Paul Wolfowitz

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Paul Wolfowitz
10th President of the World Bank Group
In office June 1, 2005 – June 30, 2007
Preceded by	James Wolfensohn
Succeeded by	Robert Zoellick
25th United States Deputy Secretary of Defense
In office 2001 – 2005
Preceded by	Rudy de Leon
Succeeded by	Gordon R. England
Born	December 22, 1943 (1943-12-22) (age 64) Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Nationality	American
Political party	Republican (before 1981 Democrat).[1]
Spouse	Clare Selgin Wolfowitz (1968–2001 [separated])
Children	Sara, David, Rachel
Residence	Chevy Chase, Maryland, U.S.
Religion	Jewish
Website	http://www.aei.org

Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (born December 22, 1943) is a former United States Ambassador to Indonesia, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, and President of the World Bank. He is currently a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, working on issues of international economic development, Africa and public-private partnerships.^[2]

As Deputy Secretary of Defense, he was "a major architect of President Bush's Iraq policy and ... its most fanatical and hawkish advocate."^[3][4][5][6] After serving two years, he resigned as president of the World Bank Group "ending a protracted and tumultuous battle over his stewardship, sparked by a promotion he arranged for his companion."^[7][8]

Contents 1 Personal history 1.1 Post-secondary education 1.1.1 Cornell University 1.1.2 University of Chicago 2 Career 2.1 Arms Control and Disarmament Agency 2.2 Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Regional Programs 2.3 State Department Director of Policy Planning 2.4 State Department Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs 2.5 Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia 2.6 Undersecretary of Defense for Policy 2.7 Out of office 2.8 Deputy Secretary of Defense 2.9 President of the World Bank 3 Recent controversies 3.1 Wolfowitz's economic arguments pertaining to the Iraq War 3.2 Wolfowitz's relationship with Shaha Riza 3.3 Wolfowitz's leadership of the World Bank Group 4 Wolfowitz in the media and pop culture 5 See also 6 Notes 7 External links

[edit] Personal history

The second child of Jacob "Jack" Wolfowitz (1910–1981) and Lillian Dundes, Paul Wolfowitz "was born in Brooklyn, New York, into a Polish Jewish immigrant family, and grew up mainly in Ithaca, New York, where his father was a professor of statistical theory at Cornell University."^[9][10] "In addition to being prolific in research" and "very well read," according to Shelemyahu Zacks, Jacob Wolfowitz "fought at the time for the liberation of Soviet Jewry. He was a friend and strong supporter of the state of Israel, AIPAC member and had many friends and admirers there."^[11] Strongly influenced by his father, according to Eric Schmitt, Paul Wolfowitz became "a soft-spoken former aspiring-mathematician-turned-policymaker ... [whose] world views ... were forged by family history and in the halls of academia rather than in the jungles of Vietnam or the corridors of Congress ... [His father] ... escaped Poland after World War I. The rest of his father's family and their diamonds perished in the Holocaust."^[12]

As a boy, Wolfowitz devoured books about the Holocaust and Hiroshima—what he calls 'the polar horrors'".^[3] Speaking of the influence of the Holocaust on his views, Wolfowitz said:

"That sense of what happened in Europe in World War II has shaped a lot of my views ... It's a very bad thing when people exterminate other people, and people persecute minorities. It doesn't mean you can prevent every such incident in the world, but it's also a mistake to dismiss that sort of concern as merely humanitarian and not related to real interest."^[12]

Before first moving to Ithaca, in the fall of 1952 for his father's new post, the Wolfowitzes lived in Manhattan: "I was born in Brooklyn but we grew up in Manhattan, one block down on Morningside Drive ... from the President of Columbia who for part of that time was Dwight Eisenhower."^[13][14] After teaching for a year at Cornell, his father took a year long sabbatical and was accompanied by his family, spending half the time at UCLA, and half at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1957, Paul Wolfowitz lived in Israel, while his father was a visiting professor at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion IIT), in Haifa.^[11][4]

Wolfowitz took classes at Cornell University while still a student at Ithaca High School.^[15] In the mid-1960s, while they were both undergraduate students at Cornell, he met Clare Selgin, who later became an anthropologist. They married in 1968, had three children, lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland, separated in 1999, and, according to some sources, became legally separated in 2001 and divorced in 2002.^{[9][10][4][16][17]}

In late 1999, Wolfowitz began dating Shaha Ali Riza. Their relationship led to controversy later, during his presidency of the World Bank Group.^[4][18]

Wolfowitz speaks five languages in addition to English; "Wolfowitz taught himself Arabic in the 1980's, when he was working at the State Department," and "He also speaks French, German, Hebrew, and Indonesian."^[4]

He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.^[8]

[edit] Post-secondary education

[edit] Cornell University

Wolfowitz entered Cornell University in 1961, on full scholarship. He was a member of the Telluride Association, a non-profit organization founded in 1910.^[10] He lived in the Telluride House through academic year 1962 to 1963.^[10]

That year philosophy professor Allan Bloom served as a faculty mentor living in the house.^[10] Schmitt observes that Wolfowitz first "became a protégé of the political philosopher Allan Bloom, and then of Albert Wohlstetter, the father of hard-line conservative strategic thinking at the University of Chicago."^[12] In August 1963, "when he was nineteen, he and his mother attended the civil-rights march on Washington organized by Martin Luther King, Jr. and others".^[4][10]

Though he "majored in mathematics and chemistry ... he was profoundly moved by John Hersey's Hiroshima and shifted his focus toward politics. 'One of the things that ultimately led me to leave mathematics and go into political science was thinking I could prevent nuclear war,' he said."^[12]

Wolfowitz graduated in 1965 with a Bachelor's degree degree in mathematics and chemistry. Against his father's wishes, Wolfowitz decided to go to graduate school to study politics.^[10]

[edit] University of Chicago

Following his graduation from Cornell, Wolfowitz attended the University of Chicago because he wanted to study under Bloom's mentor, Leo Strauss. He completed his PhD dissertation under Albert Wohlstetter. Though Wolfowitz took several courses with Bloom, he claims to have been more influenced by Wohlstetter.

