RICHARD PERL

Rense: Expatriate Richard Perle

"Richard Perle is a traitor. There's no other way to put it."

Seymour Hersh is a rarity in America these days -- an investigative journalist.

"Hersh is not a nice man in the Washington sense," writes Eric Alterman of Salon, "he does not know how to make small talk, flatter his bosses, spin his defeats and conceal his fierce competitiveness. He is simply the best investigative reporter alive and expects his work to speak for itself."

Because Hersh does what he does so well, the chicken hawk Richard Perle called him a terrorist on CNN the other day.

That's right. Perle equated Hersh with Osama bin Laden and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. "Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist," Perle told Wolf Blitzer.

When Perle was working for Senator Scoop Jackson, he was investigated by the Justice Department and found to have violated US policies relating to unlawful transmission of sensitive classified US information to Israel.

"An FBI summary of a 1970 wiretap recorded Perle discussing classified information with someone at the Israeli embassy," writes Paul Findley (They Dare To Speak Out, Chicago, Ill, Lawrence Hill Books 1989)."He came under fire in 1983 when newspapers reported he received substantial payments to represent the interests of an Israeli weapons company. Perle denied conflict of interest, insisting that, although he received payment for these services after he had assumed his position in the Defense Department, he was between government jobs when he worked for the Israeli firm."

In other words, Richard Perle is an Israeli spy.