Perle's Comments to Tenet: True or False?

George Tenet's new tell-all book is getting less than rave reviews, and numerous reports are ganging up on one clear error: an anecdote about how he encountered then Pentagon adviser Richard Perle at the White House on the day after Sept. 11. Perle, Tenet wrote, said to him: "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday, they bear responsibility."

The New York Times and other outlets are pointing out that this is impossible: Perle didn't return to the United States until several days after Sept. 11. Perle also has reportedly denied making this remark to the former CIA director. Tenet, in turn, had to admit he might have been a bit off by a few days -- but he defends the story as fundamentally true.

Did Tenet make it up? Well, there's nothing terribly surprising in Perle's comments. I did some archival research to find what might be the first public comments Richard Perle made about Sept. 11.

The Sept. 12 International Herald Tribune published these remarks in an article about the response to the terrorist attacks:

"This could not have happened without the help of governments that back terrorists," according to Richard Perle, an adviser to President Bush and a former Pentagon official in the Reagan administration.

The shock of the attack, Mr. Perle said, would galvanize U.S. policy into a systematic policy of retaliating severely against any foreign governments that have helped terrorists working against the United States. Other sources, who declined to be identified, predicted quick U.S. military strikes against targets in the Middle East, probably against Afghanistan, the operating base of the bin Laden network.

Retaliatory strikes might also target Iraq and other countries where regimes have been linked to terror.

"We have got to put certain governments on notice that if they're harboring terrorists they will be held responsible by U.S. power even if Washington does not have the sort of detailed evidence that would be needed to get a conviction in a normal court," Mr. Perle said.

From there on, Perle was pretty vocal about his belief that there were ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, as well as his support for an invasion of Iraq. By Sept. 15, he was talking much more directly about attacking Iraq. So, I'm not defending Tenet, or his book, but it's hardly worth arguing over when Perle started advocating attacking Iraq.

It's pretty clear that in the days following Sept. 11, Perle had already made up his mind.