Paul Wolfowitz

Paul Wolfowitz
10th President of the World Bank
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 June, 2005
Preceded by	James Wolfensohn
Personal details
Born	(1943-12-22) December 22, 1943 Brooklyn, New York, USA
Spouse	Clare Selgin Wolfowitz (1968-2002)
Children	Sara, David, Rachel
Residence	Washington, D.C.
Salary	$302,470 USD
Website	http://www.worldbank.org/

Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (b. December 22, 1943) is an American academic and political figure. He is currently the President of the World Bank. He is internationally recognized as the most romantic among the neocon cabal.

A former aide to conservative Democratic Senator Henry M. Jackson in the 1970s, Wolfowitz also served in the U.S. Department of Defense, as Director of Policy Planning and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the U.S. State Department, as U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, and as Deputy Secretary of Defense in the administration of President George W. Bush.

Early life and education

Paul Wolfowitz was born in Brooklyn, New York to "a Polish Jewish immigrant family," the second child of Jacob Wolfowitz (1910–1981), who emigrated from Poland to New York in 1920, and Lillian Dundes. His father was a Professor of Mathematics at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, where Paul Wolfowitz was raised. A tribute by his late father's close friend Shelemyahu Zacks observes: "In addition to being prolific in research[,] Jacob Wolfowitz was a very well read person. He was interested in current affairs and used to discuss issues of the day with his colleagues. He fought at the time for the liberation of Soviet Jewry. He was a friend and strong supporter of the state of Israel and had many friends and admirers there."

According to Eric Schmitt:

A soft-spoken former aspiring-mathematician-turned-policymaker, Mr. [Paul] Wolfowitz has world views that 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 perished in the Holocaust.

"That sense of what happened in Europe in World War II has shaped a lot of my views," he said. "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 interests."

Jacob Wolfowitz took his family with him when he taught sabbatical semesters at UCLA and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and in 1957, at the age of fourteen, Paul Wolfowitz spent a year living in Israel while his father was teaching at The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa; Wolfowitz’s elder sister, Laura, who became a biologist, would later emigrate to Israel, where she has raised her family.

In 1961 Wolfowitz graduated from Ithaca High School, where he had worked on the Tattler student newspaper. Wolfowitz was excused from military service in the Vietnam War through student deferments in order to pursue his academic studies.

Undergraduate education

Wolfowitz was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and, in 1961, he won a full scholarship to Cornell University. James Mann has speculated in his seminal biographical work on the lives of various Bush policy advisors, Rise of the Vulcans, that Wolfowitz's father believed it too good a bargain to turn down, despite the younger man's desire to attend Harvard University.

Wolfowitz was a member of the Telluride Association, of which his sister had been the first female member. This organization, founded in 1910, aims to foster an everyday synthesis of self-governance and intellectual inquiry that enables students to develop their potential for leadership and public service. Members receive free room and board in the Telluride House on the Cornell campus and learn about democracy through the practice of running the house, hiring staff, supervising maintenance, and organizing seminars. During his senior year, Wolfowitz was also a member of Quill and Dagger, a prestigious society at Cornell.

In 1963, professor of philosophy Allan Bloom served as a faculty member living in the house and had a major influence on Wolfowitz's political views with his assertion of the importance of political regimes in shaping peoples’ characters. 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."

That same year, Wolfowitz joined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom led by Martin Luther King, Jr.. According to Mann, Jacob Wolfowitz did not take well to his son’s new found passion or his mentor Bloom; Wolfowitz "reflected that his father and Bloom regarded each other with a mixture of wariness and admiration."

According to Schmitt, "At Cornell Mr. Wolfowitz majored in mathematics and chemistry, but 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."

Wolfowitz graduated in 1965 with a Bachelor's degree degree in mathematics and chemistry. He got a taste of government work as a management intern at the U.S. Bureau of the Budget. Ignoring his father's advice against pursuing a path in pure politics––Jacob had suggested economics as a possible compromise––Wolfowitz decided to go on to graduate school to study politics.

Graduate Education

Wolfowitz had hoped to attend Harvard University, but instead chose the University of Chicago as he wanted the chance to study under Bloom's mentor, Leo Strauss, who was teaching there at the time, and who, according to Mann, he thought "was a unique figure, an irreplaceable asset."

