When once confronted with a sneering remark about the Washington Post, I.F. Stone replied: "It's a great paper. You never know on what page you'll find a page-one story." One can play a similar game with the New York Times today: You never know in which paragraph you'll find the buried lede. It took me all of three (paragraphs, that is) to disinter the news item in this otherwise unshocking and unenlightening article entitled, "World Bank Panel Finds Wolfowitz at Fault; Aide Resigns":
Bank officials, speaking anonymously because the proceedings are supposed to be confidential, said that the special committee was still working today on what to recommend.
Breaking the rules is such a subjective enterprise these days. But at least Paul Wolfowitz must be smiling at the grim nostalgia of it all. At the Pentagon he was hobbled by leaks from "anonymous" officials at the State Department, and now as top dog at the World Bank he's being undone by a similar don't-ask-don't-cite practice of blabbing to the media.
As ambassador to Indonesia, Wolfowitz amassed plenty of experience in using "soft power" to coax an island dictatorship into overdue projects of reform and liberalization, if not total regime change. So whatever you think of his contribution to the state of modern Iraq, it can't quite be said he was unqualified for the presidency of the World Bank. In the grand Proustian cycle of embattled American war architects, this gig was already known as Credibility Regained, and Wolfowitz has always (and will always) hold up well in comparison with his predecessor as teller to the third world, Robert McNamara. A macabre joke has now been delivered at the World Bank's expense: You can defoliate jungles and rice paddies, and maximize peasant casualties in an illegal war to bail out French colonialism, but whatever you do, you must stay true to the wife.
At the outset of l'affaire Shaha, the Daily Mail quoted one Washington insider as saying: "[Wolfowitz's] womanizing has come home to roost. Paul was a foreign policy hawk long before he met Shaha, but it doesn't look good to be accused of being under the thumb of your mistress." (You know how it goes with centers of global financial power and things coming home to roost.)
Though apparently it wasn't Riza's influence on her boyfriend that scared the pinstriped pharisees. It was that she wasn't married to him. Shengman Zhang, the former Managing Director of the Bank, helped his wife Lingzhi Xu, a World Bank employee at a footling level compared to Riza, go from a "Level D" job status (valued at around $52,000) to a "Level G-G" job status (valued at around $123,000) in record time. According to Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal, Xu's fast-track success "never seems to have raised an eyebrow within the bank's management." It was the sort of by-the-book nepotism that everyone appreciates.
Riza, on the other hand, had been a longtime employee of the bank. She was shortlisted for promotion well before Wolfowitz got there, and her excellent job record would have assured her the same quantity of Condi-surpassing lucre for which she is now so notorious. One might still raise an eyebrow at this, however, were not Riza's ascent so demonstrably reluctant, so evidently coerced and thick with pettifogging nonsense as to make a total non-story out of her and her partner's travails.
The chairman of the World Bank Ethics Committee, Ad Melkert, was characterized by the New York Times on May 1 like this:
Mr. Melkert, a Dutch political figure active in the Labor Party in the Netherlands, said that instead of arranging for the salary and promotion package, Mr. Wolfowitz should have given the job in question to someone neutral.
That's cute. No mention here of the fact that Wolfowitz brought his personal relationship with Riza to the Ethics Committee's attention, and that Melkert was the one who instructed him not to recuse himself from Riza's reassignment. The following is a series of letters exchanged among Melkert, Wolfowitz and Xavier Coll, the Vice President of the World Bank's Human Resources, dating back to shortly after Wolfowitz's assumption of the bank presidency. These messages are worth reading in full:
July 27, 2005 – Memo from Ethics Committee Chairman Ad Melkert to PW
“Having considered different options, the EC advises:
a) That the staff member will be relocated to a position beyond (potential) supervising influence by the President and therefore will withdraw from the current selection procedure for job promotion within the MENA department;
b) That at the same time 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 as confirmed by her shortlisting for the current job process and as consistent with the practice of the Bank;
c) That the President, with the General Counsel, communicates this advice to the VPMENA and VPHR so as to implement a) and b) with immediate effect.”
