Wolfowitz: The Final Days

Bush's personnel choices are drawing deserved attention. Few things say more about a leader than the people he puts in high positions about him. And Bush's record so far is impressive. He picked the worst defense secretary in the history of the Department of Defense—a man who earned the contempt of the entire institution and has brought the greatest military force in human history to the verge of a breakdown. Then he appointed his own consigliere as attorney general—regrettably not an unprecedented step, since presidents of both parties have reached into hackdom for their attorneys general in the past. True, Alberto Gonzales has not been convicted and sentenced on a felony like Nixon's John Mitchell (at least not yet), but when you contemplate his record, he seems certain to take a finalist's slot in the running for worst attorney general of all time. Assuredly, when you consider his role in the introduction of torture, “extraordinary renditions,” mass surveillance in violation of FISA, the Presidential Signing Statements, and now the sledgehammer he's taken to the reputation of the Department of Justice (particularly in the gross politicization of prosecutions)—conviction or no, he'd be my pick.

And then we have Bush's choice for the World Bank: Paul Wolfowitz. I had a number of encounters with Wolfowitz back when he was at Johns Hopkins. He struck me as a brilliant man, and also someone with curiously flawed judgment—a sort of intellectual provocateur. He always seemed completely convinced of the correctness of his viewpoint. Certitude can be a mark of greatness of course, but rarely when it is coupled with an inability to listen.

Wolfowitz went to the World Bank promising a new reform agenda. His predecessor, James Wolfensohn, had made an impressive—but uneven—start in this arena, pushing anti-corruption as a core aspect of the bank's mission. I've been involved in development finance most of my adult life, and I advocate this posture. Transparency is urgently needed in the developing world, and the international financial institutions that work this turf badly need a missionary attitude. But was this really Wolfowitz's attitude? I started the process accepting him at his word and after time came simply not to believe him.

Wolfowitz arrived at the bank with the style of an oriental satrap, not a reformer. His dealings with his paramour, a well-regarded senior bank analyst, demonstrated abysmally bad judgment from the beginning. But now Sid Blumenthal fills us in on how Wolfowitz's interventions demonstrated the worst sort of favoritism. It seems that while Wolfowitz was the number two at Defense, he was busy dishing out all sorts of favors: getting consultancy contracts for her, paying for a trip for her to Iraq, and even getting her unprecedented security clearances assuring access to sensitive data. The favors provided after he arrived at the World Bank represent continuity, not a new phenomenon. Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney's daughter who was installed at State to provide a Neocon powerbase (this is the Liz Cheney who regularly, at the solicitation of Fred Hiatt, pens incoherent op-ed pieces for the Washington Post) is involved in these schemes. Here's a key nugget:

But in 2006 Wolfowitz made a series of calls to his friends that landed her a job at a new think tank called Foundation for the Future that is funded by the State Department. She was the sole employee, at least in the beginning. The World Bank continued to pay her salary, which was raised by $60,000 to $193,590 annually, more than the $183,500 paid to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and all of it tax-free. Moreover, Wolfowitz got the State Department to agree that the ratings of her performance would automatically be "outstanding." Wolfowitz insisted on these terms himself and then misled the World Bank board about what he had done.

Exactly how this deal was made and with whom remains something of a mystery. The person who did work with Riza in her new position was Elizabeth Cheney, then the deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. And Riza's assignment fell under the purview of Karen Hughes, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. But these facts raise more questions than they answer.

The decision to grant a non-citizen born in Libya and educated in Saudi Arabia a security clearance is truly something extraordinary. It is another vivid demonstration of the way security clearances work in the Bush Administration. Rove blew the cover of a CIA covert operative, evaded prosecution, kept his job in the White House—and his security clearance. Wolfowitz's paramour is given a security clearance like a crackerjack prize, notwithstanding a personal history that would otherwise be completely disqualifying. Again, the process is all just a political game.

In sum, Wolfowitz emerges as a poster boy for just the sort of petty contract corruption that any sensible World Bank reform program would target. Moreover, note the contrast with my prior post. In Wisconsin, a false claim of contract corruption is brought in order to provide a basis for partisan claims in a gubernatorial race. Under federal contracting rules, if a government officer responsible for a contract were to intervene to gain advantage to a spouse or spousal equivalent, that would be a serious crime. Of course, in this high profile case nothing happened—no investigation, and no prosecution. This is the nature of justice under Bush: all politics, all the time.

The entire senior staff of the bank now stands in open rebellion against Wolfowitz as the institution is gripped by “crisis mode.” Wolfowitz is reviled and viewed as petty and corrupt. Of course, in Wolfowitz's mind, he has the confidence of the Decider, and that's all that matters. Just as in the case of Gonzales, this does not mean he'll hold the job. It means his exit will be slow and painful, so as to inflict maximum damage on the institution that he heads. Perhaps that was the objective all along? One hopes not. But the case for an innocent, or even well-meaning Wolfowitz has been all but eviscerated.

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