RICHARD PERLE AND THE INSIDE BATTLE AGAINST SALT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01315R000400380034-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 8, 2004
• Sequence Number: 34
• Publication Date: May 21, 1979
• Content Type: NSPR

1 tTICL I ,ppv9d For Re ewlgQSt 11l :~I/QI+R 11311
ON PAGE ~L:___Z..-- 21 May 1979
ard Perle"a'n''.1
a . crainst
LA 1. 0 ~U ([r /14 0J
,
.&/-oi
i
AvId
GiClVe^~
By Lynn Rosellini
WushingtofStarStaff wrltcr
Nelson Rockefeller called him a Cbnl
fired. Gerald Ford and Stansfield Turner'
both irately denounced him to his boss.
One U.S. senator accused him of spread-
ing scurrilous stories, and another sug-
gested he leaks classified information.
"Ali, Perle," said a senior American states-
man recently, "he's the blackest, most in-
sidious figure.;'.; i ;. t -;
',In fact,' all over, town, whenever mein
bets ref the disarament community; get;;',
together to hash over the problems of the
upcoming' Senate debate on SALT IL some-
one is apt to mutter glumly:
',Perle If 9nly' we, could get. rid pf
`'Perlei f
' Th6repi'e till kinds of people angry at;
me," sags Richard. Perle, Sen. Henry N1. I
(Scoop) Jackson's right hand man in the
battle against SALT. Feeding flour and
eggs into,.l?astamatic machine, whicllis I
making spagheiti.in' his kitchen, Richard
Pei?le certaii}ly doesn't look'v}llainousat
';,hie moment.
Ican't help that," continues the?sofi-
spoken, wiry-haired Perle. "You can't get'i
anything done in Washington without
being controversial." lie opens the oven
door to check a pan of braised endive.
"They (administration arms control ex-
ports) would much prefer to make deci-
sions in the absence of informed criti-
cism."
As the Senate prepares to take up the
recently concluded arms agreement, Jack-
son's powerful and controversial aide ,is
smack in the center of the hard-liners' determined
opposition. And when his work is done, Perle pre-
dicts that the treaty as itnow stands will never
pass the Senate.
"I can't find 67 votes (the number required for
ratification) for this thing, no matter how hard I
try," he says.
Almost everyone agrees that Richard Perle, 37,
is one of the most knowledgeable people in town
on SALT. They also agree on one more point. "He
intimidates a lot of people in. town," says one ad-
ministration official, who, like many sources in
the sensitive arms control field, asked not to be
named. "They're scared to do things because Perle
might get them."
But there the agreement ends. Because depend-
ing on whom you talk to, Richard Perle is either
an arrogant,: dangerous dogmatist or a warm--
..;..._~
hearted, patriotic hero.
,To his detractors, he is a supremely condescend-
ing, abrasive,; win-at-all-costs zealot who doesn't
hesitate to use distortion, threats and dangerous
leaks to achieve his ends. He is a man who once
got so angry at Sen. Gaylord Nelson that he threat-
ened to travel to Wisconsin and personally cam-
paign against him in his re-election race.
He is a man who is. said to have supplied'- an
then bragged about - a' hit list of enemies who
were subsequently purged from. the Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency. A man whose reputa-
tion for leaking to the press so angered Sen. John
Culver that he denounced the practice before a
Senate subcommittee.
"To this day, I've never heard of a staffer do ing
the things that Richard does," says a veteran Sen-
ate staffer in awe. "I'd be fired if I did the things
he does."
Nonsense, says Richard Perle.
Ridiculous, says Scoop Jackson.
"The whole controversy," says Jackson, "is over
one word: jealousy. Richard Perle can take Cabi-
net officers and their best experts and stand them
on end. They know it. They would like to see him.
out of the picture."
Approved For Release 2005/01/12 : CIA-RDP88-01315R000400380034-3
 Approved
To Jackson and other hard-liners, Perle is a tire-
less, selfless true believer who eschews personal
gain to pursue the cause of American military par
ity with the Soviets. He is a brilliant thinker who
knows the issues cold and can debate an adversary
to a standstill. He is a warm human being who sup- i
ports a retarded brother in California. Ile is a
charming and witty friend.
Above all - and no one disagrees about this -
Perle is a consummate Washington operator. His
story begins in a cramped, out-of-the-way commit-
tee office on the first floor of the Old Senate Office
Building.. . .
They are an odd couple.. Side by side they sit,
wedged into the back corners of the Senate Perma-
nent Investigations subcommittee room: she, the
staff director; he, a professional staff member.
"Look, you really in ust come in earlier," Doro-
thy Fosdick, who likes to mother Perle, tells him
on frequent mornings (he often works nights)-.
