A World Bank-Wolfowitz Theory
Any theory of what is going on at the World Bank should try to explain the following facts :
1. Paul Wolfowitz decided to move from the Defense Dept. to the World Bank, a curious choice. (If he just wanted money, the private sector would have paid him more, with less hassle.)
2. People at the Bank were anxious to prevent him from having professional contact with his ladyfriend, Miss Riza, and insisted on a stretched interpretation of the no-romance rule (stretched because she would have been several ranks below him— he would not have been supervising her, or even her boss, directly).
3. High Bank officials insisted that he personally, rather than the usual personnel or legal managers, take responsibility for details of the arrangement for Miss Riza.
4. High Bank officials accepted the arrangement (which was pretty much what they had told Mr. Wolfowitz to arrange), even after a complaint investigation, but then turned and attacked him for it a year or so later.
5. Mr. Wolfowitz insisted on taking along two of his aides to the Bank and giving them high salaries, despite knowing that Bank staff didn’t like that.
Here’s a story that fits all of the facts.
Mr. Wolfowitz was ready to leave the Defense Dept. and was looking for an interesting job. His friend Miss Riza had told him of widespread corruption in the World Bank. He decided to take the challenge of going there and trying to root it out. He wanted to bring along some of his own people, since he couldn’t trust the insiders, and he had to pay them high salaries because they could earn even more in the private sector.
Naturally, the Wolfowitz move scared the corrupt people at the World Bank, since they could guess that Riza had told him lots of stories and that the two aides were ther e to help him deal with disloyal insiders. They decided to at least get Riza out of the Bank so he would lose his inside source. They also wanted him to cut off all professional contact– that is, to stop asking her questions about the Bank. At the same time, they realized they could use the Riza transfer to pin him with responsibility for what could be attacked later as corruption in case they needed a weapon against him.
The high Bank officials held back that weapon at first, wanting to save it as a threat. When you use a weapon like that, you need to “shoot to kill”, because the intended victim will strike back if he still has his job afterwards. Also, maybe Wolfowitz would get tired of the corruption theme and accept business as usual in the Bank. In 2007, they decided that he wouldn’t, and that the time had come for War. They prepared a press leak campaign, and launched it.
That’s all speculation, but I haven’t heard another theory that fits the facts.
May 9th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Yes your theory is all speculation, then again, so are your facts. Your facts are either wrong, in dispute or without foundation.
1) You don’t know Wolfowitz’s motivation for going into the World Bank and you have no evidence that he could have gotten a higher paying job in the private sector. The private sector punishes those who have been spectacularly and publicly wrong. In the current post-Abramoff atmosphere it would have been difficult for Wolfowitz to trade on his contacts, and if he has any abilities whatsoever that could be exercised legally and ethically, it isn’t obvious to me.
2) It is common in business and governmental to prohibit spouses or domestic partners from having a direct or indirect supervisory relationship. The word “indirect” is in the World Banks employment policies and obviously excludes your, “he would not have been supervising her, or even her boss, directly.” You and Wolfowitz might have tried to Google the phrase, “world bank employment policies” as I did. It is the first result. If he did not like this policy, he was free to try to find a different employer.
Fact 3) is in dispute. While it does seem clear that the ethics committee told Wolfowitz to “take care of it” as you say, it seems that Wolfowitz specified very favorable terms instead of leaving to the HR director as the committee expected from its previous conversations.
4) Again is in dispute. They accepted the arrangement that they thought had been made, not the arrangement that Wolfowitz had in fact made.
5) See 1) although I don’t see how your speculations depend critically on those aides role. However, the fact that one of those aides has resigned, pointedly praising and thanking the bank’s staff, but not Wolfowitz, is a fact that any acceptable theory of the case would have to account for, don’t you think?
In the interest of factual disclosure, shouldn’t you mention that both you and Wolfowitz are beneficiaries of funding from the Olin Foundation. Would I be wrong in presuming that this fact might color your perception of some other facts?