In the summer of 1969, Wohlstetter arranged for his students Wolfowitz, Wilson, and Richard Perle to join the Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy which was set up by Cold War architects Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson.

From 1970 to 1972, Wolfowitz taught in the Department of Political Science at Yale University, where one of his students was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.^[19]

In 1972, Wolfowitz earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago, writing his doctoral dissertation on "nuclear proliferation in the Middle East".^[20]

[edit] Career

[edit] Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

Main article: Team B

In the 1970s Wolfowitz served as an aide to Democratic Senator Henry M. Jackson, who influenced several neoconservatives, including Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. Jackson "was the quintessential 'Cold War liberal.' He was an outspoken and influential advocate of increased military spending and a hard line against the Soviet Union, while supporting social welfare programs, civil rights, and the labor movement."^[21]

In 1972 U.S. President Richard Nixon, under pressure from Senator Jackson, dismissed the head of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) and replaced him with Fred Ikle. Ikle brought in a new team including Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz wrote research papers and drafted testimony, as he had previously done at the Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy. He traveled with Ikle to strategic arms limitations talks in Paris and other European cities. He helped dissuade South Korea from reprocessing plutonium that could be diverted into a clandestine weapons program.

Under President Gerald Ford, the American intelligence agencies had come under attack over their annually published National Intelligence Estimate. According to Mann: "The underlying issue was whether the C.I.A. and other agencies were underestimating the threat from the Soviet Union, either by intentionally tailoring intelligence to support Kissinger's policy of détente or by simply failing to give enough weight to darker interpretations of Soviet intentions." In an attempt to counter these claims, the newly appointed Director of Central Intelligence, George H.W. Bush authorized the formation of a committee of anti-Communist experts, headed by Richard Pipes, to reassess the raw data. Richard Pipes picked Wolfowitz, to serve on this committee, which came to be known as Team B: "'Richard Perle recommended him,' Pipes says of Wolfowitz today [2003, as quoted by Tanenhaus]. 'I'd never heard of him.'"^[22]

The team's report, delivered in 1976 and quickly leaked to the press, stated that "All the evidence points to an undeviating Soviet commitment to what is euphemistically called the 'worldwide triumph of socialism,' but in fact connotes global Soviet hegemony," highlighting a number of key areas where they believed the government's intelligence analysts had got it wrong. According to Jack Davis, Wolfowitz observed later:

The B-Team demonstrated that it was possible to construct a sharply different view of Soviet motivation from the consensus view of the [intelligence] analysts and one that provided a much closer fit to the Soviets' observed behavior (and also provided a much better forecast of subsequent behavior up to and through the invasion of Afghanistan). The formal presentation of the competing views in a session out at [CIA headquarters in] Langley also made clear that the enormous experience and expertise of the B-Team as a group were formidable.^[23]

The work of Team B, the accuracy of its conclusions, and its effects on U.S. military policies remain controversial.^[19][24][25]

[edit] Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Regional Programs

In 1977, during the administration of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Wolfowitz moved to The Pentagon. He was employed as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Regional Programs for the U.S. Defense Department, under then U.S. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown.

In early 1980, Wolfowitz resigned from the Pentagon and went to work as a visiting professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. According to the Washington Post; "He said it was not he who changed his political philosophy so much as the Democratic Party, which abandoned the hard-headed internationalism of Harry Truman, Kennedy and Jackson."^[1]

[edit] State Department Director of Policy Planning

In 1980, following the election of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, the newly appointed U.S. National Security Advisor Richard V. Allen put together the administration's foreign policy advisory team. Allen initially rejected Wolfowitz’s appointment but following discussions, instigated by former colleague John Lehman, Allen offered Wolfowitz the position of Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department.

President Reagan’s foreign policy was heavily influenced by the Kirkpatrick Doctrine, as outlined in a 1979 article in Commentary by Jeanne Kirkpatrick entitled "Dictatorships and Double Standards".

Although most governments in the world are, as they always have been, autocracies of one kind or another, no idea hold greater sway in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratize governments, anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances.... (But) decades, if not centuries, are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits.

Wolfowitz broke from this official line by denouncing Saddam Hussein of Iraq at a time when Donald Rumsfeld was offering the dictator support in his conflict with Iran. James Mann points out: "quite a few neo-conservatives, like Wolfowitz, believed strongly in democratic ideals; they had taken from the philosopher Leo Strauss the notion that there is a moral duty to oppose a leader who is a 'tyrant.'" Other areas where Wolfowitz disagreed with the administration was in his opposition to attempts to open up dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and to the sale of Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft to Saudi Arabia. "In both instances," according to Mann, "Wolfowitz demonstrated himself to be one of the strongest supporters of Israel in the Reagan administration."

Mann stresses: "It was on China that Wolfowitz launched his boldest challenge to the established order." After Nixon and Kissinger had gone to China in the early 70s, U.S. policy was to make concessions to China as an essential Cold War ally. The Chinese were now pushing for the U.S. to end arms sales to Taiwan, and Wolfowitz used the Chinese incentive as an opportunity to undermine Kissinger's foreign policy toward China. Instead, Wolfowitz advocated a unilateralist policy, claiming that the U.S. did not need China’s assistance but that the Chinese needed the U.S. to protect them against the far-more-likely prospect of a Soviet invasion of the Chinese mainland. Wolfowitz soon came into conflict with U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who had been Kissinger’s assistant at the time of the visits to China. On March 30, 1982, The New York Times predicted that "Paul D. Wolfowitz, the director of policy planning ... will be replaced," because "Mr. Haig found Mr. Wolfowitz too theoretical." Instead, on June 25, 1982, George Schultz replaced Haig as U.S. Secretary of State, and Wolfowitz was promoted.

