'Prince of Darkness' quits as key Rumsfeld advisor

Richard Perle, a senior Pentagon official during President Ronald Reagan’s administration, today quit as chairman of the Defence Policy Board that is a key advisory arm for Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

In a brief written statement, Rumsfeld thanked Perle for his service and made no mention of why Perle resigned. He said he had asked Perle to remain as a member of the board.

Perle was an assistant secretary of defence during President Reagan's administration. He took the advisory board chairman’s post early in Rumsfeld’s tenure.

Perle became embroiled in a recent controversy stemming from a magazine article that said he had lunch in January with controversial Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi and a Saudi industrialist.

The industrialist, Harb Saleh Zuhair, was interested in investing in a venture capital firm, Trireme Partners, of which Perle is a managing partner.

Nothing ever came of the lunch in Marseilles and no investment was made. But the New Yorker story, written by Seymour M Hersh, suggested that Perle, a long-time critic of the Saudi regime, was inappropriately mixing business and politics.

Perle called the report preposterous and “monstrous".

Perle, 61, was so strongly opposed to nuclear arms control agreements with the former Soviet Union during his days in the Reagan administration that he became known as “the Prince of Darkness.”