Payments for Perle. (Comment)

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An odd thing happened in February when a European television station approached Richard Perle for an interview. Millions of antiwar protesters had rocked the globe a week prior, and the station badly wanted Perle, as chairman of the influential Defense Policy Board, to articulate the Pentagon's Iraq policy. But Perle, as he continues to do today, demanded a fee. Though startled by the request, the news station violated its strict no-pay policy for interviews and obliged the chairman.

The station's experience was not unique. During and after his chairmanship, Perle used his insider status to demand fees for appearances on a number of foreign broadcasts, which included British, Canadian, Japanese and South Korean television. While paying interviewees is common practice in some countries, a number of media outlets made exceptions for Perle. "We did pay Perle because of his position [in a] prominent advisorship to the Secretary of Defense," says a European correspondent who, like most journalists interviewed, requested anonymity because of network discomfort at publicly discussing payment policies. Fees ranged from under …