It's not surprising the White House spine has turned to jelly on the Paul Wolfowitz-World Bank controversy. They lost their edge quite some time ago, and Bush has shown his father's "wobbily" colors.

There's a lot of misinformation on the matter though, and the Bush team, had they adequate public relations skills, could of won the day. It's just another example of their poor communication abilities.

I mean, not to toot my own horn, but it took me just 148 words to clarify and wrist slap Tampa Tribune editors for their egregious attacks on Wolfowitz (last letter from May 16). So how is it that the White House can't do the same?

Wolfowitz never attempted to hide his relationship with Shaha Riza, and only followed the ruling of the bank's ethics board. If Wolfowitz must resign for poor judgment on the matter, shouldn't the board members and all those who advocated the solution likewise resign? (Note: WSJ's Bret Stephens is all over this, publishing letters from World Bank employees spotlighting other executive level shenanigans).

But this isn't about cleaning house. Or ethics even. It's about power. Once the Europeans eliminate Wolfowitz they'll be able to appoint one of their own, and go back to running the World Bank as they did before his reign. It's no coincedence that Wolfowitz's opponents have been the Europeans whereas his supporters were the very people the World Bank was created to assist - third world and developing countries.

Labels: wolfowitz, world bank

Gagging Shaha Riza
May 4, 2007

Since the misnamed "Wolfowitz scandal" broke last month, enemies of the World Bank president have engaged in selective press leaks and calculated smears intended to oust him. Most of these leaks have come from within the bank itself, not that we've seen any effort by the institution to stop them.

Meanwhile, the bank bureaucracy has systematically sought to prevent Mr. Wolfowitz and his girlfriend Shaha Riza from telling their side of the story. Exhibit A is the bank's refusal to allow Ms. Riza -- whose raise and promotion are the central issue -- to defend herself even in a newspaper op-ed.

That was the order she received this week from one W. Paatii Ofosu-Amaah, a longtime bank bureaucrat from Ghana who serves as its vice president and corporate secretary. Both Ms. Riza and her lawyer declined to comment and were not our sources, but others who've seen the letter tell us that Mr. Ofosu-Amaah cited the bank's disclosure policies regarding board proceedings to forbid Ms. Riza from taking her case to the public.

That's more than odd, given that Ms. Riza currently works at a State Department affiliate; her salary continues to be paid by the bank as part of an agreement to avoid a "conflict of interest" claimed by the bank's own ethics committee. Bank sources also tell us that Mr. Ofosu-Amaah was among those who opposed letting Mr. Wolfowitz and Ms. Riza testify on Monday to the "ad hoc committee" investigating the case. One source adds that, "like several other vice presidents, Paatii took the position that a verdict could be reached through the documentary evidence alone."

Maybe that explains why this kangaroo court was prepared last week to reach a guilty verdict against Mr. Wolfowitz before either he or Ms. Riza had been given a chance to appear, according to "three senior bank officials" cited on Saturday by the Washington Post. Mr. Ofosu-Amaah's office didn't return our calls, naturally.
-- Wall Street Journal

Labels: wolfowitz, world bank

Of its roughly 10,000 employees, no fewer than 1,396 have salaries higher than the U.S. Secretary of State; clearly "fighting poverty" does not mean taking a vow of poverty at "multilateral" institutions. At the time of Ms. Riza's departure from the bank, she was a Grade "G" (senior professional) employee; the typical salary in that grade hovers around the $124,000 mark. For the next level, Grade "H"--the level to which Ms. Riza was due to be promoted--salaries average in the $170,000 range, with an upper band of $232,360. No fewer than 17% of bank employees are in this happy bracket.

Even sweeter, all of this is tax-free to non-Americans. U.S. employees have to pay U.S. tax but have their income taxes reimbursed by the bank. As with any public bureaucracy, these jobs are also impossible to lose for anything other than gross incompetence or venality. Some of Mr. Wolfowitz's accusers--notably, former general counsel Roberto Danino--are angry precisely because he upset their lifetime sinecure by demanding higher performance.
-- Wall Street Journal, demanding that if transparency be applied to one World Bank employee, it be applied to all World Bank employees.

