No honor among thieves:
September 6, 2004
Perle Asserts Hollinger's Conrad Black Misled HimBy STEPHEN LABATON
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.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/06/business/media/06perle.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=