[edit] State Department Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs

In 1982 the new U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz appointed Wolfowitz as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Jeane Kirkpatrick, on a visit to the Philippines, had been eagerly welcomed by the dictator Ferdinand Marcos who quoted heavily from her 1979 Commentary article Dictatorships and Double Standards and although Kirkpatrick had been forced to speak-out in favor of democracy the article continued to influence Reagan’s policy toward Marcos. Following the assassination of Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. in 1983 many within the Reagan administration including the President himself began to fear that the Philippines could fall to the communists and the U.S. military would lose its strongholds at Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay Naval Station. Wolfowitz tried to re-orient the administration’s policy, stating in an April 15, 1985 article in The Wall Street Journal that "The best antidote to Communism is democracy."

In pursuance of this policy Wolfowitz and his assistant Lewis Libby made trips to Manila where they called for democratic reforms and met with non-communist opposition leaders but the approach was still very soft.

Mann points out that "the Reagan administration’s decision to support democratic government in the Philippines had been hesitant, messy, crisis-driven and skewed by the desire to do what was necessary to protect the American military installations." Following massive street protests, Marcos fled the country on a U.S. Air Force plane and the U.S. recognized the government of Corazón Aquino.

[edit] Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia

From 1986 to 1989, during the military-backed government of President Suharto, Wolfowitz was the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia.^[26]

According to Peter J. Boyer, in his New Yorker profile of Wolfowitz,

Wolfowitz’s appointment to Indonesia was not an immediately obvious match. He was a Jew representing America in the largest Muslim republic in the world, an advocate of democracy in Suharto's dictatorship. But Wolfowitz’s tenure as Ambassador was a notable success, largely owing to the fact that, in essence, he went native. With tutoring help from his driver, he learned the language, and hurled himself into the culture. He attended academic seminars, climbed volcanoes, and toured the neighborhoods of Jakarta. ^[3]

Sipress and Nakashima report that "Wolfowitz's colleagues and friends, both Indonesian and American" pointed to the "U.S. envoy's quiet pursuit of political and economic reforms in Indonesia."^[27] According to the Associated Press, however, in their opposition to Wolfowitz's later appointment to the presidency of the World Bank, "Analysts in Indonesia ... say the candidate has a poor track record in other areas crucial to the World Bank, such as fighting graft and respect for human rights."^[26]

Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a foreign policy adviser to B J Habibie, Suharto's successor as head of state (1998–1999), stated "that Wolfowitz was a competent and popular envoy," and "he was extremely able and very much admired and well-liked on a personal level," Adding however, "he never intervened to push human rights or stand up to corruption."^[26]

As Suzanne Goldenberg observes,

some who acknowledge his popularity also discount the argument that Wolfowitz used his influence as an envoy to press for change. ... "It is really too much to claim that he played any kind of role in leading Indonesia to democracy," says Jeffrey Winters, an expert on Indonesia at Chicago's Northwestern University, who was in the country at the time.... "The real record when you dig into it is that he was very slow to respond to Indonesia's movement for democracy. Indonesia's citizens across the spectrum had been struggling against authoritarian rule. They had been tortured. They had been jailed. They had been ruined in various ways, and the Wolfowitz embassy didn't speak up for them - not once. ... He adds: "He had his chance, and he toed the Reagan hawkish line." The World Bank will be watching for far more than that from Wolfowitz.^[9]

Officials involved in the AID program during Wolfowitz's tenure told Alan Sipress and Ellen Nakashima of The Washington Post that he "took a keen personal interest in development, including health care, agriculture and private sector expansion" and that "Wolfowitz canceled food assistance to the Indonesian government out of concern that Suharto's family, which had an ownership interest in the country's only flour mill, was indirectly benefiting."^[27]

In "The Tragedy of Suharto", published in May 1998, in The Wall Street Journal, Wolfowitz states:

Although it is fashionable to blame all of Asia's present problems on corruption and the failure of Asian values, it is at bottom a case of a bubble bursting, of too many imprudent lenders chasing too many incautious borrowers. But the greed of Mr. Suharto's children ensured that their father would take the lion's share of the blame for Indonesia's financial collapse. The Suharto children's favored position became a major obstacle to the measures needed to restore economic confidence. Worst of all, they ensured that the economic crisis would be a political crisis as well. That he allowed this, and that he amassed such wealth himself, is all the more mysterious since he lived a relatively modest life.^[28]

After the 2002 Bali bombing, on October 18, 2002, then Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz observed that "the reason the terrorists are successful in Indonesia is because the Suharto regime fell and the methods that were used to suppress them are gone."^[29]

[edit] Undersecretary of Defense for Policy

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From 1989 to 1993, Wolfowitz served in the administration of George H.W. Bush as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, under then U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Wolfowitz’s team co-ordinated and reviewed military strategy, raising $50 billion in allied financial support for the operation. Wolfowitz was present with Cheney, Colin Powell and others, on 27 February 1991 at the meeting with the President where it was decided that the troops should be demobilised.