August 8, 2005 – Letter from Ethics Committee Chairman Ad Melkert to PW
1) The EC cannot interact directly with staff member situations, hence Xavier should act upon your instruction.
2) The interaction with the staff member at this stage is only for information purposes, by way of courtesy, as both you and the EC have been preoccupied from the outset to have a procedure in place and an outcome reached that would duly recognize the record and career perspectives of the staff member, taking into account the scope of the EC which is limited to Board officials.
August 11, 2005 – Memo from PW to Xavier Coll, Human Resources VP
“As you know, I recused myself from any personnel action or decision related to Shaha Riza, a proposal which would have afforded her the opportunity to continue on her professional career course at the Bank while avoiding any appearance of conflict of interest. The Ethics Committee advised me that my proposal was unacceptable. In addition, they stated that it was not appropriate for them to ‘interact with staff member situations’, therefore, I was directed to instruct you to inform her of their conclusions and develop a plan which ‘duly recognizes (her) record and career perspectives,’ and that I should complete the action by the end of this week.”
“I understand your preference would be to offer her a financial settlement that would compensate her for both the lost opportunities related to promotion and the pain, suffering, and damage to her professional reputation that has been involved in her forced departure.
“Based on your advice, I direct you to provide her a choice between her proposal and your alternative of financial compensation in lieu of promotion to I or J level. The H promotion should be included in either alternative.”
“Finally, I wish to reiterate my deep unhappiness with the whole way of dealing with a situation that I still believe, and have been advised by experienced labor legal counsel, should have been resolved by my recusal.”
September 1, 2005 – Letter from Human Resources VP Xavier Coll to Shaha Riza
"There is no precedent of this kind and no personnel policy that clearly applies to resolve it.”
October 24, 2005 – Letter from Ethics Committee Chairman Ad Melkert to PW
“I am writing on behalf of the Ethics Committee to acknowledge the resolution of the conflict of interest in line with the guidance provided by the Committee, as conveyed through my informal draft of July 27, 2005. Your memo confirms that the staff member has agreed to be detailed outside the Bank Group, and that you withdraw your proposal for recusal. 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.”
November 25, 2005 – Letter from Ethics Committee Chairman Ad Melkert
“Dear Paul, This is (formally needed for the records) just to confirm the outcome regarding this extraordinarily difficult issue. 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.”
February 28, 2006 – Letter from Ethics Committee Chairman Ad Melkert to PW
“Dear Paul, This is to inform you that the Ethics Committee has reviewed two emails from ‘John Smith’ dated January 21, 2006 and February 15, 2006, respectively, which were sent to the Bank’s Investigations Hotline and copied to the Executive Directors. The emails allege ethical lapses by the President of the World Bank.”
“On the Basis of a careful review of the above-mentioned documents and the information provided by the President at the informal board meeting with Executive Directors on February 3, 2006, the Ethics Committee decided that the allegations regarding appointments of Bank staff do not appear to pose ethical issues appropriate for further consideration by the Committee. The Committee also decided that the allegation relating to a matter which had been previously considered by the Committee did not contain new information warranting any further review by the Committee.”
So, then: The "conflict of interest" was formally resolved on October 24, 2005, then followed a month later by a warm personal note from Melkert in which he thanked Wolfowitz for his transparency and cooperation, and wished Riza well in her future endeavors. The case was then shortly re-opened in January 2006 at the prompting of two anonymous emails to the World Bank's "Hotline," alleging Wolfowitz's "ethical lapses." It was then closed again on February 28, 2006 when those emails' charges were shown to be unwarranted.
So what's at issue here, particularly when, as Coll states it, there was "no precedence" for such a personnel reshuffling in the bank's history? Why does Wolfowitz look very likely to lose his job? Because of 1) the dollar amount Riza's raise (she went from a Bank salary of $132,660 to $193,590), 2) the fact that Wolfowitz "dictated" the terms of her reassignment to Coll, and 3) Wolfowitz's failure to proceed through the proper advisory channels in effectuating 1 and 2. What were the proper advisory channels? Well, according now to the Board and Ethics Committee, he should have consulted both in the hashing out all further details relating to Riza's status. However, these were details that he was given autonomy to see to—and given it by the Ethics Committee's own chairman! How is it that the official who denies the bank president's request for recusal would then forget to explain just how much more thoroughly involved the president would have to be in resolving his own conflict of interest? Who is negligent here—Wolfowitz or Melkert?
