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The World Bank investigative report on Paul Wolfowitz may point to the smoking gun that explains the origins of the Iraq War. The 58-page report details a disturbing disregard for the rule of law and for even simple professional ethics that cannot help provoke serious questions about whether similar behavior characterized the initiation of the War. As this post details there are too many disturbing parallels that cry out for Congressional investigation. The case against Wolfowitz, if proven, could reveal a systematic disregard for our democratic principles on a scale that would easily eclipse Watergate.
Near the end of the report, the World Bank’s ad hoc committee presents a disturbing portrait of a rogue executive with a sociopathic personality who believes he should not be governed by normal rules, ethical standards or even regard for coworkers and the institution he heads. I quote this section in its entirety because the press reports have pasted together only pieces of it, which does not allow for the full impact of the charges.
Because the Bank has issued the document in my least favorite program, Adobe Acrobat, and set parameters on it so text cannot be cut and pasted or searched (at least by my copy of Acrobat), what appears below is an image copy. This is probably why the press has published only excerpts. Please excuse the formatting, but that is the way the PDF was formatted on the page. Obviously someone was in a rush to publish this report. The committee states in section vi, Concluding Observations:
Reading the entire section casts as larger light on the situation. Wolfowitz was in essence a rogue president who systematically violated any reasonable standards of leadership or even simple employee conduct. Instead of leadership he offered egotistical outlawry, as if he was accountable to no one but himself.
Had you or I committed the same offenses as Wolfowitz we quite likely would have been immediately terminated and our reputations ruined. But Wolfie (was there ever a nickname so appropriate?) has powerful friends, especially friends who would not like this Wolf to turn sheep and start talking about what he knows about Iraq.
The specifics cited in the World Bank report are especially disturbing and have huge consequences for an investigation of Wolfowitz’s role in starting the Iraq War. First, and most damning, “from the outset he cast himself in opposition to the established rules of the institution.” Of course, with the Bank we all know about Wolfowitz’s relationship with Shaha Riza who at the time Wolfowitz accepted the job worked as Acting Director of EXT.
There is no need to go into details of this little affair that has been in all the news media other than to acknowledge yet another instance of Bush Administration arrogance in even considering Wolfowitz for the job. Clearly the relationship, as the Bank report extensively documented, constituted a clear conflict of interest.
And where was the GOP that had such a Monica fixation? Where are their so-called “moral values” in this case? In a March 22, 2005 story “What Will the Neighbors Say?” the Washington Post noted after the relationship became public:
Turns out that some Iraq war foes in the diplomat-heavy neighborhood south of American University don’t seem to appreciate that Wolfowitz regularly spends the night at Riza’s home. Two residents told us that Wolfowitz’s guards wait in a car outside until he departs early in the morning.
Now let’s substitute Iraq for that conflict of interest. At the time the United States was considering invading Iraq, the United Nations and the world community were against a unilateral invasion because they felt there was not a clear reason for it. Their evidence did not show Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction nor did he have any relationship with al Qaeda. Wolfowitz “did not accept the Bank’s policy on conflict of interest” any more than he accepted the conclusions of the United Nations.
In the case of the Bank, the report says Wolfowitz stopped seeking advice from the Bank’s lawyers ( the “Legal Vice Presidency”) and sought “an inadequate review by external lawyers after the fact.” And we all know what he did with Iraq. Frustrated with the United Nations’ “lawyers,” Wolfowitz and the Bush Administration sought what we all know now was an “inadequate review” by sources external to not only the United Nations but in some cases our own government. Like Wolfowitz at the Bank they sought to make their own case.
The Bank’s ad hoc group saw this “as a manifestation of an attitude in which Mr. Wolfowitz saw himself as the outsider to whom the established rules and standards did not apply.” If ever there was a clearer statement of the attitudes of Wolfowitz and others who masterminded the Iraq invasion, I have not seen or heard it.
Wolfowitz, of course, issued his own reply to the report. It makes for a fascinating side-by-side comparison that provides yet more insight into this arrogant sociopath. It’s most distinguishing feature is the huge volume of strike-outs, as if by erasing the report’s extensive documentation of his unethical conduct, he could erase any memory of it. It eerily parallels the Bush Administration’s attempts to strikeout the records of the months leading up to Iraq and its own conduct.
The case against Wolfowitz shows that this man does not:
- Listen to internal counsel except when it suits him;
- Feel bound by internal rules;
- Believe any ethical code of conduct applies to him;
- See anything wrong in violating basic principles that allow organizations (and nations) to function.
One could make a case (although I do not buy it) that with Iraq, the end justified the means. We will give Wolfowitz the benefit of the doubt and say he saw Saddam Hussein as a genuine threat and was willing to do whatever it took to remove him from power.
However, the World Bank case in essence was about his mistress. It may have had something to do with love, but nothing to do with national or international security or with the core objectives of the bank. It was, as they say, personal. That is why I call this man a sociopath, because what the ad hoc committee’s report reveals is a man who was willing to do anything–including damaging the organization–just to get his way over a personal matter. His entire personality is amoral.
I have worked with a few amoral people in my life and they can be very scary. They do not believe in anything. It is perfectly acceptable to lie, destroy other people’s lives, violate all essential principles of fairness and decency because they do not recognize them. They don’t exist. Whatever synapses have become cross-wired in their brains have obliterated any sense of empathy. You or I may lie and recognize it as a lie, but rationalize it anyway, but these people do not recognize the concept of lying. Reality is whatever they say it is. Personal gain is the only value; power is the only ethic.
From this grows the crimes of what historian Vernon Lewis Parrington called “the Great Barbecue” of the late nineteenth century, the Teapot Dome, the McCarthy era, Watergate. There is a continuum from petty crooks and liars to organizational malefactors and government apparachiks, to war criminals. Where Wolfowitz falls on this continuum now depends on whether Congress follows up the World Bank fiasco with hearings on the origins of the Iraq War.
The World Bank Report concludes that “there is a crisis of leadership at the Bank.” It might have said the same about the United States.
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