In 1983, he was the subject of a New York Times investigation into an allegation that he recommended that the Army buy weapons from an Israeli company from whose owners he had, two years earlier, accepted a fifty-thousand-dollar fee. […] He had not recused himself in the matter, he explained, because the fee was for work he had done before he took the Defense Department job.

recuse (v) : to withdraw oneself from serving as a judge or other decision-maker in order to avoid a real or apparent conflict of interest; – often used with the reflexive; as, the judge recused himself due to a financial interest in the matter – source: New Yorker 17.3.2003, p. 78