All that the Bank's own bylaws state with regards to such nebulous matters of "conflicts of interest" and Board notification of their resolution is the following: "On the question of communications with Executive Directors, it was agreed that Executive Directors should be notified, in case they would inquire, only after the Requestor had resolved the conflict of interest. Any such communication should only indicate that the Ethics Committee considered the request and confirms that the conflict of interest has been dealt with appropriately." This does not specify who should do the notifying, but the second sentence implies that the Ethics Committee's imprimatur is the one most needed, and so that body—not the "Requestor," in this case the bank president—should communicate with the Board.
As cited above, Wolfowitz, acting on Melkert's instruction, wrote to Coll at HR:
“Based on your advice, I direct you to provide [Riza] a choice between her proposal and your alternative of financial compensation in lieu of promotion to I or J level. The H promotion should be included in either alternative.”
"Based on your advice" is important. So is the simple fact that Xavier Coll cannot have been the head of Human Resources and unaware of the typical compensation that attends an "H promotion." Indeed, Coll—not Wolfowitz—was the one to arrive at the exact figure of Riza's new income, as this letter proves [Note: "Robin" refers to Wolfowitz's staff assistant Robin Cleveland]:
Even if Wolfowitz had written Coll: "I want to pay Shaha her fair share because she'll do that thing with my ear that drives me crazy," how would that have been in direct violation of the course of action set out for him by Ad Melkert? At what point did he try to maneuver sub rosa to get his girlfriend a sweeter deal than she deserved? If Wolfowitz's motives are still murky, what are we to make of his evident frustration in having to involve himself in this decidedly awkward situation?
“Finally, I wish to reiterate my deep unhappiness with the whole way of dealing with a situation that I still believe, and have been advised by experienced labor legal counsel, should have been resolved by my recusal.”
I should think if graft were my objective, I would not complain that I was being made the sole enabler of my own ill-gotten fortune.
At what point, then, does Wolfowitz's politics or "image" not come galloping into this agonizingly drawn-out and pathetic vendetta? If Fantasy Anti-Globalization League World Bank President Joseph Stiglitz had gone to such lengths to ensure his partner's reassignment and pay package were on the up-and-up, you can be sure his name would now grace the pages of the London Review of Books in close proximity to the term "witch hunt."
Interestingly enough, in Melkert's case, the big bad neocon used to be regarded with some favor—that is, until Melkert's own judgment as a World Bank functionary became subject to scrutiny. Check out this extraordinary letter, dated July 14, 2005, and sent by Melkert to Wolfowitz on the occasion of the ten-year anniversary of the Srebrenica Massacre. I especially love how Melkert even requests the English part of what I hope was a Hebrew prayer that Wolfowitz delivered to commemorate the genocide of Balkan Muslims:
The Times, as ever, helps put things in perspective:
This [anonymous World Bank] official said that the overwhelming sentiment in Europe, as expressed in editorials, political commentaries and even web logs, was that European governments should never again let the United States pick the president of the World Bank all by itself.
I would challenge that official to explain how overwhelming sentiment pertaining to World Bank procedure has any bearing on an investigation into the probity of one man. But while we're on the subject, it's worth asking why the chorus of European opinion—normally so vexed by the career advancement of secular Muslim feminists—chooses now to demand that a half century of custom in naming the World Bank president be rescinded. The United States has a majority share in the institution and is thus entitled to a majority voting right, which means that it chooses the executive. (Never mind the fact that the bulk of the bank's resources, lent more profligately than Wolfowitz or anyone with a conscience would like, come from the United States.)
So if we're to understand that Paul Wolfowitz's fate is inextricably tied up with the need for future gestures of multilateralism in the administration of international organizations, fine. I'll assume that the next demarche appearing on continental broadsheets and websites will be to grant Washington a stake in the Europe Union's setting of currency rates.