On February 25, 1998, Wolfowitz testified before a congressional committee that he thought that "the best opportunity to overthrow Saddam was, unfortunately, lost in the month right after the war."^[30] Wolfowitz added that he was horrified in March as "Saddam Hussein flew helicopters that slaughtered the people in the south and in the north who were rising up against him, while American fighter pilots flew overhead, desperately eager to shoot down those helicopters, and not allowed to do so." During that hearing, he also stated: "Some people might say—and I think I would sympathise with this view—that perhaps if we had delayed the ceasefire by a few more days, we might have got rid of [Saddam Hussein]."

After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Wolfowitz and his then-assistant Scooter Libby wrote the Wolfowitz Doctrine to "set the nation’s direction for the next century." At that time the official administration line was "containment", and the contents of Wolfowitz’s plan calling for "preemption" and "unilateralism" which was opposed by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell and President Bush. Defense Secretary Cheney produced a revised plan released in 1992.

After the election of U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1992, Wolfowitz left government until 2000. During the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, from 2000 to 2007, many of the ideas in the Wolfowitz Doctrine became part of what is called the Bush Doctrine.

[edit] Out of office

This article or section is missing citations or needs footnotes. Using inline citations helps guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (May 2007)

See main article: Project for the New American Century

From 1994 to 2001, Wolfowitz served as Professor of International Relations and Dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. He was instrumental in adding more than $75 million to the university's endowment, developing an international finance concentration as part of the curriculum, and combining the various Asian studies programs into one department. Drawing upon his political and defense experience, he also served as a foreign policy advisor to Bob Dole on the 1996 U.S. Presidential election campaign.^{[citations needed]}

According to Kampfner, "Wolfowitz used his perch at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies as a test-bed for a new conservative world vision." Wolfowitz was associated with the Project for the New American Century (PNAC); he signed both the PNAC's June 3, 1997 "Statement of Principles",^[31] which begins by stating:

American foreign and defense policy is adrift. Conservatives have criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration. They have also resisted isolationist impulses from within their own ranks. But conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America's role in the world.... We aim to change this. We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership.

and its January 26, 1998 "open letter to President Bill Clinton", which begins by stating: "We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War."^[32]

In February 1998 Wolfowitz testified before a Congressional hearing, stating that the current administration lacked the sense of purpose to "liberate ourselves, our friends and allies in the region, and the Iraqi people themselves from the menace of Saddam Hussein."^[33] In his testimony, he lamented the decision at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War to call for a ceasefire before attempting to achieve those goals. Wolfowitz urged the administration to support Iraqi opposition groups, in particular the INC of Ahmed Chalabi with arms, intelligence and financing as a way of overthrowing the current regime without risking American troops.^{[citation needed]}

In September 2000 the PNAC produced a 90-page report entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century, advocating the redeployment of U.S. troops in permanent bases in strategic locations throughout the world where they can be ready to act to protect U.S. interests abroad.^[34] During the 2000 U.S. Presidential election campaign, Wolfowitz served as a foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush as part of the group led by Condoleezza Rice calling itself The Vulcans.^[35]

[edit] Deputy Secretary of Defense

From 2001 to 2005, during the George W. Bush administration, Wolfowitz served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense reporting to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The terrorist attacks of 9-11 was a turning point in administration policy, as Wolfowitz later explained: "9/11 really was a wake up call and that if we take proper advantage of this opportunity to prevent the future terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction that it will have been an extremely valuable wake up call," adding: "if we say our only problem was to respond to 9/11, and we wait until somebody hits us with nuclear weapons before we take that kind of threat seriously, we will have made a very big mistake."^[36]

In the first emergency meeting of the U.S. National Security Council on the day of the attacks, Rumsfeld asked, "Why shouldn’t we go against Iraq, not just al-Qaeda?" with Wolfowitz adding that Iraq was a "brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily—it was doable," and, according to John Kampfner, "from that moment on, he and Wolfowitz used every available opportunity to press the case." The idea was initially rejected, at the behest of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, but, according to Kampfner, "Undeterred Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz held secret meetings about opening up a second front—against Saddam. Powell was excluded." In such meetings they created a policy that would later be dubbed the Bush Doctrine, centering on "pre-emption", American unilateralism, and the war on Iraq, which the PNAC had advocated in their earlier letters.^[37]

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. had to deal immediately with the threat of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.^[37] The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001. Victory was declared on March 6, 2002. Just under a month later, on October 10, 2001, George Robertson, then Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, went to the Pentagon to offer NATO troops, planes and ships to assist. Wolfowitz rebuffed the offer, saying: "We can do everything we need to." Wolfowitz later announced publicly, according to Kampfner, "that 'allies, coalitions and diplomacy' were of little immediate concern."

Ten months later, on January 15, 2003, with hostilities still continuing, Wolfowitz made a fifteen-hour visit to the Afghan capital, Kabul, and met with the new president Hamid Karzai. Wolfowitz stated, "We’re clearly moving into a different phase, where our priority in Afghanistan is increasingly going to be stability and reconstruction. There’s no way to go too fast. Faster is better." Despite the promises, according to Hersh, "little effort to provide the military and economic resources" necessary for reconstruction was made.^[37] This criticism would also re-occur after the U.S. invasion of Iraq later that year.^[37]

On April 16, 2002 the National Solidarity Rally for Israel was called in Washington to oppose US pressure on the government of Ariel Sharon. Wolfowitz was the sole representative of the Bush administration to attend, speaking alongside Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. According to Matthew Engel in The Guardian, the administration had exposed itself to being momentarily characterised as anti-Israel, which would have meant losing votes and financial support.^[38] As reported by the BBC, Wolfowitz told the crowd that US President George W. Bush "wants you to know that he stands in solidarity with you".^[39] Sharon Samber and Matthew E. Berger reported for Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) that Wolfowitz continued by saying that "Innocent Palestinians are suffering and dying as well. It is critical that we recognize and acknowledge that fact," before being booed and drowned out by chants of "No more Arafat."^[40] According to Engel this may have been a turning point that saw a return to a more pro-Israeli position within the administration as Bush feared being outflanked on the right.^[38]

