Wolfowitz. UGH!!!

From the NY Times:

Frustrations With Wolfowitz Boil Over at Meeting
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
Published: April 25, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 24 — At a meeting between Paul D. Wolfowitz and his top managers at the World Bank last week, Mr. Wolfowitz made an unusual confession. “I understand that I’ve lost a lot of trust, and I want to build that trust back up,” he said, according to people present.

But the beleaguered bank president was immediately confronted by one of his top deputies, who asserted that Mr. Wolfowitz was wrong to think that the furor over his leadership sprang only from his handling of the pay and promotion for his companion or from unease over his support of the Iraq war while at the Pentagon.

Graeme Wheeler, the bank’s managing director, said at the meeting that the fight over whether Mr. Wolfowitz should stay on at the bank amounted to the “the biggest crisis in its history.”

He said it arose from a range of issues, including fears that Mr. Wolfowitz and his aides were trying to impose Bush administration ideas on family planning and climate change at the bank and worries over a possible conflict of interest in the bank’s hiring of a Washington law firm, Williams & Connolly, to investigate leaks. A partner at the firm had earlier negotiated Mr. Wolfowitz’s employment contract with the bank.

Mr. Wheeler also said Mr. Wolfowitz’s staying on would cause “fantastic damage” to the bank’s reputation and effectiveness.

The exchange, described in detail by people who attended the closed meeting, illustrated how far the turmoil surrounding Mr. Wolfowitz has spread since it erupted in public a few weeks ago. It also revealed his determination to remain on the job and the deep wellspring of antipathy toward him among the bank’s board and senior staff.

With the hiring of Robert S. Bennett, a prominent lawyer, to defend his record before the board, Mr. Wolfowitz has effectively revealed that his hope is to play for time, overhaul his management team and plead that a hasty exit would be disruptive to the bank, especially since he was not planning to stay for more than three more years anyway.

According to the people at the meeting last week, the vice presidents were startled when Mr. Wolfowitz said he might not even be at the bank for another year, though this was not said to be a sign that he would resign, only that a fight over whether he should stay was not worth the trouble.

Mr. Wolfowitz has promised to mend his ways and has warned that a forced ouster would damage the bank. But it has become clear that there is a larger sense of unease, especially among Europeans, about American influence over the bank and its strategies toward ending poverty. There is also tension between the United States and Europe over who is to blame for the shortfall in commitments to raise $30 billion to reach that goal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/washington/25wolfowitz.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

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