When he suggests a particularly outrageous idea,
she says: "Richard! You can't do that! There's no
way you can do that!"
Dr. Dorothy Fosdick, 65, certainly didn't have to
spend the last. 25 years of her. life anonymously
squirreled away in a cramped back office. The
daughter of noted.pacifist minister Harry Emer-
son Fosdick, she was raised in. a prominent. New
York family and years ago,,had a love affair with
Adlai Stevenson.
But Fosdick, who once rejected an offer to be
the first woman on the prestigious Council on For-
eign Relations ("I wasn't going to be a taken"), has
no use for social convention. Neither does Scoop.
Jackson. And neither did a bright young student
who showed up in Jackson's office one day in 1969.
Richard Perle was from Los Angeles: where his
father, the son of Russian Jewish emigres,. oper-
ated a textile business. The elder Perle was a high
school dropout, and while the family was close-.
knit, the atmosphere at home was "anything but ;
intellectual." Yet Richard; the eldest of two broth-
ers, grew up with an insatiable intellectual curios-:
ity. .
At Hollywood High, he was known as a veiy_-
bright but shy boy who always dressed formally--,.
in shirts, sweaters and neckties in contrast to7
his more casual classmates. "He was a pudgy but :
goodlooking boy," recalled high school pal Ken
Margolis: "Richard always looked like somebody
had bathed him with olive oil: sleek, dark and..:
smooth."
Perle joined the debating team and surrounded
himself with leftist friends - some of them chil-
dren of Hollywood's much-publicized Comma-
nists. By the time he entered the University of
Southern California, Perle was a political liberal {
who founded a chapter of the ACLU, helped organ-
ize a demonstration for a stay of execution for
Caryl Chessman and wrote a liberal column for
the campus newspaper.' _
"I had quite left-wing views at the.time," he re-
called. "All the things I believed about i?nterna.
tional politics were the standard left-wing mews::
the power of world public opinion to discipline.
states that were aggressive or repressive, disarms
ment as & means of assuring peace, diplomacyas a:;
means of control."
But then Perle, an English major, stumbled into
an international relations course. "I gradually saw,
all my cherished notions overturned," he said..
Perle began to seek out the best authorities on
the subject. He befriended the daughter of Albert
Wohlstetter and spent hours at the Wohlstetter
home, listening to the noted hard-liner's views. He
read a book skeptical of arms control by London
School of Economics professor Hedley Bull, and
enrolled in the school for one year.
By the time he returned to the U.S., Perle was a
confirmed believer - to his friends' dismay -- in-,
military strength as a means of maintaining inter-
national stability. "He was a hawk,"says longtime
friend Dan Gallen. "Most of his friends were disar-'
mament types. We used to have long debates into the night."
In 1969, after graduate work at Princeton and a
brief stint at a Westinghouse think. tank, Perle ac-
cepted Wohlstetter's invitation to campaign ' for_
the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) in Washington.
Shortly afterward, he met Scoop Jackson, who
promptly hired him.
"He had this unique combination," recalls Jack-
son, "of being an outstanding scholar and having
excellent judgment in strategic matters."
Like Fosdick, Perle didn't care one whit about
climbing the foreign policy status ladder. He had
little interest in fellowships from Brookings oF.
the Council on Foreign Relations (he later joined,-'
the Council, hoping to change it "from inside"), or
in paying the requisite social and professional
amenities to higher-ups. T ".
"In the disarmament community," says-a Senate
staffer who admires Perle, "they didn't under-
stand someone-willing to sit here years and years
and years in a filthy pit, buried. under books,
working through the night.".: -
Like Fosdick, Perle's only loyalty was to Jack-
son. And Jackson returned it, treating him like a
son. He was forever sending Perle off to see physi-
cians, or reminding him to get his income tax in
or leaving him little gifts (once, a bag of pista-
chios). And later, when Perle would come under ?
attack, Jackson would say: "I'm a loyal person. I
stand by my people. Nobody's going to intimidate
me."
It was precisely this trust,.coupled with Jack-
son's own influence, that would eventually make
Perle a power. Perle had the.time - which the
busy Jackson didn't always - to master compli- I
cated defense issues. He could brief. Jackson
coolly, rationally and effectively on a"moment's
notice.
-If Jackson was called to the White House, Perle
could tell'him what questions the President would
be likely to ask, and what recent figures would
support his replies. By the time he got downtown,
Jackson would know as much. as the President ---
often more.