Following the declaration of victory in Afghanistan the Bush administration had started to plan for the next stage of the War on Terror. According to John Kampfner, "Emboldened by their experience in Afghanistan, they saw the opportunity to root out hostile regimes in the Middle East and to implant very American interpretations of democracy and free markets, from Iraq to Iran and Saudi Arabia. Wolfowitz epitomised this view." Wolfowitz "saw a liberated Iraq as both paradigm and linchpin for future interventions." The 2003 invasion of Iraq began on March 19.^[37]

Prior to the invasion, Wolfowitz had a plan to sell the war to the administration as well as the general public, as he later stated: "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."^{[41][14][13][42][43][44]}

The job of finding WMD and providing justification for the attack would fall to the intelligence services, but, according to Kampfner, "Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believed that, while the established security services had a role, they were too bureaucratic and too traditional in their thinking." As a result "they set up what came to be known as the 'cabal', a cell of eight or nine analysts in a new Office of Special Plans (OSP) based in the U.S. Defense Department." According to an unnamed Pentagon source quoted by Hersh, the OSP "was created in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true—that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States."^[37]

Within months of being set-up, the OSP "rivaled both the CIA and the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA, as President Bush’s main source of intelligence regarding Iraq’s possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al Qaeda." Hersh explains that the OSP "relied on data gathered by other intelligence agencies and also on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, or I.N.C., the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi." According to Kampfner, the CIA had ended its funding of the I.N.C. "in the mid-1990s when doubts were cast about Chalabi’s reliability." Nevertheless "as the administration geared up for conflict with Saddam, Chalabi was welcomed in the inner sanctum of the Pentagon" under the auspices of the OSP, and "Wolfowitz did not see fit to challenge any of Chalabi’s information." The actions of the OSP have led to accusation of the Bush administration "fixing intelligence to support policy" with the aim of influencing Congress in its use of the War Powers Act.^[37]

Kampfner outlined Wolfowitz’s strategy for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which "envisaged the use of air support and the occupation of southern Iraq with ground troops, to install a new government run by Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress." Wolfowitz believed that the operation would require minimal troop deployment, Hersh explains, because "any show of force would immediately trigger a revolt against Saddam within Iraq, and that it would quickly expand."^[37] The financial expenditure would be kept low, Kampfner observes, if "under the plan American troops would seize the oil fields around Basra, in the South, and sell the oil to finance the opposition."

During Wolfowitz's pre-war testimony before Congress, he dismissed General Eric K. Shinseki's estimates of the size of the post war occupation force as incorrect and estimated that fewer than 100,000 troops would be necessary in the war. Two days after Shinseki testified, Wolfowitz said to the House Budget Committee on February 27, 2003:

There has been a good deal of comment—some of it quite outlandish—about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army—hard to imagine.^[37]

On October 26, 2003, while in Baghdad staying at the Al-Rashid Hotel Wolfowitz narrowly escaped an attack when six rockets slammed into the floors below his room blowing out the windows and frames.^[45] Army Lt. Col. Charles H. Buehring was killed and seventeen others soldiers were wounded.^[46] Wolfowitz and his DOD staffers escaped unharmed and returned to the United States on October 28, 2003.

[edit] President of the World Bank

In March 2005, Wolfowitz was nominated to be president of the World Bank. Criticism of his nomination appeared in the media.^[47] Nobel Laureate in Economics and former chief economist for the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz said: "'The World Bank will once again become a hate figure. This could bring street protests and violence across the developing world.'"^[48] In a speech at the U.N. Economic and Social Council, economist Jeffrey Sachs also opposed Wolfowitz: "It's time for other candidates to come forward that have experience in development. This is a position on which hundreds of millions of people depend for their lives ... Let's have a proper leadership of professionalism."^[49]

In the U.S. there was some praise for the nomination. An editorial in The Wall Street Journal states: "Mr. Wolfowitz is willing to speak the truth to power ... he saw earlier than most, and spoke publicly about, the need for dictators to plan democratic transitions. It is the world's dictators who are the chief causes of world poverty. If anyone can stand up to the Robert Mugabes of the world, it must be the man who stood up to Saddam Hussein."^[50]

He was confirmed and became president on June 1, 2005. He soon attended the 31st G8 summit to discuss issues of global climate change and the economic development in Africa. When this meeting was interrupted by the July 7, 2005 London bombings, Wolfowitz was present with other world leaders at the press conference given by British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Several of Wolfowitz's initial appointments at the Bank proved controversial, including two US nationals (Robin Cleveland and Kevin Kellems) formerly with the Bush administration, whom he appointed as close advisors with $250,000 tax-free contracts.^[51] Another appointee, Juan José Daboub was criticized by his colleagues and others for attempts to change policies on family planning and climate change towards a conservative line."^[52][53]

Wolfowitz gave special emphasis to two particular issues. Identifying Sub-Saharan Africa as the region most challenged to improve living standards, he traveled widely in the region. He also made clear his focus on fighting corruption. Several aspects of the latter program raised controversy. Overturning the names produced by a formal search process, he appointed a figure linked to the US Republican party to head the Bank's internal watchdog. Member countries worried that Wolfowitz's willingness to suspend lending to countries on grounds of corruption was vulnerable to selective application in line with US foreign policy interests. In a debate on the proposed Governance and Anti-Corruption Strategy at the Bank's 2006 Annual Meetings, shareholders directed Wolfowitz to undertake extensive consultations and revise the strategy to show how objective measures of corruption would be incorporated into decisions and how the shareholders' representatives on the Bank's Board would play a key role. Following the consultations and revisions, the Board approved a revised strategy in spring 2007.^[4]

