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Wolfwowitz Under Pressure: Washington Post Reports on Brewing Unrest at World Bank over Appointment of Partisan Political Operatives
Share / Recommend - Comment - Print - Tuesday, Jan 24, 06, 1:43PM
Last Friday, TWN reported that Paul Wolfowitz was engaging in personnel appointment strategies that were beginning to smell of partisan cronyism.
By Monday, a staff letter was sent to Wolfowitz expressing sentiments of significant "dismay" about the President's appointment of political hacks in key positions that should be open to transparent competition -- with decisions made on the basis of merit.
Today, Paul Blustein of the Washington Post adds more to the story and reports on the letter and Wolfowitz's troubling pattern of management decisions.
From Paul Blustein's piece:
Tensions flared yesterday between World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz and bank employees, as the bank's staff association criticized some of Wolfowitz's recent appointments and Wolfowitz fired back that he was trying to correct lax enforcement of the bank's internal corruption rules.The controversy is the starkest sign of discontent among the staff nine months after President Bush chose Wolfowitz to head the bank. Wolfowitz is a former deputy defense secretary best known for his role in planning the invasion of Iraq.
In a letter circulated yesterday evening to bank staffers, the staff association chair, Alison Cave, raised pointed questions about last week's appointment of Suzanne Rich Folsom, a bank official with Republican party ties, to head the Department of Institutional Integrity, a unit that investigates misconduct and corruption at the bank. The letter also cited the recent naming of Kevin S. Kellems, a former aide to Vice President Cheney, as the bank's top communications strategist.Their selection, the letter suggested, had been undertaken without a properly open and competitive process, potentially undermining the bank's ability to persuade developing countries to adopt transparent and clean procedures in hiring and procurement. "We are concerned . . . that the positions were not filled in accordance with established recruitment procedures, which exemplify our commitment to good governance," the letter said.
Those at the bank who have thoughts on this evolving situation -- or insider information -- on Wolfowitz's agenda, feel free to contact me.
-- Steve Clemons
FT has an assortment of reporting on Wolfowitz' management style in today's paper. They editorialize about it as well.
on a completly unrelated note, why are people from the nitze school @ johns hopkins in strategic places of power like the world bank, the import-export bank, the state department, usaid, and the like; the kind of people that would give us pause when we read of the things that don't sit well in a free, open, society, but just seem to help, aid, and assist the unindicted neocon criminals throughout our government
it couldn't be what they are teaching there, is it ?? or the contacts and relationships made, nahh
oh, and i got the same feeling of, unease, whenever i see someone graduating from harvard business, yale law, princeton, my whole view of the 'landed gentry' and the 'elite' that go to these schools learn how the game is played and how to game the system
the corporate chicainery that has shown itself over and over again: your not judged on ablity, it's who you know; competance is not rewarded, loyalty is
lisa myers, case in point. when some big shit goes down (and you know it will, it's only a matter of time), people will ask, why was the daughter of the former joint chiefs of staff chairman in that post ?? abilty, or being married to chertoff's chief of staff (myers didn't go to harvard law, but her husband and chertoff both did)
this may come off as elitist or classist, but that doesn't make my (poorly written) point less true, does it
Tofubo -- It doesn't strike me so much as elitist or classist as generalist or "caricaturist." The crap you assign to H, Y, P, inter alia, is everywhere. We are swimming in it, all of us. It's not too much to say that we enable it (all of us!).
Let's go after the crap, not individual graduates, some of whom actually wind up doing creditable jobs, including jobs for worthy non-profits.
No, let's be very clear about what the crap consists of and then and go after its promoters and any other parasitic forms who seek to become CEO's (or even presidents!) of the sewer.
Interesting article in the Dec 2005 issue of Z Magazine:
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Images/mcleod1205.html
No mention of Wolfowitz, but a truly horrible description of the World Bank.
This is the joker who told us the war would cost about 40 billion, where is he now. I think he needs to justify why the American people were mislead by this very small calculation. We are spending almost 40 billion every two months.
Raymond B
www.voteswagon.com
This whole process was a sham, why have all these hearings when everyone votes right down party lines? Does party allegiance outway general intelligence? Regardless of whether you are for or against, this should have been more meaningful.
Raymond B
www.voteswagon.com
What a surprise (cough, cough) that Wolfowitz, a noted "neo-con", would engage in cronyism and preferential hiring of other neo-cons. The mere fact that Wolfowitz was appointed to head up the World Bank smelled a bit suspicious at the time, and it has only become more odiferous since.
Tofubo, is this a guilt by association thing? Paul Wolfowitz hasn't worked at SAIS for about 5 or 6 years. The association between the Bank and SAIS has gone on far longer than Wolfie's connection- given the intl affairs / econ focus of SAIS, is it any surprise that it's a feeder for the Bank, State, USAID? At the very least, those kids are educated about the work they'll be doing.
As for your characterization that SAIS students (et al) are "landed gentry," you *sound* like an ignorant crackpot. Sure there are plenty of richies at SAIS, but I can assure you that a good number of the students have worked hard to get into those programs and are not being fed some Republican pap. I would venture to guess that many have done far more than you to make a positive difference in the world. Unlike Dubya, they have been around the world - and I don't mean on yachts.
Wolfie stands for a lot of very bad things, but his commitment to education is, I believe, genuine. It's sad to see him ignoring that as he pays off cronies with jobs they are ill suited for.
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