(In fact, some members of the disarmament
community began to suspect that Jackson was
Charlie McCarthy to Perle's Edgar Bergen. "Jack-
son is Perle," insisted one. "Don't ever assume any
different. Perle has his hand up Jackson's back
and is working him." Jackson scoffs at this notion,
pointing out that his basic positions on defense
predate his involvement with Perle. "That's non-
sense," he says. "They better go back and look at
my record").
But his closeness to Jackson was only part of
Perle's power. Over the wears he meticulously
cultivated an alliance of disenchanted hard-liners i
t roug ou e executive branch. One was a CIA
an alyst w~io have Perle top-secret SALT reports."-
Approved For Release 2005/01/12 : CIA-RDP88-01315R000400380034-3
2
GONm-.~
 Approved For Release 2005/01/12 : CIA-RDP88-01315R000400380034-3
Another was an anonymous Carter administration
source who would meet Perle for lunch under an
assumed name. There were many more, and they
all offered information.
"To do anything on the hill," Perle explained,
"you have to have information. You have to be
able to see behind arguments. That often means
being told by someone inside an agency that, for
instance, a statement made by the secretary (of
state) obscures a certain fact. Sometimes, if you
know an action is being taken, you can stop it, or
influence it."
A Democratic Senate staffer who has no affec-
tion for Perle put it this way: "What he has done
for years is take the coin of his realm - bureau
cratic gossip in the form of executive studies and
documents provided by his friends - and use it to
intimidate elements of the executive branch to ac-
cept his view, and his Senator's view."
That might mean a well-timed plant with the
Evans-Novak column. ("Richard plays the press
like a violinist," says Peter Lakeland, an aide to
Sen Jacob Javits). Or an embarrassing question by
Jackson to a high ranking official at a Senate hear-
ing. Or a carefully managed legislative coup.
"He was the sparkplug from"the.beginning on
the Jackson-Vanickamendment (witholding trade
advantages from-countries that restrict immigra-
tion)," says John Lehman, a close friend and for=
mer ACDA. deputy director. "f was working for Kis--
singer on the other side. I know the guy who beat
us - it was Richard. He masterminded the passage
of the Trident submarine program. And the 40
votes against (Paul)' Warnke---?that was purely
Richard."
But while his methods brought success, they did
not always make Richard Perle a popular guy.
"He's an idea guy," says Robert G. Old, Senate
armed services committee minority counsel. "He's
extremely persistent and tenacious ... But at
times, Perle can be an SOB to work with."
Dorothy Fosdick explains it this way: "Maybe
some people don't take to Richard," she says, "be-,
cause he's not very tolerant of sloppy thinking, or
of people who don't think at all. He's-'not tolerant
of people who haven't done their homework; who
don't know an issue, who haven't seen it through."
Jackson was so outraged when Nelson Rockefel-
ler implied- in his much-publicized 1976 remarks
that Fosdick and Perle were Communists, that he
extracted an apology from the then-vice president
on the Senate floor.
But Perle himself is unruffled by the criticism.
"Arms control has always been confined to a small
number of experts," he says. "They're not used to
criticism from within..
"The implication that-J. have been responsible -
for leaking classified information is extremely un-
fair," he continues.. "I am extremely careful. But if.
I learn through my sources of things that'are
going on,.l don't feel compelled to keep them from
,the public"
y = ..*
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine this polite,
charming man "getting" anyone. Richard Perle,
gourmet cook, is sipping a glass of Beaujolais in
the living room of his Capitol Hill townhouse. The
spaghetti is made, the veal chops await the broiler
and dinner guests aren't expected for a few more
minutes.
"No one has ever explained," he chuckles, "how
it is that I'm supposed to have had these powers."
As it turns out, Richard Perle's most cherished
dream has nothing to do with backfire bombers or
SS-17's. As it turns out, Perle wants to open a res-
taurant specializing in souffles (cheese, chocolate,
grand marnier, seafood and lemon).
"I've come up with an idea to mechanize the
production of souffles," he says wistfully. "It
would make a luxurious and exotic dish available
to everyone for the price of a hamburger. I went to
the trouble of establishing a corporation, Le Souf-
fle, Inc. But then I got bogged down in other
things."
A short while later, Perle hauls out blueprints
for another long-awaited plan: a kitchen he has de-
signed for his new home in Chevy Chase. "We'll
have an indoor barbecue with a gas jet, here," he
begins, tracing a finger across the plans.. "And
over here, & :restaurant-sized stove with six burn-
ers and an oversized oven ,,and over here, room.-1
for the expresso machine.
If there is malevolence in Richard' Perle, it is `
well-hidden. "He really is a study in contrasts,
says close friend Howard Feldman. "There's a .a
sweet side.bf him that people don't know."
Perle is happy as a chipmunk when he discusses