[edit] Recent controversies

[edit] Wolfowitz's economic arguments pertaining to the Iraq War

On March 27, 2003, Wolfowitz told a Congressional panel that oil revenue earned by Iraq alone would pay for Iraq's reconstruction after the Iraq war; he testified: "The oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years. Now, there are a lot of claims on that money, but ... We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.”^[54][55][6] By March 2005, two years later, oil revenues were not paying for the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, Wolfowitz's estimation of 50 to 100 billion US dollars had not materialized, and, in light of his miscalculation, detractors criticized his appointment to head of the World Bank.^[56] Though, in 2008, Wolfowitz's estimation of $50 to $100 billion was proven to be right on the money, so to speak, given that soaring oil prices will leave the Iraqi government with a cumulative budget surplus of as much as $79 billion the year’s end. ^{[57] [58]}

[edit] Wolfowitz's relationship with Shaha Riza

Main article: Shaha Riza

After President George W. Bush's nomination of Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank, journalists reported that Wolfowitz had become involved in a relationship with World Bank Senior Communications Officer (and Acting Manager of External Affairs) for the Middle East and North Africa Regional Office Shaha Ali Riza.^[59] According to Richard Leiby, of The Washington Post, Riza is "an Oxford-educated British citizen, was born in Tunisia and grew up in Saudi Arabia. She's known for her expertise on women's rights and has been listed on the bank's Web site as a media contact for Iraq reconstruction issues."^[60] According to Leiby and Linton Weeks, in their essay "In the Shadow of a Scandal", Riza's employment at the World Bank predated Wolfowitz's nomination as Bank president: "Riza started at the World Bank as a consultant in July 1997 and became a full-time employee in 1999"; and the relationship between Riza and Wolfowitz pre-dated it as well:

In the early 1990s, Riza joined the National Endowment for Democracy and is credited there with development of the organization's Middle East program. Wolfowitz was on the endowment's board—which is how Riza first met him, according to Turkish journalist Cengiz Candar, a friend of the couple. "Shaha was married at the time and Paul was married," Candar recalled, and it wasn't until late 1999—after Riza divorced and Wolfowitz had separated from his wife of 30 years, Clare Selgin Wolfowitz—that the couple began dating."^[60][18]

When Wolfowitz was being considered for head of the CIA immediately after the 2000 election, Clare Wolfowitz wrote President-elect George Bush a letter telling him that her husband's relationship with a foreign national—Riza—posed a national security risk.^[61][62] It has been reported that Scooter Libby intercepted the letter.^[63] Sidney Blumenthal also reported on the letter Clare Wolfowitz wrote:

“

This embittered letter remained a closely guarded secret, although a former high official of the CIA told me about it. Chris Nelson also reported it on April 16 in his widely respected, nonpartisan foreign policy newsletter: "A certain Ms. Riza was even then Wolfowitz's true love. The problem for the CIA wasn't just that she was a foreign national, although that was and is today an issue for anyone interested in CIA employment. The problem was that Wolfowitz was married to someone else, and that someone was really angry about it, and she found a way to bring her complaint directly to the President. So when we, with our characteristic innocence, put Wolfowitz on our short-list for CIA, we were instantly told, by a very, very, very senior Republican foreign policy operative, 'I don't think so.' It was then gently explained why, purely on background, of course. Why Wolfowitz's personal issues weren't also a disqualification for DOD we've never heard." The Daily Mail of London also reported on his wife's letter at the time that Wolfowitz was appointed president of the World Bank in 2005. Asked about it by the newspaper, Clare Wolfowitz did not deny it, saying, "That's very interesting but not something I can tell you about."[64]

”

According to the profile of Wolfowitz published in the London Sunday Times on March 20, 2005, despite their cultural differences, "Riza, an Arab feminist who confounds portrayals of Wolfowitz as a leader of a 'Zionist conspiracy' of Jewish neoconservatives in Washington ... [and who] works as the bank’s senior gender co-ordinator for the Middle East and north Africa ... not only shares Wolfowitz’s passion for spreading democracy in the Arab world, but is said to have reinforced his determination to remove Saddam Hussein’s oppressive regime."^[16]

The reported relationship created further controversy concerning Wolfowitz’s nomination to head the World Bank, because the organization's own ethics rules preclude sexual relationships between a manager and a staff member serving under that manager, even if one reports to the other only indirectly through a chain of supervision. Sharon Churcher and Annette Witheridge, in The Daily Mail, quote one World Bank employee's statement that "Unless Riza gives up her job, this will be an impossible conflict of interest"; the observation of "a Washington insider": "His womanizing has come home to roost ... Paul was a foreign policy hawk long before he met Shaha, but it doesn't look good to be accused of being under the thumb of your mistress"; and Wolfowitz's response: "If a personal relationship presents a potential conflict of interest, I will comply with Bank policies to resolve the issue."^[17]

Wolfowitz initially proposed to the World Bank's Ethics Committee that he recuse himself from personnel matters regarding Riza, but the committee rejected that proposal.^[65] Riza was "seconded to the State Department", or placed on "external assignment," assigned "a job at the state department under Liz Cheney, the daughter of the vice-president, promoting democracy in the Middle East ..."^[66] She "was also moved up to a managerial pay grade in compensation for the disruption to her career," resulting in a raise of over $60,000, as well as guarantees of future increases; "The staff association claims that the pay rise was more than double the amount allowed under employee guidelines."^[66][67] A promotion and raise had been among the options suggested by a World Bank ethics committee that was set up to advise on the situation.^[68] According to Steven R. Weisman, however, in a report published in The New York Times, the then-current chair of the committee emphasized that he was not informed at the time of the details or extent of the present and future raises built into the agreement with Riza.^[69] Wolfowitz refers to the controversy concerning his relationship with Riza in his recent statement posted on the website of the World Bank (April 12, 2007).^[70]

