Everything about Paul Wolfowitz totally explained
The job of finding WMD and providing justification for the attack would fall to the intelligence services, but, according to Kampfner, "Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believed that, while the established security services had a role, they were too bureaucratic and too traditional in their thinking." As a result "they set up what came to be known as the 'cabal', a cell of eight or nine analysts in a new
Office of Special Plans (OSP) based in the
U.S. Defense Department." According to an unnamed Pentagon source quoted by Hersh, the OSP "was created in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true—that
Saddam Hussein had close ties to
Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States." Army Lt. Col. Charles H. Buehring was killed and seventeen others soldiers were wounded. Wolfowitz and his DOD staffers escaped unharmed and returned to the United States on
October 28,
2003.
President of the World Bank
In March 2005, Wolfowitz was nominated to be president of the
World Bank. Criticism of his nomination appeared in the media.
Nobel Laureate in Economics and former chief economist for the World Bank
Joseph Stiglitz said: "'The World Bank will once again become a hate figure. This could bring street protests and violence across the developing world.'" In a speech at the U.N. Economic and Social Council, Economist
Jeffrey Sachs also opposed Wolfowitz: "It's time for other candidates to come forward that have experience in development. This is a position on which hundreds of millions of people depend for their lives ... Let's have a proper leadership of professionalism."
In the U.S. there was some praise for the nomination. An editorial in
The Wall Street Journal states: "Mr. Wolfowitz is willing to speak the truth to power ... he saw earlier than most, and spoke publicly about, the need for dictators to plan democratic transitions. It is the world's dictators who are the chief causes of world poverty. If anyone can stand up to the
Robert Mugabes of the world, it must be the man who stood up to
Saddam Hussein."
He was confirmed and became president on
June 1,
2005. He soon attended the
31st G8 summit to discuss issues of
global climate change and the
economic development in
Africa. When this meeting was interrupted by the
July 7, 2005 London bombings, Wolfowitz was present with other world leaders at the press conference given by
British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Several of Wolfowitz's initial appointments at the Bank proved controversial, including two US nationals (
Robin Cleveland and
Kevin Kellems) formerly with the Bush administration, whom he appointed as close advisors with $250,000 tax-free contracts. Another appointee,
Juan José Daboub was criticized by his colleagues and others for attempts to change policies on family planning and climate change towards a conservative line."
Wolfowitz gave special emphasis to two particular issues. Identifying Sub-Saharan Africa as the region most challenged to improve living standards, he traveled widely in the region. He also made clear his focus on fighting corruption. Several aspects of the latter program raised controversy. Overturning the names produced by a formal search process, he appointed a figure linked to the US Republican party to head the Bank's internal watchdog. Member countries worried that Wolfowitz's willingness to suspend lending to countries on grounds of corruption was vulnerable to selective application in line with US foreign policy interests. In a debate on the proposed Governance and Anti-Corruption Strategy at the Bank's 2006 Annual Meetings, shareholders directed Wolfowitz to undertake extensive consultations and revise the strategy to show how objective measures of corruption would be incorporated into decisions and how the shareholders' representatives on the Bank's Board would play a key role. Following the consultations and revisions, the Board approved a revised strategy in spring 2007.
Wolfowitz's relationship with Shaha Riza
After President George W. Bush's nomination of Wolfowitz as president of the
World Bank, journalists reported that Wolfowitz had become involved in a relationship with World Bank Senior Communications Officer (and Acting Manager of External Affairs) for the Middle East and North Africa Regional Office
Shaha Ali Riza. According to Richard Leiby, of
The Washington Post, Riza is "an
Oxford-educated
British citizen, was born in
Tunisia and grew up in
Saudi Arabia. She's known for her expertise on
women's rights and has been listed on the bank's Web site as a
media contact for
Iraq reconstruction issues." According to Leiby and Linton Weeks, in their essay "In the Shadow of a Scandal", Riza's employment at the World Bank predated Wolfowitz's nomination as Bank president: "Riza started at the World Bank as a consultant in July 1997 and became a full-time employee in 1999"; and the relationship between Riza and Wolfowitz pre-dated it as well:
In the early 1990s, Riza joined the National Endowment for Democracy and is credited there with development of the organization's Middle East program. Wolfowitz was on the endowment's board—which is how Riza first met him, according to Turkish journalist Cengiz Candar, a friend of the couple. "Shaha was married at the time and Paul was married," Candar recalled, and it wasn't until late 1999—after Riza divorced and Wolfowitz had separated from his wife of 30 years, Clare Selgin Wolfowitz—that the couple began dating."
When Wolfowitz was being considered for head of the CIA immediately after the 2000 election, Clare Wolfowitz wrote President-elect George Bush a letter telling him that her husband's relationship with a foreign national—Riza—posed a national security risk. It has been reported that
Scooter Libby intercepted the letter.
