Dutch Rub-Out
Wolfowitz and the World Bank's Euro-cabal.
Monday, April 30, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz faces an "ad hoc committee" investigating his alleged ethics violations today, but it seems the committee has reached its conclusions even before he has a chance to defend himself. This fits the pattern of what is ever more clearly a Euro-railroad job.
On Saturday, the Washington Post cited "three senior bank officials" as saying that the committee has "nearly completed a report" concluding that Mr. Wolfowitz "breached ethics rules when he engineered a pay raise for his girlfriend." The Post also reported that, "According to bank officials, the timing of the committee's report and its conclusions have been choreographed for maximum impact in what has become a full-blown campaign to persuade Wolfowitz to go." So there it is from the plotters themselves: Verdict first, trial later.
None of this is surprising when you consider that the "ad hoc committee" is dominated by Europeans who have been leading the campaign to oust Mr. Wolfowitz. Four of the committee's seven members are European, including its Dutch chairman, a Frenchman, Norwegian and Russian. The others hail from Ethiopia, Mexico and China, but the Europeans have the majority and are running this railroad.
The "ad hoc" chairman is Herman Wijffels, a Dutch politician who has his own blatant conflict of interest in the case. One of the main "witnesses" against Mr. Wolfowitz is Ad Melkert, another Dutch politician who had previously run the bank board's ethics committee that advised Mr. Wolfowitz to give the raise to his girlfriend that is now the basis for the accusations against him. Whom do you think Mr. Wijfells is going to side with: His fellow countryman, or an American reviled in Europe for wanting to depose Saddam Hussein?
Mr. Melkert has played an especially craven role by running from his own responsibility in the case. As head of the ethics committee in 2005, he refused to let Mr. Wolfowitz recuse himself from dealings with Shaha Riza, who had been long employed at the bank. Then Mr. Melkert advised him to ensure that Ms. Riza got a new job that included some kind of raise or promotion to compensate for the disruption to her career. Now, however, Mr. Melkert claims he was an innocent bystander who knew nothing about Ms. Riza's raise.
How very European. This is the same Ad Melkert, who on October 24, 2005, after Ms. Riza had been told of her new job and salary, wrote in a letter to Mr. Wolfowitz that "Because the outcome is consistent with the [Ethics] Committee's findings and advice above, the Committee concurs with your view that this matter can be treated as closed."
And it is the same Ad Melkert who absolved Mr. Wolfowitz after inspecting two whistleblower emails from an anonymous "John Smith" that circulated around the bank in early 2006 and charged malfeasance. A January 21 whistleblower email included a reference to Ms. Riza's "salary increase of around US$50,000" and was sent to the entire bank board.
On February 28, 2006, Mr. Melkert wrote to Mr. Wolfowitz, saying that he and the ethics committee had "reviewed two emails from 'John Smith'" as well as relevant "background documents." He went on to write that "On the basis of a careful review of the above-mentioned documents . . . the allegations relating to a matter which had been previously considered by the Committee did not contain new information warranting any further review by the Committee."
Either Mr. Melkert is lying now, or he was negligent when he wrote that letter. But there's no excuse for his current Sgt. Schultz routine from "Hogan's Heroes" that "I know nothing. Nothing!" Mr. Wijffels succeeded Mr. Melkert as the Dutch representative on the bank board, so he has a clear conflict of interest in judging his countryman's abdication. He also has a conflict because he's in a position to protect fellow board members who were also alerted to Ms. Riza's salary by the whistleblower email. Mr. Wijffels should resign from the ad hoc committee and be replaced by someone from outside the bank's Euro-cabal.
By the way, today's "ad hoc" bank meeting is designed to coincide with President Bush's summit with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose bank representative is among the anti-Wolfowitz ringleaders. The hope among the Euro-plotters is that Mr. Bush will bow to the European leaders on Mr. Wolfowitz in return for some other policy concession, and thus encourage him to resign. That would spare the Europeans a difficult bank vote. But it would only make Mr. Bush look even weaker than he already is if another of his appointees can be run out of town on a phony scandal.
Ms. Riza will also get her first hearing today in this kangaroo court, and she ought to blast them for the way the bank has violated its own rules in leaking details of her salary and damaged her career--all in the name of preventing a "conflict" that was no fault of her own. The real disgrace here isn't Mr. Wolfowitz or Ms. Riza but the bank itself and its self-protecting staff and European directors. Their only "ethic" is to oust an American reformer so they can get back to running the foreign aid status quo.
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