[edit] Wolfowitz's leadership of the World Bank Group

Beginning early in 2007, Fox News published on its website a series of investigative stories on the World Bank, based in part on leaks to Fox of internal bank documents.^[71]

On April 11, 2007, Reuters and Al Kamen, in his column in The Washington Post, reported that Wolfowitz and the World Bank board had hired the Williams & Connolly law firm to oversee an investigation into the leaking of internal bank documents to Fox News.^[72][73] Those reports cite an internal memo to the bank staff later posted on the internet, dated April 9, 2007, in which the World Bank's general counsel, Ana Palacio, states that the Bank's legal staff was scrutinizing two articles by investigative reporter Richard Behar published on the website of Fox News on January 31 and March 27, 2007.^[74] A day after the second report published by Behar, on March 28, 2007, Kamen had disclosed that "Bank records obtained by the Government Accountability Project" documented pay raises in excess of Bank policies given to Shaha Riza^[75]

On April 12, 2007 the London Financial Times reported that, in a 2005 memorandum, Wolfowitz had personally directed the Bank's human resources chief to offer Riza a large pay rise and promotion, according to two anonymous sources who told the Financial Times that they had seen the memo.^[76] The memo was part of a package of 102 pages of documents publicly released by the bank on April 14, 2007.^[76]

On April 14, 2007, after reviewing the 102-page document package, the Financial Times concluded that it was "a potentially fatal blow" to Wolfowitz.^[76] In contrast, Fox News concluded that the new documents might offer Wolfowitz a "new lifeline" in the scandal, because the Bank's ethics committee had launched a review of the Riza compensation case in early 2006 and concluded that it did not warrant any further attention by the committee.^[77]

Media speculations about Wolfowitz quitting his position as president of the World Bank intensified on April 19, 2007 after his failure to attend a high-profile meeting.^[78] The controversy about Wolfowitz's girlfriend Shaha Riza led to disruption at the World Bank when some employees wore blue ribbons "in a display of defiance against his leadership."^[79]

World Bank Group's board of executive directors and staffers complained also that Wolfowitz was imposing Bush Administration policies to eliminate family planning from World Bank programs. According to Nicole Gaouette, in her report published in the Los Angeles Times on April 19, 2007, Juan José Daboub—the managing director whom Wolfowitz had appointed who has also been criticized for overly-conservative policies concerning climate change^[53] and "a Roman Catholic with ties to a conservative Salvadoran political party"—repeatedly deleted references to family planning from World Bank proposals.^[52]

On May 14, 2007 the World Bank committee investigating the alleged ethics violations reported (in part):

• "Mr. Wolfowitz's contract requiring that he adhere to the Code of Conduct for board officials and that he avoid any conflict of interest, real or apparent, were violated";
• "The salary increase Ms. Riza received at Mr. Wolfowitz's direction was in excess of the range established by Rule 6.01";
• "The ad hoc group concludes that in actuality, Mr Wolfowitz from the outset cast himself in opposition to the established rules of the institution"; and
• "He did not accept the bank's policy on conflict of interest, so he sought to negotiate for himself a resolution different from that which would have applied to the staff he was selected to head."^[80]

Wolfowitz appeared before the World Bank Group's board of executive directors to respond on Tuesday, May 15, 2007, and, the following day, on Wednesday, May 16, in another board meeting, its executive directors would "consider the report and make a statement later in the week." Adams speculates that "With Mr Wolfowitz so far refusing to step down, the board may need to take radical action to break the stalemate. Members have discussed a range of options, including sacking Mr Wolfowitz, issuing a vote of no confidence or reprimanding him. Some board members argue that a vote of no confidence would make it impossible for him to stay in the job."^[81] If the World Bank's board of directors "votes him out," according to Michael Hirsh, in the May 21, 2007 issue of Newsweek, he would be "the first president dismissed in [its] 62-year history ..."^[82] By mid-afternoon, Wednesday, May 16, 2007, The New York Times, reported that "after six weeks of fighting efforts to oust him as president ... Wolfowitz began today to negotiate the terms of his possible resignation, in return for the bank dropping or softening the charge that he had engaged in misconduct ..."^[83] After recent expressions from the Bush administration that it "fully" supported Wolfowitz as World Bank president and its urging a "fair hearing" for him, President Bush expressed "regret" at Wolfowitz's impending resignation.^[84]

On May 17, 2007, in a statement published on its website, the World Bank Group's board of Executive Directors announced that Paul Wolfowitz would resign as World Bank Group president at the end of June 2007; their statement is followed by a statement from Wolfowitz about his tenure as president and his hopes for the World Bank's future success.^[7][85]

[edit] Wolfowitz in the media and pop culture

In his 2002 profile of Wolfowitz in The New York Times, Eric Schmitt describes Wolfowitz as a "lightning rod" for President George W. Bush^[12]

Prior to Wolfowitz's nomination to the World Bank, as cited in media profiles of him, in Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), James Mann described him as "the most influential underling in Washington."^[9] According to Goldenberg, as well as various other sources, "A former colleague says[,] "Hawk doesn't do him justice. What about velociraptor?"^[9][86]

In his book review of Rise of the Vulcans, Martin Sieff views Mann's portrayal of Wolfowitz as disappointing in its uncritical omissions and departures from reality.^[35]

