|
Muttering at the World Bank
Wolfowitz's Appointment of Loyalists Disturbs Some Staffers
By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writer
02/08/06 "Washington
Post" -- -- At the World Bank, they are
sometimes referred to as "the entourage," "the palace guard," or
"the circle of trust," because of their close relationship with
bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz. They are Americans with ties
to the Bush administration, and the immense clout they wield has
sparked a furor in the ranks of the giant development leader.
Their roles have rekindled fears among the staff that Wolfowitz,
the former U.S. deputy defense secretary, is bent on imposing a
conservative agenda on the bank. Wolfowitz has repeatedly sought
to dispel such concerns since he became bank president in June.
He has pledged his commitment to the bank's mission of
alleviating poverty, and his unassuming manner has charmed many
staffers who were averse to his role as a chief strategist of
the U.S.-Iraq war.
But after months of seeming tranquillity, the bank is stewing
with discontent over Wolfowitz's choice of several confidantes
with administration or Republican connections to serve in key
bank posts. The most influential is Robin Cleveland, who worked
closely with Wolfowitz when she was a senior official at the
Office of Management and Budget and is now his top adviser. Two
others are Kevin S. Kellems, a former spokesman for Vice
President Cheney who last month became the bank's chief
communications strategist; and Suzanne Rich Folsom, a former
Republican activist named last month to head the Department of
Institutional Integrity, the bank's internal watchdog unit.
Kellems also holds the title of senior adviser to the president,
and Folsom has the title of counselor to the president.
With little development experience, one or more members of that
trio advise Wolfowitz on many of his major decisions and act as
his conduits to other bank officials. The arrangement, bank
veterans said, is unprecedented at the 184-nation institution,
which has a multinational staff of 10,000 and lends about $20
billion a year to developing countries for projects ranging from
roads and medical clinics to the creation of financial systems.
Top bank officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for
fear of offending the new team, said a sense of powerlessness
prevails in the bank's upper echelon because of the requirements
for important matters to go through the Wolfowitz coterie.
Several high-ranking officials have left -- notably Shengman
Zhang, the bank's former No. 2, and Roberto Daniño, the general
counsel, both of whom told colleagues that they felt cut out of
decision-making.
Further fueling the disquiet was the disclosure last week that
Ana Palacio, who was foreign minister of Spain when that nation
sent troops to Iraq, has received a short-term contract as a
bank consultant -- perhaps positioning her for a permanent job.
In an interview, Wolfowitz said the anxiety was understandable,
but he scoffed at suggestions that his lieutenants are
distancing him from longtime bank staffers. "I can't be
'surrounded' by two-and-a-half people," he said, noting that he
has appointed several non-Americans to important posts -- Graeme
Wheeler, a New Zealander, as acting managing director; Letitia
A. Obeng, a Ghanaian, as his office director; Lars H. Thunell, a
Swede, as head of the bank's private-sector investment arm; and
Vincenzo La Via, an Italian, as chief financial officer.
"I really like hearing different points of view," Wolfowitz
said. "I like to encourage people to disagree with me." With a
grin, he added that he has told staffers that they should
withhold opposing views only when they are meeting with an
official from some foreign government, "and you're agreeing with
him, not me."
Kellems observed that Wolfowitz has made extensive efforts to
hear from staffers -- including holding "town hall" meetings to
answer questions and eating lunch in the cafeteria, where he
sits with strangers to ask them what is on their minds.
"He also gave out his personal e-mail address" to a large number
of staffers, Kellems said. "The offer was, 'I don't care what
rank you are, if you have a concern, or idea, whatever it is,
send it to me. I pledge to read it. I do not pledge to answer
them all. But I promise you, if you want the contents to remain
anonymous, it will.' Then he sometimes sends them to us -- if he
wants it acted on, he'll strip off who it is from, and say,
'What do you think of this?' or, 'This looks like it might be a
real problem.' "
Although the World Bank president is by tradition a U.S.
citizen, no previous president has filled his office with
Americans, much less a group of politically kindred spirits,
according to bank staffers who have worked there since it was
run in the 1970s by former defense secretary Robert S. McNamara.
Common as such a staffing approach may be at, say, a U.S.
Cabinet agency, it goes down poorly among the bank's
international civil servants.
Part of the problem, bank staffers acknowledged, is that many of
them don't care for Republican policies. (The party affiliations
of Wolfowitz's U.S. aides are not so clear-cut; both Cleveland
and Kellems once worked for Democratic senators -- Cleveland for
Birch Bayh of Indiana and Kellems for John Glenn of Ohio.)
The political antipathy is evident in the relish with which many
staffers call attention to Cleveland's role in a scandal
involving Pentagon contracts for aircraft leases. In that case,
e-mails showed that Cleveland -- who was overseeing the Defense
Department budget at the OMB -- sought help from Air Force
Secretary James G. Roche in securing a job for her brother with
a defense contractor at the same time as Roche was seeking
Cleveland's support for an air-tanker lease deal. Asked for
comment, Cleveland said: "The U.S. attorney's office looked into
the matter and notified me that there was no basis for any
further action."
Wheeler, the acting managing director, sought to soothe the
staff in an interview posted on the bank's internal Web site.
"It's natural for the President to want to have around him some
people who he has worked with in the past and who can help him
settle into the new organization," Wheeler said.
The staff gave his comments a thumbs down, as measured by their
use of a system allowing them to rate the comments with one star
("not very informative"), two stars ("somewhat informative") and
three stars ("very informative"). More than 1,100 of them had
responded yesterday with an average rating between one and two
stars, a far larger number of respondents and lower rating than
is usual for the Web site.
Some of the sharpest criticism has targeted Folsom's appointment
to run the Department of Institutional Integrity. A staffer at
the Republican National Committee in the 1980s who also worked
in the 1989 inauguration of President George H.W. Bush, Folsom
went to work for a major law firm in the 1990s, specializing in
ethics law. She came to the bank in 2003 as a counselor to
Wolfowitz's predecessor, James D. Wolfensohn, who assigned her
to help manage the bank's relations with the administration and
Congress. Her star has shone brightly under Wolfowitz, who named
her acting director of the watchdog unit in October and made the
appointment permanent on Jan. 17.
Folsom's detractors note that she had little experience as an
investigator. The bank's staff association circulated a letter
citing widespread "dismay" over her appointment as well as
Kellems's. The letter expressed concern that the bank needs to
set a pristine example in its hiring practices, for developing
countries that are trying to avoid cronyism.
In an interview, Folsom disputed suggestions that politics
played a role in her appointment. "I haven't had a political job
since my 20s. I'm in my 40s now," she said, adding that the main
reason for her selection by Wolfowitz was his belief that as
acting director she invigorated a once-lethargic department with
a long backlog of investigations. "Talk to people" in the
department, she said. "They're energized."
They are, judging by conversations with staffers who spoke on
the condition they would not be identified. "I've been
pleasantly surprised," one said. "Things are no longer
languishing. We now have street cred within the institution. . .
. They're starting to put some teeth in the
anti-corruption-speak."
Kellems, who attracted notice in the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" as
the Wolfowitz aide who helped comb the deputy defense
secretary's hair, shrugged off concern over the personnel moves.
"Anytime there's a transition to a new leader, especially one at
a public institution, it's only human nature that that will
bring with it varying levels of unease," he said. "There's been
far less of that unease to date than many of us expected."
But there is no ignoring the hullabaloo. "At one meeting,
someone stood up and said that they heard the reason I got this
job was because my son worked for Wolfowitz at the Pentagon,"
Folsom said. "My son is 9. If he worked at the Pentagon, I want
the back pay."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
Translate
this page
(In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
