PETER OVERBY reporting: Richard Perle's resignation letter was addressed to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It has that note of finality so familiar in Washington ethics stories. Quote, "I've been privileged to serve you and my colleagues as chairman of the Policy Board for nearly two years. It has been an honor to work with the board." But it's not really all that final. While Perle won't be chairman anymore, he'll still be at the table, just sitting in a different chair. Perle told Rumsfeld that he'd violated no ethics rules. He didn't respond to several interview requests from NPR. Senator Carl Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, earlier this week called on Perle either to take himself completely out of businesses that suggest conflicts of interest or to step down from the board. Today Bill Hartung, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, said Perle's resignation doesn't make any difference.

Mr. BILL HARTUNG (World Policy Institute): He's doing the minimum he can do to try to do spin control and PR control on this problem.

OVERBY: Perle's problem comes from two recent articles. Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh alleged in The New Yorker that Perle started a venture capital firm that blurred the line between his official and private concerns. And The New York Times last Friday revealed that Perle had agreed to advise Global Crossing, the bankrupt telecom firm, as it seeks Pentagon permission to be bought out by a foreign corporation. Perle is well-known as a leading hawk in the foreign-policy establishment. He was an assistant Defense secretary in the Reagan administration. Ivo Daalder, a foreign-policy analyst at The Brookings Institution, notes that Perle was active in the Bush presidential campaign.

Mr. IVO DAALDER (The Brookings Institution): He was one of the so-called vulcans, which was the group of people who worked the foreign-policy issues for the Bush campaign, and he was the only one who did not go into government; everyone else did.

OVERBY: But as head of the Defense Policy Board, Perle has got a foot in both worlds. The board used to be an obscure group that mulled over defense issues in private. Daalder, at The Brookings Institution, says that under Rumsfeld and Perle, Policy Board members started speaking out as members of the panel.

Mr. DAALDER: As a means to underline their bona fides for the public debate, to say and underscore that although they don't speak for the administration, which they don't, they are close enough to the administration that they can be taken as surrogates for the administration's point of view in public debate.

OVERBY: The Defense Policy Board is big--30 members--and they're not insignificant names: former House Speakers Newt Gingrich and Tom Foley, former Cabinet Secretaries Henry Kissinger and George Shultz and former Vice President Dan Quayle. In a report airing tonight on "NOW with Bill Moyers" on PBS, Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity says that nine of the 30 members have ties to the defense industry. Board member James Woolsey, a former CIA director, today said that's inevitable. He said that if a Defense secretary wants advice from outside the Pentagon, defense industry experts are the ones who can give it. Woolsey said the ethical lines are clear and he doesn't think board members crossed them. But Bill Hartung at the World Policy Institute says the board needs more scrutiny than it's had.

Mr. HARTUNG: I think that Woolsey, Kissinger, Newt Gingrich--all the folks on that board need to be vetted now. We have to find out what their business interests are, how they've been representing themselves.

OVERBY: As for Perle, the Global Crossing deal would pay him $125,000 up front, plus another $600,000 if the Pentagon approved the company's buyout. Perle now tells Rumsfeld that he'll turn down any future payments from Global Crossing, and he'll donate the money he's already made to the families of American GIs killed or injured in Iraq. Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.

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