For Rosh Hashana 2003 (5764), The Jerusalem Post named Paul Wolfowitz its inaugural "Man of the Year."^[87]

In June 2004, as reported on the MSNBC television program Deborah Norville Tonight, Tom Clancy asked about Paul Wolfowitz: "Is he really on our side?", narrating the context: "I sat in on—I was in the Pentagon in '01 for a red team operation and he came in and briefed us. And after the brief, I just thought, is he really on our side? Sorry."^[88]

Journalist and polemicist Christopher Hitchens stated in an interview with Johann Hari published on September 23, 2004: "The thing that would most surprise people about Wolfowitz if they met him is that he's a real bleeding heart."^[89]

Bloomberg News reported on March 24, 2005 that Malaysian politician Anwar Ibrahim, Wolfowitz's longtime friend, had said in an interview that Wolfowitz "passionately believes in freedom and understands the issues of poverty, environment degradation, living conditions and health issues which (are) very much a World Bank agenda."^[90]

According to Sipress and Nakashima, reporting in the The Washington Post several days later, Abdurrahman Wahid, Indonesia's first democratically-elected president after the fall of Suharto, "was so taken by Wolfowitz's 1989 speech that he asked to be introduced... that they became friends and he remains proud of that relationship today despite differences over the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Wahid was impeached by his political rivals in 2001 but remains highly influential."^[27]

On April 6, 2005, after Wolfowitz was appointed to the World Bank, the East Timor Action Network (ETAN) quoted East Timorese Nobel Peace Prize-winner José Ramos-Horta's comment that "Those who have suspicions and reservations should not have them because Wolfowitz is very humane and sensitive."^[91]

In his article about Wolfowitz's problems as president of the World Bank Group, published in The New Statesman on May 15, 2006, for which he interviewed Bank "insiders", Robert Calderisi, who "worked at the World Bank from 1979 to 2002," wonders whether Wolfowitz is "The Worst Man in the World?", concluding "most insiders believe the bank is becoming the very caricature of a US-dominated, ideological agency that they have always denied it was. Its critics may feel vindicated, but friends of international development will worry that the Europeans - who are the largest providers of aid to poor countries - will lose confidence in using the bank as an objective channel. Or they may bide their time and decide that Paul Wolfowitz will be the last US-appointed president of the World Bank."^[92]

In May 2007, as a result of the controversy about his leadership of the World Bank Group, according to Washington Post op-ed columnist Sebastian Mallaby, Wolfowitz became involved in an "endgame" both for his career and for the institution of the World Bank itself.^[93]

Wolfowitz found public prominence through his involvement in the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, criticized in Fahrenheit 9/11, the film by Michael Moore. According to Suzanne Goldenberg's profile of Wolfowitz published in The Guardian, "one of the most indelible moments of the film ... is when Paul Wolfowitz ... puts a generous dollop of spit on his comb before smoothing his hair for a television appearance."^[9] She describes Wolfowitz as the "intellectual high priest of the Bush administration's hawks."^[9]

Wolfowitz is featured in the Autumn 2004 BBC Two television documentary film series The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear, directed by Adam Curtis, which compares the rise of the American neoconservatives and radical Islamists, arguing that there are close connections between them, that some popular beliefs about these groups are inaccurate, and that both movements have benefited from exaggerating the scale of the terrorist threat, inflating a myth of a dangerous enemy in order to draw people to support them.^[94]

[edit] See also

• American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
• Full-spectrum dominance
• Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA)
• Joint Vision 2020
• Neoconservatism
• Project for the New American Century
• Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) Board of Advisors
• Wolfowitz Doctrine
• World Bank Group

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

Official biographical accounts

• "Biography: Paul Wolfowitz: President, The World Bank Group", at web.worldbank.org (World Bank Group). Accessed May 4, 2007.
• "Paul Wolfowitz—Department of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense". Search result in obsolete directory of "The President and His Leadership Team". Accessed May 4, 2007.
• "Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense"—Archived biography at the United States Department of Defense. Last updated: March 16, 2005. Accessed May 2, 2007.
• Wolfowitz, Paul. "Statement by Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank Group WB/IMF Spring Meetings 2007". Online posting. World Bank Group, Worldbank.org, April 12, 2007. Accessed May 1, 2007. (Video and audio links.)

Diplomatic posts
Preceded by Anthony Lake	United States Department of State Director of Policy Planning 1981 – 1982	Succeeded by Stephen W. Bosworth
Preceded by John H. Holdridge	Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs 1982 – 1986	Succeeded by Gaston J. Sigur, Jr.
Preceded by John H. Holdridge	United States Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia 1986 – 1989	Succeeded by John C. Monjo
Political offices
Preceded by Fred Ikle	United States Department of Defense Under Secretary of Defense for Policy 1989 – 1993	Succeeded by Frank G. Wisner
Academic offices
Preceded by George Packard	Dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies 1993 – 2001	Succeeded by Jessica Einhorn
Political offices
Preceded by Rudy deLeon	United States Deputy Secretary of Defense 2001 – 2005	Succeeded by Gordon R. England
Non-profit organization positions
Preceded by James Wolfensohn	President of the World Bank 2005 – 2007	Succeeded by Robert Zoellick

v • d • e Presidents of the World Bank Eugene Meyer · John J. McCloy · Eugene R. Black, Sr. · George David Woods · Robert McNamara · Alden W. Clausen · Barber Conable · Lewis Thompson Preston · James Wolfensohn · Paul Wolfowitz · Robert Zoellick

Persondata
NAME	Wolfowitz, Paul Dundes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	10th President of the World Bank, Deputy Secretary of Defense in the administration of President George W. Bush
DATE OF BIRTH	December 22, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH	Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH