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Last week, Richard Perle, the influential Pentagon adviser, was speaking on his mobile phone outside a Senate office building when trouble came from an unlikely source: the parking attendant.

It's not about the oil," Mr Perle was heard to shout at the attendant in apparent frustration before returning to his call.

It was that sort of week for Mr Perle, one of the leading architects of the US policy on Iraq, who has been embroiled in a storm of controversy over his outside business interests.

Mr Perle was appointed chairman of the Defense Policy Board in2001 by Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary. Although the board members are not paid government employees, they have grown in stature because of Mr Perle's close ties to the administration's hawks.

His role came under scrutiny after the New Yorker magazine reported that Mr Perle had attended a lunch in January with two Saudi businessmen to seek funding for his venture capital group, Trireme Partners, which invests in defence and security companies. One of the Saudis was alleged to be Adnan Kashoggi, the arms dealer at the centre of the Iran-Contra scandal.

Mr Perle denied the allegations, and threatened to sue the publication for libel in London. But the controversy did not end.

He finally resigned his chairmanship on Thursday night after his work for Global Crossing, the bankrupt telecommunications company, sparked calls in Congress for an ethics investigation.

Mr Perle was to be paid $750, 000by the company to help win government approval to sell its assets to a Chinese-controlled company. The deal has been blocked by the defence department and the FBI, which object to a Chinese company controlling the vital fibre-optic network that the government uses.

Mr Perle had bristled at the suggestion that he has done anything improper, or should leave the board altogether. He said in a letter to Mr Rumsfeld that he was resigning his post to prevent a political distraction.

Asked about the controversy last week, he suggested it was the work of a leftwing conspiracy.

"I'm beginning to think that people who've been saying on the internet that I am part of a small neo-conservative cabal that runs the world actually believe what they are saying," he told the Financial Times.

Mr Perle is not the first Washington official to have had a connection with Global Crossing. Terry MacAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, spun a $100, 000investment in the company into a $15m windfall before it collapsed into bankruptcy and became the subject of congressional hearings.

Mr Perle is also not the only businessman to sit on a quasi-governmental advisory board. The Department of Energy Electricity Advisory Board is stocked with energy company executives.

Mr Perle's current problems stem partly from his high profile as a leading intellectual of the neo-conservative movement. He has long exercised considerable influence on successive Republican administrations.

He served as the assistant secretary of defence in the White House of President Ronald Reagan, one of 10 such positions, but was given the moniker "the Prince of Darkness" by his political enemies because of his staunch opposition to arms control treaties.

He has long been a well-known figure in the Israel lobby with close ties to Ariel Sharon, the Israeli leader. In1983 , it was reported that he had received payments from an Israeli arms company for representing their interests. Mr Perle explained that the work was done before he assumed his Pentagon post.

His stature grew sharply under the current Bush administration, where disciples such as Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith have risen to key civilian positions in the Pentagon.

Mr Perle appeared to be flexing his newly found policy muscles at a conservative think-tank breakfast last week when he poured scorn on the United Nations, peace protesters and any country opposing the war on Iraq.

But his growing influence has proved a double-edged sword. While he has been able to see his long-held hawkish beliefs become US policy, his business dealings are being more closely examined than ever.

The Financial Times