Wolfowitz enrolled in a couple of Strauss' courses, on Plato and Montesquieu, but, according to Mann, they "did not become especially close," as the aging professor was winding down his career and was to retire before Wolfowitz graduated. Fellow student Peter Wilson confirms that "Wolfowitz didn't talk much about Strauss in those days," but as Mann points out, "in subsequent years colleagues both in government and academia came to view Wolfowitz as one of the heirs to Leo Strauss's intellectual traditions."

Instead Wolfowitz came under the tutelage of Professor Albert Wohlstetter, who had studied mathematics with Wolfowitz's father at Columbia and was, according to Mann, "the sort of scholar of whom the mathematician Jacob Wolfowitz would have approved." Wohlstetter instilled in his students the importance of maintaining US supremacy through advanced weaponry. Wohlstetter feared that plutonium produced as a by-product of U.S.-sponsored nuclear-powered desalination plants to be built near the Israeli-Egyptian border could be used in a nuclear weapons program. He returned from a trip to Israel with a number of Hebrew language documents on the program that he handed over to Wolfowitz; these would form the basis of Wolfowitz's doctoral dissertation.

In the summer of 1969, Wohlstetter arranged for his students Wolfowitz and Wilson, along with an old acquaintance, Richard Perle, to join the Committee to Maintain A Prudent Defense Policy in Washington D.C. Set up by Cold War architects Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson, the lobbying group was designed to maintain support in the U.S. Congress for the antiballistic missile (ABM) system. The opposition to ABM in Congress had started employing scientific experts to argue against the system, so Nitze and Acheson turned to Wohlstetter and his young protégés to counter these arguments. Together they set to work writing and distributing research papers and drafting testimony for U.S. Senator Henry M. Jackson. Nitze later wrote; “The papers they helped us produce ran rings around the misinformed papers produced by polemical and pompous scientists.” The senate eventually approved the ABM system by 51 votes to 50. U.S. President Richard Nixon would however later sign the ABM Treaty, restricting the construction of such systems.

From 1970 to 1972, Wolfowitz taught in the Department of Political Science at Yale University, where one of his students was Lewis Libby, who would become a long-term political associate as well as a conspirator involved in the Valerie Plame affair, a scandal in the Bush administration. In 1972 Wolfowitz earned his doctorate in political science with a thesis on the dangers posed by nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. In particular he highlighted:

• The inefficiencies of international nuclear inspections.
• The risk of materials being diverted to clandestine weapons programs.
• The dangers of aiding a nation to develop nuclear technologies.

All of these factors would reappear in his later analysis of Iraq.

According to Schmitt, "Translating high theory into practice, he joined the government in 1973."

Later personal life

Wolfowitz met anthropologist Clare Selgin Wolfowitz while they were both studying at Cornell University in the mid-1960s; they married in 1968, had three children (Sara, David, and Rachel), separated in 2001, and, according to some sources, were divorced in 2002, though, according to other sources their marital status appears to be uncertain. "Since separating from his wife...in 2001, he has dated a secular Muslim woman in her fifties, Shaha Ali Riza. A British national from a Libyan family who grew up in Saudi Arabia, Riza is a longtime advocate of democracy in Arab countries."

Further information: § Wolfowitz's relationship with Shaha Riza

.

He lives in Washington, D.C.

Career

Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

Main article: Team B

In 1972 U.S. President Richard Nixon under pressure from U.S. Senator Henry M. Jackson, who was unhappy with the SALT I strategic arms limitations talks and the policy of détente, dismissed the head of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) and replaced him with Fred Ikle. Ikle brought in a completely new team including Wolfowitz, who had been recommended by his old tutor Albert Wohlstetter. Wolfowitz once again set to work writing and distributing research papers and drafting testimony, as he had previously done at the Committee to Maintain A Prudent Defence Policy. He also traveled with Ikle to strategic arms limitations talks in Paris and other European cities. His greatest success was in dissuading South Korea from reprocessing plutonium that could be diverted into a clandestine weapons program, a situation that would re-occur north of the border during the George W. Bush administration.

Under President Gerald Ford, the American intelligence agencies had come under attack from Wohlstetter, among others, 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. Wolfowitz, who was still employed by the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, was assigned to this committee, which came to be known as Team B. According to Mann, "Wolfowitz viewed himself as Kissinger's opposite, his adversary in the realm of ideas."

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," before going on to highlight a number of key areas where they believed the 'professional' analysts had got it wrong. According to Jack Davis, Wolfowitz observed later that "The B Team demonstrated that it was possible to construct a sharply different view of Soviet motivation from the consensus view of the analysts, and one that provided a much closer fit to the Soviet's observed behavior."

