The Wolfowitz-World Bank Affair–Documents
May 14 the World Bank posted its latest reports and annexes on the Wolfowitz kerfuffle. They include the report itself, lots of transcripts, and documents that Wolfowitz submitted. They do not include any other documents— the people attacking Wolfowitz rely on their word alone, though Xavier Coll does say he has personal notes that he was unwilling to make public. The documents support Wolfowitz, as always. I’d like to ask Coll why we can’t see his documents, and also ask him what kind of settlement for Shaha Riza he proposed, and why he has no record in writing of his proposal when he says he was taking such careful notes. We could ask much the same question of everyone else who is now criticizing Wolfowitz.
The report itself is audacious. It even criticizes Wolfowitz for responding to his critics, as thereby undermining the World Bank. The bureaucrats’ position now is that when the Ethics Committee told Wolfowitz, in writing, to “instruct” Coll on what to do with Riza, they meant for Wolfowitz to do whatever Coll thought should be done, and that when they told Wolfowitz to compensate Riza for the special hardship of having to leave the Bank’s normal promotion process, he wasn’t suppose to compensate her in any way out of the ordinary routine of promotion and salary increase. What weasels! If Wolfowitz does get fired, he’ll have a good lawsuit against the Bank.
May 18: Wolfowitz has now resigned, but in a compromise where the Board said,
“He assured us that he acted ethically and in good faith in what he believed were the best interests of the institution, and we accept that.” He cannot bring a lawsuit, since he resigned and since the Board has said it does not think he acted unethically– in effect, rejecting the report I discuss above but saying Wolfowitz should leave anyway just to get the fuss over. Too bad.