Richard Perle

Richard Perle is Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who has held a number of U.S. defense policy posts, and is recognized for his neoconservative ideology. A number of commentators refer to him, ironically, as the "Prince of Darkness."

He has been a member (1987-2004) chairman of the Defense Policy Board and its chairman between 2001 and 2003, assistant secretary of defense for international security policy (1981-1987), and a staff member to Senator Henry Jackson (D-WA) (1969-1980).

Perle has authored several books and many articles, and holds a M.A. in political science from Princeton. He was a high school classmate of the daughter of Albert Wohlstetter, who introduced him to strategic concepts. In the summer of 1969, new from graduate school, he and Paul Wolfowitz worked with Dean Acheson and Paul Nitze in the short-lived but influential Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy; these elder statesmen of containment policy were a lifelong influence. Afterwards, he went to work for Jackson, as the lead Congressional staffer on opposition to arms control agreements with the Soviet Union.

He and Wolfowitz remain friends and colleagues; Wolfowitz has tended to work inside the system while Perle is more an external advisor.

In a Public Broadcasting System interview with Ben Wattenberg, he described neoconservative thinking, in response to Wattenberg's comment "Irving Kristol said a neoconservative is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality."

Right. And I think that’s a fair description, and I suppose all of us were liberal at one time. I was liberal in high school and a little bit into college. But reality and rigor are important tonics, and if you got into the world of international affairs and you looked with some rigor at what was going on in the world, it was really hard to be liberal and naïve...Anyone who looked at the facts in Nineteen Thirty-six knew what was coming or could at least see that the balance of power was in the process of shifting from one in which the democracies could expect to contain this growing totalitarian threat in Nazi Germany to a balance in which they couldn’t...the indulgence of Saddam led to the invasion of Kuwait.

Arms Control

In 1975-1976, he was involved in creating "Team B", a group that internally challenged the Central Intelligence Agency estimates on Soviet power and intentions, based on a different set of assumptions about Soviet motivations.

Defense Policy Board

At the first Defense Policy Board meeting after the 9-11 attack, he had Ahmed Chalabi speak to the group, arguing that Iraq was behind it. He raised other controversy in the board, such as the appearance of a conflict of interest with a telecommunications company.

Neoconservatives and the Iraq War

Perle has distanced himself from the George W. Bush Administration, and, indeed, neoconservatism. He distanced himself sufficiently to say, at a presentation sponsored by National Interest magazine, "There is no such thing as a neoconservative foreign policy...It is a left critique of what is believed by the commentator to be a right-wing policy."