Labels: wolfowitz, world bank

On the heels of the Wolfowitz screw comes the Frist screw:

[WSJ] When insider-trading allegations against former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist surfaced back in 2005, they were splashed on the pages of major newspapers from coast to coast. Now that Dr. Frist has been vindicated, the silence is instructive. Is anybody out there?

... Yet it's impossible to undo the damage to his political career. Despite flimsy evidence, the media storm cast a shadow over his office, derailing any thought of a Presidential bid this year. The Nashville heart surgeon chose instead to "take a sabbatical from public life."

Democrats naturally cared less about the actual facts than about pinning another scandal on Congressional Republicans in the run-up to the fall elections. But what about others who thought it clever or funny or perhaps mandatory to get their share of media attention by confusing accusation with proof of wrongdoing?

American University Professor James Thurber got his name in the paper for quipping that Senator Frist "came in like Jimmy Stewart and was leaving like Martha Stewart." What a card. As for the press corps, it ran off in a braying stampede in pursuit of the theme du jour, which was Abramoff-DeLay-GOP corruption. The accusations against Dr. Frist fit that template, so there was no need for the herd of independent minds to inspect the evidence and make distinctions. A Washington Post editorial from the day now looks especially embarrassing -- and unfair.
Read the rest of the story.

This is a primer on Media 101, and to a large extent an ugly indictment on the willingness of our pack-hound "gotcha" journalists to follow the lead of the almightly Democratic Party press release.

It's so blatantly partisan I'd have far more respect for them were they getting bribe money for it.

Labels: Frist, media bias, wolfowitz

The Wall Street Journal editorial board has been all over the attempt by European heavy hitters to replace Paul Wolfowitz with one of their own as president of the World Bank. Their latest editorial (available free here) covers some of the same ground previously known, but it nonetheless bears repeating because of their brazen attempt to use a fabricated scandel to re-acquire power.

Mr. [Ad] Melkert has played an especially craven role by running from his own responsibility in the case. As head of the ethics committee in 2005, he refused to let Mr. Wolfowitz recuse himself from dealings with Shaha Riza, who had been long employed at the bank. Then Mr. Melkert advised him to ensure that Ms. Riza got a new job that included some kind of raise or promotion to compensate for the disruption to her career. Now, however, Mr. Melkert claims he was an innocent bystander who knew nothing about Ms. Riza's raise.

How very European. This is the same Ad Melkert, who on October 24, 2005, after Ms. Riza had been told of her new job and salary, wrote in a letter to Mr. Wolfowitz that "Because the outcome is consistent with the [Ethics] Committee's findings and advice above, the Committee concurs with your view that this matter can be treated as closed."
Read the rest.

Labels: wolfowitz, world bank

If you're unfamiliar with the hack job being directed at World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, you can catch up here. But as Bret Stephens demonstrates in his latest column, Wolfowitz's true outrage - at least for Europe - is that he was a Bush apointee. How else do you explain that the European bloc protects the vice president of the European Commission in Brussels, Günter Verheugen, even though he's actually committed acts of scandel?

[Wall Street Journal] In April, Mr. Verheugen, a former German parliamentarian for the Social Democrats, appointed economist Petra Erler as his chief of staff. In August, the couple was spotted au naturel on a Baltic shore. Mr. Verheugen--who also has a wife--has dismissed allegations of impropriety as "pure slander" and asked the German newsweekly Der Spiegel whether "two adults [can't] do as they wish in their private lives?"

In fact, they can't: The EU Commission's Code of Conduct, which he helped draft, observes that "in their official and private lives Commissioners should behave in a manner that is in keeping with the dignity of their office. Ruling out all risks of a conflict of interest helps guarantee their independence."

