Conflict of Interest: The Bushonian Way of Life
by AL MARTIN

(April 7) America continues straight ahead on the road to Right Wing Dictatorship.

Interviewed by Bill Moyers, Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity spoke about Richard Perle and how it embarrassed the White House because the financial and conflict of interest disclosures were not supposed to be made publicly available.

Richard Perle is a former Assistant Secretary of Defense (1981-1987), now acting as a private consultant to Republican controlled industry, bidding for government contracts, primarily through the Department of Defense.

Perles financial and conflict of interest disclosures showed that he had conflicts of interest with corporations that he represented, the CEOs and members of the board of directors of which were former Bushonian minions.

This was supposed to be behind the scenes, so when Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was asked about it, all he could answer in Perle's defense was that "Richard Perle is a loyal citizen.

To avoid a repeat of this embarrassment, Bush signed a new national security directive, giving, the Vice President Dick Cheney (of all people) absolute control over the classification of ALL government documents.

This is completely unprecedented.

Cheney said that the first order of business hes going to enact is to bring all financial and conflict of interest disclosures as well as disclosures of past ethical and/or criminal violations under national security seal, as it relates to Republican consultants who are former members of the Bushonian Regime(s).

Normally this would have to be passed through the GAO (Government Accounting Office), but now this directive circumvents the current process and places the entire power to classify documents in the hands of the Vice President solely.

Such a thing has never been done before, but they are determined not to have another Richard Perle Embarrassment.

The only way that can be done is to place all information, including financial disclosures, conflicts of interest, past ethical violations, and past criminal records of all Bushonian Minions now acting as consultants, under national security seal.

Further, the Vice President stated that he would now move with his new powers to completely eliminate the Freedom of Information Act.