Sidney Blumenthal also reported on the letter Clare Wolfowitz wrote:
According to the profile of Wolfowitz published in the London
Sunday Times on
March 20,
2005, despite their cultural differences, "Riza, an Arab feminist who confounds portrayals of Wolfowitz as a leader of a '
Zionist conspiracy' of Jewish
neoconservatives in Washington ... [andwho] works as the bank’s senior gender co-ordinator for the Middle East and north Africa ... not only shares Wolfowitz’s passion for spreading democracy in the
Arab world, but is said to have reinforced his determination to remove
Saddam Hussein’s oppressive regime."
The reported relationship created further controversy concerning Wolfowitz’s nomination to head the World Bank, because the organization's own ethics rules preclude sexual relationships between a manager and a staff member serving under that manager, even if one reports to the other only indirectly through a chain of supervision. Sharon Churcher and Annette Witheridge, in
The Daily Mail, quote one World Bank employee's statement that "Unless Riza gives up her job, this will be an impossible conflict of interest"; the observation of "a Washington insider": "His 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"; and Wolfowitz's response: "If a personal relationship presents a potential conflict of interest, I'll comply with Bank policies to resolve the issue."
Wolfowitz initially proposed to the World Bank's Ethics Committee that he recuse himself from personnel matters regarding Riza, but the committee rejected that proposal. Riza was "seconded to the
State Department", or placed on "external assignment," assigned "a job at the state department under
Liz Cheney, the daughter of the
vice-president, promoting democracy in the Middle East ..." She "was also moved up to a managerial pay grade in compensation for the disruption to her career," resulting in a raise of over $60,000, as well as guarantees of future increases; "The staff association claims that the pay rise was more than double the amount allowed under employee guidelines." A promotion and raise had been among the options suggested by a World Bank ethics committee that was set up to advise on the situation. According to Steven R. Weisman, however, in a report published in
The New York Times, the then-current chair of the committee emphasized that he wasn't informed at the time of the details or extent of the present and future raises built into the agreement with Riza. Wolfowitz refers to the controversy concerning his relationship with Riza in his recent statement posted on the website of the World Bank (
April 12,
2007).
Wolfowitz's leadership of the World Bank Group
Beginning early in 2007,
Fox News published on its website a series of investigative stories on the World Bank, based in part on leaks to Fox of internal bank documents.
On
April 11,
2007,
Reuters and Al Kamen, in his column in
The Washington Post, reported that Wolfowitz and the World Bank board had hired the
Williams & Connolly law firm to oversee an investigation into the leaking of internal bank documents to
Fox News. Those reports cite an internal memo to the bank staff later posted on the internet, dated
April 9,
2007, in which the World Bank's general counsel, Ana Palacio, states that the Bank's legal staff was scrutinizing two articles by investigative reporter
Richard Behar published on the website of
Fox News on
January 31 and
March 27,
2007. A day after the second report published by Behar, on
March 28,
2007, Kamen had disclosed that "Bank records obtained by the Government Accountability Project" documented pay raises in excess of Bank policies given to
Shaha Riza
On
April 12,
2007 the London
Financial Times reported that, in a 2005 memorandum, Wolfowitz had personally directed the Bank's human resources chief to offer Riza a large pay rise and promotion, according to two anonymous sources who told the
Financial Times that they'd seen the memo. The memo was part of a package of 102 pages of documents publicly released by the bank on
April 14,
2007. In contrast,
Fox News concluded that the new documents might offer Wolfowitz a "new lifeline" in the scandal, because the Bank's ethics committee had launched a review of the Riza compensation case in early 2006 and concluded that it didn't warrant any further attention by the committee.
Media speculations about Wolfowitz quitting his position as president of the
World Bank intensified on
April 19,
2007 after his failure to attend a high-profile meeting. The controversy about Wolfowitz's girlfriend Shaha Riza led to disruption at the World Bank when some employees wore
blue ribbons "in a display of defiance against his leadership."
World Bank Group's board of executive directors and staffers complained also that Wolfowitz was imposing
Bush Administration policies to eliminate
family planning from World Bank programs. According to Nicole Gaouette, in her report published in the
Los Angeles Times on
April 19,
2007,
Juan José Daboub—the managing director whom Wolfowitz had appointed who has also been criticized for overly-conservative policies concerning climate change
On
May 14,
2007 the World Bank committee investigating the alleged ethics violations reported (in part):
- "Mr. Wolfowitz's contract requiring that he adhere to the Code of Conduct for board officials and that he avoid any conflict of interest, real or apparent, were violated";
- "The salary increase Ms. Riza received at Mr. Wolfowitz's direction was in excess of the range established by Rule 6.01";
- "The ad hoc group concludes that in actuality, Mr Wolfowitz from the outset cast himself in opposition to the established rules of the institution"; and
- "He didn't accept the bank's policy on conflict of interest, so he sought to negotiate for himself a resolution different from that which would have applied to the staff he was selected to head."
