USA: BUSH GANG

Reuter: Perle Failed To Disclose Financial Ties To Boeing

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pentagon adviser Richard Perle came under fire on Friday for failing to disclose financial ties to Boeing Co. , even while championing its bid for a controversial $20 billion-plus defense contract.

Perle co-wrote a guest column in The Wall Street Journal newspaper this summer praising the plan to lease then buy 100 modified refueling planes, a year after Boeing committed to invest up to $20 million in Trireme Partners, a New York venture capital fund in which Perle is a principal.

"If ever there were an argument that traditional business practices are ill-suited for defense 'transformation', the saga of the tanker-leasing proposal would count as People's Exhibit A," Perle and a colleague wrote in the Journal on Aug. 14.

"It stinks to high heaven," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based federal budget watchdog group, of Perle's failure to disclose his ties to Boeing in the Wall Street Journal piece.

Boeing acknowledged in a recently released internal e-mail that it ghost-wrote several opinion pieces by prominent figures in favor of leasing tankers rather than buying them outright, as has been standard weapons-procurement policy. "Manche Journalisten und Kommentatoren sind nicht als Konzern-Nutten"