Jim Lobe reports for IPS News<\/p>\n
Since the publication of Michiko Kakutani\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s review<\/a> of George Tenet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new book, At the Center of the Storm<\/em><\/a>, in Saturday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s New York Times<\/em>, neoconservatives have been jumping all over the book\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s account of the author\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s alleged encounter with Richard Perle on September 12, 2001, as a way to discredit the former CIA chief. Perle, who was then coming out of the White House, according to the book, turned to Tenet at that moment, and said, “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility.”<\/p>\n “Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the problem [with Tenet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s account],” wrote<\/a> Perle prot\u00c3\u00a9g\u00c3\u00a9 Bill Kristol gleefully in Sunday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Weekly Standard<\/em>. “Richard Perle was in France that day, unable to fly back after September 11. In fact Perle did not return to the United State [sic] until September 15,” Kristol noted, concluding his article by asking “How many other facts has George Tenet invented?”<\/p>\n Kristol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s observation has been seized on by a number of prominent neoconservatives as evidence that the book \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and presumably its overall thesis that Vice President Dick Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, and the neoconservatives, such as then-Defense Policy Board chairman Perle, who served as their chief aides and advisers, were determined to use 9\/11 to take the U.S. to war with Iraq \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is deeply flawed and can thus be disregarded. In addition to Kristol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s editorial, the Weekly Standard<\/em> has published a lengthy article<\/a> by Thomas Joscelyn debunking Tenet, while the National Review<\/em> Online has run one editorial<\/a>, as well as articles by Perle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s colleague at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Michael Ledeen<\/a>, and Andrew McCarthy<\/a> of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) devoted to the same purpose. The Washington Times<\/em> also published an editorial<\/a>, as did an unsigned news item<\/a> posted at the Fox News website. All have cited the alleged Tenet-Perle encounter as evidence that the book is not to be trusted.<\/p>\n Tenet has since conceded that he may have made a chronological error, telling<\/a> NBC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcToday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 show on Monday, “\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6I may have gotten the days wrong, but I know I got the substance of that conversation correct. The encounter occurred.”<\/p>\n A review of the record suggests that Tenet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recollection of the substance \u00e2\u20ac\u201c if not the timing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c may indeed be correct. In fact, even while the dust from the Twin Towers was still settling in lower Manhattan \u00e2\u20ac\u201c thousands of miles from Perle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s summer home in the south of France \u00e2\u20ac\u201c he was apparently offering his opinions in a variety of media about Iraq\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible responsibility and the desirability of striking against it.<\/p>\n Nor was it only he: in the week that followed the attacks, Kristol himself repeatedly made the same case, although no one was more active outside the administration (we know from many accounts that then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was hyper-active on the subject inside the administration) in arguing for going after Saddam than Perle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s neoconservative confrere, James Woolsey. (I cited a few of these in a lengthy July 15, 2003 IPS article<\/a> on how a relatively small network of hawks in and outside the administration used 9\/11 as a pretext for war.)<\/p>\n We can begin on September 12, 2001, the day Tenet apparently mistakenly wrote that the encounter took place. On that date, the Washington Post<\/em> quoted Perle, who had presumably been interviewed by telephone the previous day, as follows:<\/p>\n “‘I believe this will now be the catalyst that causes a significant change in our policy toward terrorism and that change should be to hold responsible governments that support terrorism,’ said Richard N. Perle, a Reagan Pentagon official and currently chairman of the Defense Policy Board that advises Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. ‘It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been our policy to hold individual terrorists accountable rather than the governments who support them and that policy has failed.’<\/em><\/p>\n “‘\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6This could not have been done without help of one or more governments,” Perle said, citing the need for passports, communications, intelligence and training for pilots for yesterday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attacks. ‘Someone taught these suicide bombers how to fly large airplanes. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think that can be done without the assistance of large governments. You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t walk in off the street and learn how to fly a Boeing 767.’ Perle added, ‘We have to make the cost to the governments that support terrorism so high that they stop supporting them.'”<\/em><\/p>\n On the same day, the International Herald Tribune<\/em>, in an article titled “For Washington, a Modern Pearl Harbor; Like the Attack in 1941, Air Terrorism Could Provoke Severe Repercussions<\/a>,” “We have got to put certain governments on notice that if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re harboring terrorists they will be held responsible by U.S. power even if Washington does not have the sort of detailed evidence that would be needed to get a conviction in a normal court.”<\/em><\/p>\n Three days later, when Perle was back in Washington, he was interviewed by Robert Novak on CNN, saying<\/a>:<\/p>\n “Even if we cannot prove to the standards that we enjoy in our own civil society that they were involved. We do know, for example, that Saddam Hussein has ties to Osama bin Laden. That can be documented. So, on the theory, which seems to be a valid one, that if you support terrorists and they then commit atrocities against Americans, you are responsible. Unless we hold those countries responsible, we will be chasing terrorists without significant effect.”<\/em><\/p>\n Perle, who was taken up with two days\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 of highly classified meetings of his Defense Policy Board (DPB) to which he invited Iraqi National Congress (INC) leader Ahmad Chalabi, next appears in a September 18th article<\/a> by Knight-Ridder\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Warren Strobel, who was already ahead of the rest of the mainstream media. In a widely published article, he wrote that Bush\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s advisers were divided on how far their new “war on terror” would take them:<\/p>\n “‘This is just an added reason for making life as difficult as we can for Saddam,’ said Richard Perle, an adviser to the Pentagon and leading proponent of vastly increased aid to the opposition Iraqi National Congress. ‘If all we do is go after bin Laden, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll make a mockery of all the president had to say about waging a war on terrorism,’ Perle said.”<\/em><\/p>\n
\nquoted Perle as saying:<\/p>\n