Wolfowitz, Perle and Feith
One Down – Two To Go
Hellenic news.com
7-26-04
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former chairman of the
Defense Policy Board Richard Perle and Under Secretary of Defense
Douglas Feith, are the persons in the Defense Department primarily
responsible for the erroneous facts and policy judgments regarding
Turkey to the great detriment of U.S. interests in the region and
worldwide.
Richard Perle
Perle resigned on March 27, 2003 as chairman of the Defense Policy
Board after disclosures that his business dealings included a meeting
with two Saudis, one an arms dealer, and a contract for $750,000 to
advise telecommunications firm Global Crossings Ltd. that was seeking
Defense Department permission to be sold to Chinese investors.
In a New Yorker article, Seymour Hersch reported that Perle faced
conflict of interest between his work on the board and his private
business dealings. He reported that Perle is `a managing partner in a
venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P.’ He also reported
that Perle attended a luncheon meeting on January 3, 2004 with two
Saudis, Adnan Khashoggi and industrialist Harle Zuhair, who told
Hersch that the agenda included an item `to pave the way for Zuhair to
put together a group of ten Saudi businessmen who would invest ten
million dollars each in Trireme.’ (New Yorker, March 17, 2003, pages
76-81.)
Perle resigned as Assistant Secretary of Defense in 1987, before the
end of the Cold War, and went to Turkey and negotiated an $800,000
contract for International Advisors Inc. (IAI), a company which he
initiated. He recruited Douglas Feith, his special assistant at
Defense, to head IAI.
Perle became a consultant to IAI and received $48,000 annually from
1989 to 1994. IAI registered as a foreign agent with the Justice
Department. IAI received $800,000 from Turkey in 1989 and then
received $600,000 annually from 1990 to 1994.
Douglas Feith
>From 1989 to 1994, Douglas Feith headed IAI and registered as a
foreign agent for Turkey. He received $60,000 annually and his law
firm Feith and Zell received hundreds of thousands of dollars from IAI
Neither Perle, when he was on the Defense Policy Board, or Feith as
Under Secretary of Defense, recused themselves on matters dealing with
U.S.-Turkey relations.
Feith was Perle’s protégé. According to the Washington Post’s
BobWoodward, ` Feith was not popular with the military. He appeared to
equate policy with paper.’ Woodward wrote that General Tommy Franks
`tried to ignore Feith though it was not easy. The general once
confided to several colleagues about Feith: ` I have to deal with the
[expletive] stupidest guy on the face of the earth almost every day.’
(Woodward, Plan of Attack, p. 281.)
Paul Wolfowitz
Wolfowitz has committed major mistakes of policy and judgment
regarding Turkey to the serious detriment of
U.S. interests. Wolfowitz’s remarks on Turkey have contained false and
misleading statements with serious errors of fact and omission of
Orwellian proportions.
On July 14, 2002, Wolfowitz in a CNN Turkey interview stated:
`I think a real test of whether a country is a democracy is how it
treats its minorities. And actually it’s one of the things that
impress (sic) me about Turkish history-the way Turkey treats its own
minorities.’
How does one respond to such a statement? Armenian, Greek and Kurdish
Americans have expressed their outrage. See Exhibit 1 to AHI joint
letter of September 4, 2002 on AHI website at for a
list of Turkey’sviolations of the human rights of its minorities
committed throughout the 20th century, a number of which continue up
to the present time.
Also on July 14, 2002, in a speech at the Conrad Hotel, Istanbul,
Wolfowitz referred to Turkey:
`as a staunch NATO ally through forty years of Cold Warâ=80¦.Itis the
great good fortune of the United States, of NATO, the West, indeed the
world, that occupying this most important crossroads we have one of
our strongest, most reliable and most self-reliant allies.’
This is another false and misleading statement by Wolfowitz with
serious errors of fact and omission. The record shows that during the
Cold War, Turkey brushed aside U.S. interests on many occasions and
deliberately gave substantial assistance to the Soviet military. See
Exhibit 2 of the September 4, 2002 letter which sets forth examples of
Turkey’s unreliability as an ally and refutes the assertion of Turkey
as a self-reliant ally. Turkey’s vote on March 1, 2003 refusing to
allow U.S. troops to use bases in Turkey to open a second front
against the Saddam Hussein dictatorship is a dramatic example of
Turkey’s unreliability as an ally. Wolfowitz’s effusive comments in
his July 14, 2002 speech regarding Ataturk may play well in Turkey,
but the rest of the world is familiar with Ataturkas a brutal dictator
and mass killer of Armenians, Greeks and Kurds. John Gunther in his
book, Inside Europe refers in his opening sentence to Ataturk as
â=80=9CThe blond, blue-eyed combination of patriot and psychopath who
is dictator of Turkey.’ (1938 edition p. 378.) See Exhibit 3 of the
September 4, 2002 letter for the details of Ataturk’s mass killings of
Armenians, Greeks and Kurds. Ataturk and Turkey are hardly the models,
as suggested by Wolfowitz, for Afghanistan and other Muslim nations to
follow to achieve democracy.
In his July 14, 2002 speech Wolfowitz also stated:
`When the ?illness’ of international terrorism struck the United
States last September, Turkey quickly offered unconditional
support…’
Wolfowitz conveniently omits the fact that Turkey is an international
terrorist state by virtue of its aggression against Cyprus in 1974,
and a national terrorist state by its actions of ethnic cleansing,
crimes against humanityand genocide against its 20 percent Kurdish
minority. The double standard on the rule of law and international and
national terrorism that the U.S. applies to Turkey damages the U.S.’s
war on international terrorism and makes a mockery of our moral and
legal positions. See Exhibit 4 of the September 4, 2002 letter which
discusses Turkey as an international and national terrorist state.
Wolfowitz refers often to Turkey’s democracy. The fact is
otherwise. Turkey is still a military-dominated government, in which
the military controls foreign affairs and national security policy and
has harmful influence overdomestic affairs. There is an absence in
Turkey of minority rights, human rights, press freedom, speech freedom
and religious freedom. Falsehoods and myths regarding Turkey’s
democracy have been propagated for years by Defense and State
Department officials. Freedom House in its 2003 annual report calls
Turkey only part-free.
On March 13, 2002, in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, Wolfowitz failed to recognize that Turkey violated the
NATO Treaty by its invasion of Cyprus and that the violation continues
to this day. See Exhibit 6 of the September 4, 2002 letter which
discusses Turkey’s violation of the North Atlantic Treaty by its
invasion of Cyprus.
The false and misleading statements made by Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz
on Turkey raise serious questions as to his credibility and the
factual basis of his advice to the President and Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld on other issues such as Iraq.
The U.S. double standard policy toward Turkey on the rule of law and
the appeasement of Turkey these past decades, pursued by a handful of
Defense and State Department officials and Turkey’s paid foreign
agents, have seriously damaged U.S. national interests. President
Bush said `enough is enough’ regarding the violence in the Middle
East. The President, in the interests of the U.S., should tell his
advisors that `enough is enough’ regarding Turkey’s aggression and
occupation in Cyprus, its genocide against the Kurds, its blockade of
humanitarian aid to Armenia, its national torture policy, its
thousands of political prisoners, its jailing of journalists, the lack
of religious freedom, its denial of the Armenian Genocide and the
Turkish military’s control of national security and foreign policy and
its harmful influence on domestic policy.
Secretary Rumsfeld should ask for the resignations of Wolfowitz and
Feith.
Gene Rossides is President
of the American Hellenic Institute
and former Assistant Secretary
of the Treasury
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress