(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.

Perle’s 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.