From 1981 to 1982 Wolfowitz was appointed head of the policy planning staff in the State Department. In the same year Perle, who was an assistant secretary for international security policy in President Reagan's defense department hired and promoted Douglas Feith after he had been fired from his position as a Middle East analyst at the National Security Council. Later it was found out that Feith was fired due to an FBI investigation suspecting that he had distributed confidential materials to an Israeli embassy official. With the right connections and the support of his close allies Wolfowitz and Perle, Feith was able to attain his position as undersecretary for policy in the Pentagon in 2001, from which he resigned in 2005. In return, he appointed Perle as chairman of the Defense Policy Board. This friendship was mutually beneficial for both Perle and Feith, who used their overlapping positions of power to help promote the other and bail each other out of trouble. Perle is nonetheless an inspiration and mentor to Feith who describes him as a "godfather" and trusts that "He would actively work to help anybody he had worked with and liked and admired and who he thought was useful to the overall cause of U.S. national security as he saw it." Both Wolfowitz and Feith would eventually join forces and work closely together to promote the War in Iraq after 9/11, including heading the Office of Special Plans.