Wolfowitz appeared before the World Bank Group's board of executive directors to respond on Tuesday,
May 15,
2007, and, the following day, on Wednesday,
May 16, in another board meeting, its executive directors would "consider the report and make a statement later in the week." Adams speculates that "With Mr Wolfowitz so far refusing to step down, the board may need to take radical action to break the stalemate. Members have discussed a range of options, including sacking Mr Wolfowitz, issuing a vote of no confidence or reprimanding him. Some board members argue that a vote of no confidence would make it impossible for him to stay in the job." If the World Bank's board of directors "votes him out," according to Michael Hirsh, in the
May 21,
2007 issue of
Newsweek, he'd be "the first president dismissed in [its] 62-year history ..." By mid-afternoon, Wednesday,
May 16,
2007,
The New York Times, reported that "after six weeks of fighting efforts to oust him as president ... Wolfowitz began today to negotiate the terms of his possible resignation, in return for the bank dropping or softening the charge that he'd engaged in misconduct ..." After recent expressions from the Bush administration that it "fully" supported Wolfowitz as World Bank president and its urging a "fair hearing" for him, President Bush expressed "regret" at Wolfowitz's impending resignation.
On
May 17,
2007, in a statement published on its website, the World Bank Group's board of Executive Directors announced that Paul Wolfowitz would resign as World Bank Group president at the end of June 2007; their statement is followed by a statement from Wolfowitz about his tenure as president and his hopes for the World Bank's future success.
Wolfowitz in the media and pop culture
In his 2002 profile of Wolfowitz in
The New York Times, Eric Schmitt describes Wolfowitz as a "lightning rod" for President
George W. Bush
In his book review of
Rise of the Vulcans, Martin Sieff views Mann's portrayal of Wolfowitz as disappointing in its uncritical omissions and departures from reality.
In June 2004, as reported on the
MSNBC television program
Deborah Norville Tonight,
Tom Clancy asked about Paul Wolfowitz: "Is he really on our side?", narrating the context: "I sat in on—I was in the Pentagon in '01 for a
red team operation and he came in and briefed us. And after the brief, I just thought, is he really on our side? Sorry."
Journalist and polemicist
Christopher Hitchens stated in an interview with
Johann Hari published on
September 23,
2004: "The thing that would most surprise people about Wolfowitz if they met him is that he's a real
bleeding heart."
Bloomberg News reported on
March 24,
2005 that Malaysian politician
Anwar Ibrahim, Wolfowitz's longtime friend, had said in an interview that Wolfowitz "passionately believes in freedom and understands the issues of
poverty, environment degradation, living conditions and health issues which (are) very much a World Bank agenda."
According to Sipress and Nakashima, reporting in the
The Washington Post several days later,
Abdurrahman Wahid, Indonesia's first democratically-elected president after the fall of Suharto, "was so taken by Wolfowitz's 1989 speech that he asked to be introduced... that they became friends and he remains proud of that relationship today despite differences over the
U.S. invasion of Iraq. Wahid was impeached by his political rivals in 2001 but remains highly influential."
In his article about Wolfowitz's problems as president of the
World Bank Group, published in
The New Statesman on
May 15,
2006, for which he interviewed Bank "insiders", Robert Calderisi, who "worked at the World Bank from 1979 to 2002," wonders whether Wolfowitz is "The Worst Man in the World?", concluding "most insiders believe the bank is becoming the very caricature of a US-dominated, ideological agency that they've always denied it was. Its critics may feel vindicated, but friends of international development will worry that the Europeans - who are the largest providers of aid to poor countries - will lose confidence in using the bank as an objective channel. Or they may bide their time and decide that Paul Wolfowitz will be the last US-appointed president of the World Bank."
In May 2007, as a result of the controversy about his leadership of the
World Bank Group, according to
Washington Post op-ed columnist Sebastian Mallaby, Wolfowitz became involved in an "endgame" both for his career and for the institution of the World Bank itself.
Immortal Technique talks about Wolfowitz in his song
One Remix where he says
"Paul Wolfowitz motherfucker I'll see you in hell."
Wolfowitz found public prominence through his involvement in the 2003
U.S. invasion of Iraq, criticized in
Fahrenheit 9/11, the film by
Michael Moore. According to Suzanne Goldenberg's profile of Wolfowitz published in
The Guardian, "one of the most indelible moments of the film ... is when Paul Wolfowitz ... puts a generous dollop of spit on his comb before smoothing his hair for a television appearance."
On
30 January 2007, after his visit to
Selimiye Mosque in
Edirne,
Turkey, news media released photographs of Paul Wolfowitz's socks, which had holes in them. A few days later,
Today's Zaman announced that the Turkish Hosiery Manufacturers' Association sent him twelve pairs of socks.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Paul Wolfowitz'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://paul_wolfowitz.totallyexplained.com">Paul Wolfowitz Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
