as well." . . .

- - New York Times, September 6, 2004

http://cfo.com/article.cfm/8072914

SEC Clears Perle in Hollinger Probe
The former Defense Department official won't be charged in connection with the Conrad Black civil suit.
Stephen Taub, CFO.com

October 24, 2006

Richard Perle is off the hook. The Securities and Exchange Commission told the former defense department official that he will not be face civil charges for his actions as a director of Hollinger International, according to the Associated Press.

Perle was dragged into the case in November 2004 when regulators filed civil fraud charges against former Hollinger chairman and chief executive Conrad Black, alleging Black engaged in undisclosed transactions that benefited him at the expense of his media company, according to AP. In connection with Black's case, Perle received a so-called Wells notice from the SEC alerting him that he might face civil charges for failing to police Black, reported Bloomberg.

The SEC notification was confirmed by Dennis Block, an attorney for Perle and a partner at Cadwalalder, Wickersham and Taft. "There was absolutely no basis for it," Block told Bloomberg, which added that Perle was a member of Hollinger's three-member executive committee, along with Black and former President David Radler, from 1996 to 2003. Perle resigned from the board earlier this year.

The SEC accused Black and Radler of wrongfully diverting proceeds from sales of company newspapers for their personal use, according to the Bloomberg report. Perle, who served on the Pentagon's advisory Defense Policy Board for 17 years until 2004, received $3.1 million in undisclosed bonuses from Hollinger for running an Internet investment arm called Hollinger Digital, noted Bloomberg. citing a report put together by former SEC Chairman Richard Breeden.

In an interview conducted last year, Perle said he was "blown away" by the report's accusations, said Bloomberg. The wire service also noted that the Breeden report accused Perle of helping to convince Black to put $2.5 million of Hollinger's cash into a venture-capital fund in which Perle and Black participated, without seeking board approval. Currently, Perle is a member of several conservative think tanks.

- - CFO.com, October 24, 2006

Is CFO.com hinting at some kind of connection between the last sentence ("conservative think tanks") of this news article, and the lede sentence ("off the hook")?

And if Richard Perle is truly as innocent and as stupid a dupe as he claimed to be, then why is he employed by "think" tanks?

http://chicagoreader.com/features/stories/hottype/070105

The other day I stopped by the Dirksen Building to pick up . . . a proffer laying out in broad strokes the government's case against Black and three lesser Hollinger officers . . . The proffer quotes him telling another Hollinger officer in a 2002 e-mail:

"There has not been an occasion for many months when I got on our plane without wondering whether it was really affordable. But I'm not prepared to reenact the French Revolutionary renunciation of the rights of the nobility."
- - Conrad Black

- - The Chicago Reader

Even his own lawyers concede that their client has an attitude problem.