...But aside from the facts that Mr. Wolfowitz is unmarried and prefers his clothes on, the substance of the cases could not be more different. Mr. Verheugen seems to have obscured the nature of his relationship with Ms. Erler; Mr. Wolfowitz acknowledged his relationship with Shaha Riza before he took the job as Bank president. Mr. Verheugen sought to use the power of his office to bring Ms. Erler nearer to him; Mr. Wolfowitz sought to use the power of his to move Ms. Riza away. Ms. Erler moved into a better job; Ms. Riza was forced into a lesser one. Mr. Verheugen ignored his own code of conduct; Mr. Wolfowitz followed the instructions of his ethics committee, whose chairman later praised him for acting in a "constructive spirit."

What the Wolfowitz scandal comes down to, then, is that he gave Ms. Riza a fat raise after the Bank's board agreed that she deserved compensation for losing her job.
Thus Wolfowitz's true crime? He's a conservative.

Labels: Hypocrisy, wolfowitz, world bank

One of the stories you may not have seen this week, for obvious reasons, is nonetheless one you should know. I held this for a few days because it seemed trite. But onward the blogging goes...

Once you know the relevant facts behind the fracas surrounding World Bank President and former Bush aide Paul Wolfowitz, one can only conclude that he was set up by members of the World Bank to fail. Furthermore, as recent articles in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal demonstrate, one can only conclude that the media is - once again - being selectively but purposely negligent in its reporting duties.

Here's what the mainstream media has emphasized: Wolfowitz ordered that his girlfriend who worked at the bank, Shaha Riza, be given a raise of about $60,000.

Sounds bad, right? Well, most media reports don't mention that 1) the World Bank ethics board refused Wolfowitz's attempt to recuse himself, 2) that they created the terms of Riza's pay increase (because as Wolfowitz's girlfriend she would no longer be eligible for promotions), and 3) most galling of all, the ethics board informed Wolfowitz that he had to directly order the pay raise since the board had no such authority.

The articles that do mention any of these facts minimize those facts by burying them in the story (The WaPost placement: paragraph 13 of 15).

"I'm amazed that the ethics committee had a lot of views, but then stepped back from their implementation," said Ruth Wedgwood, a professor of international law at Johns Hopkins University. Turning the matter over to Wolfowitz to resolve in the first place, she noted, was "sort of oxymoronic: 'You can't recuse yourself enough to suit us, but we want you to be formally in the chain of command to resolve this.' "
Nothing personal to professor Wedgwood, but an international law professor shouldn't be so naive. This is politics, and Wolfowitz, in attempting to add transparency and accountability to the World Bank, is targeted by the 'status quo' enemies.

One expects bureaucrats to be slimy. But what of reporters and editors? Here's a Wall Street Journal headline: "Wolfowitz Memo, Dictating Raises Given to Friend, Now Haunts Him." Oh really? But no mention that the World Bank's own "Ethics Board" - and what an oxymoron - instructed Wolfowitz to dictate said raise!

Fortunately, that paper's editorial board bothered to concentrate on the most relevant angles:

The paper trail shows that Mr. Wolfowitz had asked to recuse himself from matters related to his girlfriend, a long time World Bank employee, before he signed his own employment contract. The bank's general counsel at the time, Roberto Danino, wrote in a May 27, 2005 letter to Mr. Wolfowitz's lawyers:

"First, I would like to acknowledge that Mr. Wolfowitz has disclosed to the Board, through you, that he has a pre-existing relationship with a Bank staff member, and that he proposes to resolve the conflict of interest in relation to Staff Rule 3.01, Paragraph 4.02 by recusing himself from all personnel matters and professional contact related to the staff member." (Our emphasis here and elsewhere.)

That would have settled the matter at any rational institution, given that his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, worked four reporting layers below the president in the bank hierarchy. But the bank board -- composed of representatives from donor nations -- decided to set up an ethics committee to investigate. And it was the ethics committee that concluded that Ms. Riza's job entailed a "de facto conflict of interest" that could only be resolved by her leaving the bank.