Team B came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed several terrifying new weapons of mass destruction, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a sonar system that didn't depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable with current U.S. technology. The conclusions of Team B about the Soviet Union's weapons systems have since been proven to be highly inaccurate and misleading worst-case scenarios. According to Dr. Anne Cahn (Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1977-1980) "If you go through most of Team B's specific allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them one by one, they were all wrong."

Its conclusions about the Soviets' strategic aims with regard to nuclear warfare, on the other hand, were proven to be more accurate. According to Richard Pipes, writing in Commentary, Team B showed that the A Team suffered from 'mirror-imaging' [thinking that the Soviets necessarily believed in MAD]; and that Soviet construction of MIRV'ed, highly accurate, high yield ICBMs was inconsistent with the MAD policy of holding each other's cities hostage, but was instead suggestive of a first-strike anti-missile policy.

But the Team B conclusions proved to be highly effective in discrediting the policy of détente and the SALT II strategic arms limitations talks and won over U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and future U.S. President Ronald Reagan, giving Wolfowitz two very influential allies. Another invaluable ally was Harvard graduate student Francis Fukuyama whom Wolfowitz invited to work for him as an intern over that summer.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Regional Programs

In 1977 under U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Wolfowitz moved to The Pentagon to broaden his experience of military issues because, according to Mann, he believed that "The key to preventing nuclear wars was to stop conventional wars." Wolfowitz 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 where he was put to work on the Limited Contingency Study, ordered to examine possible areas of threat to the U.S. in the third world.

One of the first seminars Wolfowitz attended after taking up the post was given by Professor Geoffrey Kemp of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in which it was argued that the U.S. was concentrating too much on defending against the possibility of a Soviet invasion of Europe through the Fulda Gap in Germany and ignoring the far more likely possibility of them turning southward to seize the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. "This warning struck a chord with Wolfowitz," according to Mann, as it "fit well with the conclusion he had just reached in the Team B intelligence review." Wolfowitz hired Kemp and Dennis Ross a Soviet specialist from the University of California to work with him on preparing the study. "We and our major industrialized allies have a vital and growing stake in the Persian Gulf region because of our need for Persian Gulf oil and because events in the Persian Gulf affect the Arab-Israeli conflict," the report stated, going on to conclude that Soviet seizure of the Persian Gulf oil field would "probably destroy NATO and the US-Japanese alliance without recourse to war by the Soviets."

Wolfowitz then took the study one step further by questioning what would happen if another country in the region were to seize the oil fields. He quickly identified that "Iraq has become the militarily pre-eminent in the Persian Gulf,” which was “a worrisome development" because of its:

• Radical-Arab stance
• Anti-Western attitudes
• Dependence on Soviet arms sales
• Willingness to foment trouble in other local nations

The study concluded "Iraq’s implicit power will cause currently moderate local powers to accommodate themselves to Iraq" and that "Iraq may in the future use her military forces against such states as Kuwait or Saudi Arabia." To solve this the US must "be able to defend the interests of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and ourselves against an Iraqi invasion or show of force," and make manifest its "capabilities and commitments to balance Iraq’s power," requiring "an increased visibility for U.S. power." As Mann explains, "Iraq was a subject to which Wolfowitz would return over and over again during his career."

According to Ross "no one believed that Iraq posed a serious or imminent threat to the Saudis," but Wolfowitz had told him: "When you look at contingencies, you don’t focus only on the likelihood of the contingency but also on the severity of its consequences." Brown felt differently, worried that if the report leaked it would damage U.S. relations with Iraq and destabilize Saudi Arabia. The study did however have eventual effect. "The whole thrust of the study," according to Ross, "was to say that [the U.S.] had a big problem, that it would take us a long time to get any significant military force into the area." The study’s recommendations laid the groundwork for what would become the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), conceived as Rapid Deployment Forces for the Persian Gulf, it would go on to play a key role in the 1991 Gulf War after the study’s prediction apparently came true and the subsequent 2003 invasion of Iraq for which Wolfowitz was a major driving force.

In late 1979 Jeanne Kirkpatrick began a migration of neoconservatives from their traditional base in the U.S. Democratic Party over to the U.S. Republican Party and its Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan. Wolfowitz joined this exodus after receiving a phone call from his old boss Fred Ikle, then working on the Reagan campaign, in which he said "Paul, you’ve got to get out of there. We want you in the new administration." A short time later, 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." The Times observes, however, that "he has not ceased being a registered Democrat."

