corrente

Way, way, way back when (last May I think it was), the WaPo put together a graphic which did not get nearly the attention it should have, on the Life & Times (& in this case the Sun-Times, and a couple of Posts) of Richard Perle, neocon extraordinaire.

Today, the NYT's excellent Business section (not to be confused with their fall-on-the-knees political writers) has a damning look at what happens when these self-described geniuses fall to fighting amongst themselves.

Note that this report was done by a former head of the Securities & Exchange Commission, not an intelligence agency. This is just the start of the Night of the Long Knives which is going to bring down the neocons:

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 by his friend and business colleague.

Mr. Perle, a top Pentagon official in the Reagan administration, wielded considerable influence in foreign-policy circles as recently as 2002 as an intellectual parent to the neoconservatives. He was named to the Hollinger board in 1994, joining other like-minded men selected by Lord Black, a self-made businessman from Canada who surrounded himself with conservative thinkers. He particularly did that at Hollinger, a global media company whose holdings at the time included The Chicago Sun-Times, The Jerusalem Post, The Sunday and Daily Telegraph and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Mr. Perle served on a three-member executive committee of the board headed by Lord Black. The two men socialized frequently and traveled together extensively on the company jet, once going to see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

In the face of federal investigations and a scathing internal report for Hollinger by Richard C. Breeden, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Perle has broken ranks and turned on Lord Black...

"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.

"Richard has always been willing to take the highest risks, playing for the highest stakes on policy issues over the years and often winning, but this is also really a story of being seduced by money," said Mr. Gelb, a former official at the State and Defense departments and a former columnist at The New York Times. "People in the foreign policy world do not make a lot of money. They go to think tanks, government, academe, and generally get $125,000 to $150,000 a year. When you are touched by lightning and manage to get into the inner sanctum to make money, the opportunities are delicious."

Yeah. A hunnert-an-a-quadda, a hunnert-an-a-half, *ptooey*, dat's pocket change ain't it? The kind of money you get when you print it with other peoples' kids' blood, that's "delicious."