Ms. Riza was on a promotion list at the time, and so the bank's ethicists also proposed that she be compensated for this blow to her career. In a July 22, 2005 ethics committee discussion memo, Mr. Danino noted that "There would be two avenues here for promotion -- an 'in situ' promotion to Grade GH for the staff member" and promotion through competitive selection to another position." Or, as an alternative, "The Bank can also decide, as part of settlement of claims, to offer an ad hoc salary increase."

Five days later, on July 27, ethics committee chairman Ad Melkert formally advised Mr. Wolfowitz in a memo that "the potential disruption of the staff member's career prospect will be recognized by an in situ promotion on the basis of her qualifying record . . ." In the same memo, Mr. Melkert recommends "That the President, with the General Counsel, communicates this advice" to the vice president for human resources "so as to implement" it immediately.

And in an August 8 letter, Mr. Melkert advised that the president get this done pronto: "The EC [ethics committee] cannot interact directly with staff member situations, hence Xavier [Coll, the human resources vice president] should act upon your instruction." Only then did Mr. Wolfowitz instruct Mr. Coll on the details of Ms. Riza's new job and pay raise.

Needless to say, none of this context has appeared in the media smears suggesting that Mr. Wolfowitz pulled a fast one to pad the pay of Ms. Riza. Yet the record clearly shows he acted only after he had tried to recuse himself but then wasn't allowed to do so by the ethics committee. And he acted only after that same committee advised him to compensate Ms. Riza for the damage to her career from a "conflict of interest" that was no fault of her own.

Based on this paper trail, Mr. Wolfowitz's only real mistake was in assuming that everyone else was acting in good faith. Yet when some of these details leaked to the media, nearly everyone else at the bank dodged responsibility and let Mr. Wolfowitz twist in the wind. Mr. Melkert, a Dutch politician now at the U.N., seems to have played an especially cowardly role.

In an October 24, 2005 letter to Mr. Wolfowitz, he averred that "Because the outcome is consistent with the Committee's findings and advice above, the Committee concurs with your view that this matter can be treated as closed." A month later, on November 25, Mr. Melkert even sent Mr. Wolfowitz a personal, hand-written note saying, "I would like to thank you for the very open and constructive spirit of our discussions, knowing in particular the sensitivity to Shaha, who I hope will be happy in her new assignment."

And when anonymous World Bank staffers began to circulate emails making nasty allegations about Ms. Shaha's job transfer and pay in early 2006, Mr. Melkert dismissed them in a letter to Mr. Wolfowitz on February 28, 2006 because they "did not contain new information warranting any further review by the Committee." Yet amid the recent media smears, Mr. Melkert has minimized his own crucial role.

All of this is so unfair that Mr. Wolfowitz could be forgiven for concluding that bank officials insisted he play a role in raising Ms. Riza's pay precisely so they could use it against him later. Even if that isn't true, it's clear that his enemies -- especially Europeans who want the bank presidency to go to one of their own -- are now using this to force him out of the bank. They especially dislike his anticorruption campaign, as do his opponents in the staff union and such elites of the global poverty industry as Nancy Birdsall of the Center for Global Development. They prefer the status quo that holds them accountable only for how much money they lend, not how much they actually help the poor.

Equally cynical has been the press corps, which slurred Mr. Wolfowitz with selective reporting and now says, in straight-faced solemnity, that the president must leave the bank because his "credibility" has been damaged. Paul Wolfowitz, meet the Duke lacrosse team.

The only way this fiasco could get any worse would be for Mr. Wolfowitz to resign in the teeth of so much dishonesty and cravenness. We're glad the Bush Administration isn't falling for this Euro-bureaucracy-media putsch. Mr. Wolfowitz has apologized for any mistakes he's made, though we're not sure why. He's the one who deserves an apology.

Labels: wolfowitz, world bank