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September
6, 2002
William
J. Haynes, Esq.
General
Counsel
The
Pentagon
1000
Defense
Washington,
DC 20301
Dear Mr.
Haynes:
I write
on behalf of the signatories to the joint letter of September 4, 2002,
copy enclosed, to President George W. Bush regarding false and misleading
statements by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz on Turkey.
The letter contains a section on a conflict of interest at the Department
of Defense by two high ranking officials, namely Douglas Feith, Undersecretary
of Defense for Policy and Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy
Board and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security
Affairs.
We respectfully
request an inquiry by you to this conflict of interest matter. The
section in the joint letter on the conflict of interest is as follows:
There
are two high-ranking Defense Department officials with an apparent
conflict of interest regarding U.S. relations with Turkey. Douglas
Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, is a former registered
foreign agent for Turkey from 1989 to 1994. Mr. Feith was principal
for International Advisors Inc. (IAI). As such, he received $60,000
annually and his law firm Feith and Zell received many hundreds of
thousands of dollars from IAI. He was previously a special assistant
to Richard Perle at the Defense Department.
Richard
Perle, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security
Affairs, is the non-paid chairman of the Defense Policy Board. Mr.
Perle resigned from the Reagan Administration in 1987, before the
end of the Cold War, and went to Turkey and negotiated and $800,000
contract for International Advisors Inc., a company which he initiated
and for which he recruited six former Executive Branch staff officials.
He became a consultant to IAI and received $48,000 annually from 1989
to 1994. IAI, Turkey’s foreign agent registered with the Justice
Department received $800,000 from Turkey in 1989, and then received
$600,000 annually from 1990 to 1994.
We believe
these facts amount to a conflict of interest regarding any matters
dealing with U.S.-Turkey relations which would require Mr. Feith and
Mr. Perle to recuse themselves, at a minimum, from any such matters.
Consideration should be given to their removal. What role did Under
Secretary Feith and Mr. Perle play in the recommendation to revive
grant military or economic aid to the Turkish military-controlled
government?
The joint
letter was signed by the following leading Armenian, Greek and Kurdish
American organizations:
- The
Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA)
- The
Order of AHEPA
- The
Hellenic American Women's Council (HAWC)
- The
Hellenic American National Council (HANC)
- The
American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN)
- The
American Hellenic Institute (AHI)
Thank
you for your consideration regarding this matter.
Sincerely,
Gene Rossides
cc:
President
George W. Bush
Secretary
of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
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