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 was put in charge of putting together the administration's foreign policy advisory team. Allen initially rejected Wolfowitz’s appointment: He had worked for Carter. I thought he was a Carter guy," Allen later recalled, adding: "He was goner, as far as I was concerned"; but following discussions, instigated by former colleague John Lehman, Allen offered him the position of Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department. In this position Wolfowitz and his newly selected staff, that included Lewis Libby, Francis Fukuyama, Dennis Ross, Alan Keyes, Zalmay Khalilzad, Stephen Sestanovich and James Roche, would be responsible for defining the administrations long-term foreign goals.

Reagan’s foreign policy had been heavily influenced by a 1979 article in Commentary by Jeanne Kirkpatrick entitled "Dictatorships and Double Standards". In the article, written in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution, Kirkpatrick had argued that "We seem to accept the status quo in Communist nations (in the name of 'diversity' and national autonomy) but not in nations ruled by ‘right-wing’ dictators or white oligarchies," pointing out that the regimes that the Carter administration had pushed for democratic reforms "turn out to be those in which non-Communist autocracies are under pressure from revolutionary guerillas," such as key Cold War allies Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran and Anastasio Somoza Debayle, dictator of Nicaragua. "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," a belief which Kirkpatrick disagreed with because "Decades, if not centuries, are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits." This is known as the Kirkpatrick Doctrine.

Wolfowitz famously broke from this official line by denouncing Saddam Hussein of Iraq at a time when Donald Rumsfeld, acting as Reagan's official envoy, 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 Palestinian 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."

According to Mann however; "It was on China that Wolfowitz launched his boldest challenge to the established order." Ever since Nixon and Kissinger had gone to China in the early 70s it had been U.S. policy 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 this as an opportunity to undermine the Kissingerian policy. Wolfowitz advocated a unilateralist policy claiming that the U.S. didn’t need China’s assistance, and in fact that Chinese needed the U.S. to protect them against the far more likely prospect of a Soviet invasion of China. 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 falsely reported "Paul D. Wolfowitz, the director of policy planning...will be replaced," because "Mr. Haig found Mr. Wolfowitz too theoretical." On June 25 George Schultz replaced Haig as U.S. Secretary of State, and Wolfowitz was actually promoted.

State Department Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs

In 1982 Wolfowitz was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs by new U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz who would become an influential mentor. At the time the Reagan’s foreign policy was beset with difficulties caused by conflict between Schultz and U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Wolfowitz was able to turn this to his favor by forming a powerful alliance with Weinberger’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia Richard Armitage and Gaston Sigur of the National Security Council. Between them these three men controlled the administration’s policy for Asia.

Jeanne 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 took this opportunity 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. This was already the administration’s policy in Eastern Europe and Wolfowitz has since argued that; “You can’t use democracy, as appropriately you should, as a battle with the Soviet Union, and turn around and be completely hypocritical about it when it’s on your side of the line.”

Wolfowitz claims that this policy did not deviate from that lain out by Kirkpatrick in her 1979 article as the "necessary disciplines and habits" she wrote of were already in place. "When we went to work on Marcos, it was not to dismantle the institutions of the Philippines; it was actually to get him to stop dismantling them himself," Wolfowitz later argued of the specifics of the policy; "Military reform, economic reform, getting rid of crony capitalism, relying on the church, political reform: It was very institutionally oriented." 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. As Wolfowitz later explained: "If we had said, ‘We are enemies of the Marcos regime. We want to see it’s demise rather than reform,’ we would have lost all influence in Manila and would have created a situation highly polarized between a regime that had hunkered down and was prepared to do anything to survive and a population at loose ends," that would have strengthened the communists. So at the same time Wolfowitz also fought against moves by the U.S. Congress to end military aide to the Marcos regime.

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"; but, , that decision did eventually pay off when, following massive street protests, Marcos fled the country on a U.S. Air Force plane and Reagan reluctantly recognized the government of Corazón Aquino. Wolfowitz has since claimed that this demonstrates that democracy "needs the prodding of the U.S." Wolfowitz’s commitment to democracy would be put to the test in his next posting.

Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia

From 1986-89 Wolfowitz was the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia while General Suharto was president. Former foreign policy adviser Dewi Fortuna Anwar told ABC News that Ambassador Wolfowitz "was extremely able and very much admired and well-liked on a personal level, but he never intervened to push human rights or stand up to corruption."

After Suharto stood down in 1998 Wolfowitz himself stated that the General was guilty "of suppressing political dissent, of weakening alternative leaders and of showing favoritism to his children's business deals, frequently at the expense of sound economic policy" while ABC News clarifies that "at the time, thousands of leftists detained after the 1965 U.S.-backed military coup that brought Suharto to power were still languishing in jail without trial." ABC News goes on to claim that "tens of thousands of people in East Timor, a country Suharto's troops occupied in 1975, died during the 1980s in a series of army anti-insurgency offensives." Director of the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development Binny Buchori told ABC News that Wolfowitz "went to East Timor and saw abuses going on, but then kept quiet."

Perhaps most significantly considering Wolfowitz’s current position is ABC News's claim that "during his 32-year reign, Suharto, his family and his military and business cronies transformed Indonesia into one of the most graft-ridden countries in the world, plundering an estimated $30 billion", much of this money is believed to have come from Wolfowitz's new employers, the World Bank. Binny Buchori says that Wolfowitz "never alluded to any concerns about the level of corruption or the need for more transparency." 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." According to Sipress and Nakashima, Wolfowitz gave a farewell speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in Jakarta in which he stated that "the cost of the high-cost economy remains too high, for the private sector to flourish, special privilege must give way to equal opportunity and equal risk for all." Wolfowitz has since stated in The Wall Street Journal "that he [Suharto] allowed this, and that he amassed such wealth himself, is all the more mysterious since he lived a relatively modest life."

Sipress and Nakashima say 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," whereas Binny Buchori states that "he was an effective diplomat, but he gave no moral support for dissidents." ABC News quotes the head of the Indonesian National Human Rights Commission Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara as saying "of all former U.S. ambassadors, he was considered closest to and most influential with Suharto and his family, but he never showed interest in issues regarding democratization or respect of human rights. Wolfowitz never once visited our offices. I also never heard him publicly mention corruption, not once." Dewi Fortuna Anwar suggests that "at the time, Washington didn't care too much about human rights and democracy; it was still the Cold War and they were only concerned about fighting communism." According to Goldenberg, Jeffrey Winters, of Northwestern University, stated Wolfowitz "'had his chance, and he toed the Reagan hawkish line.'"

In Wolfowitz's May 1989 farewell remarks at Jakarta's American Cultural Center, however, he stated that "if greater openness is a key to economic success, I believe there is increasingly a need for openness in the political sphere as well." As The Washington Post goes on to explain: "this single, unexpected sentence stunned some members of Suharto's inner circle." Wolfowitz has stated in an article he wrote in The Wall Street Journal following the Indonesian 1998 Revolution that Suharto blamed this "plea for greater political openness" as "the cause of the violent incidents that marked Indonesia's largely stage-managed elections in 1997." As quoted by Goldenberg, Jeffrey Winters dismisses Wolfowitz's statement, observing: "'it is really too much to claim that he played any kind of role in leading Indonesia to democracy.'"

In 1997 Wolfowitz was still publicly praising Suharto's "strong and remarkable leadership" in testimony on Indonesia before the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations. In "The Tragedy of Suharto", Wolfowitz writes: "The tragedy for Mr. Suharto and his country is that he would have been widely admired by his countrymen if he had stepped down 10 years ago," adding that "achieving peace among a population so diverse requires a strong leader and a unified military." In the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombing, 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."

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy

Wolfowitz, Gen. Colin Powell (left), and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf (middle) listen as Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney addresses reporters regarding the 1991 Gulf War.

From 1989-93 under U.S. President George H.W. Bush Wolfowitz served as U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy reporting to the then U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. Wolfowitz was charged with realigning U.S. military strategy in the post-cold war environment.

During the 1991 Persian Gulf War Wolfowitz’s team were charged with the co-ordination and review of military strategy as well as the raising of $50 billion in allied financial support for the operation. Wolfowitz was present, alongside Cheney, Colin Powell and others, on 27 February 1991 at the meeting with the President at which all agreed that the mission had been accomplished and the troops should be demobilised. At that time he did not believe it appropriate for US soldiers to push forward into Iraq to bring about regime change but did support the policy of encouraging Kurdish and Shiite revolutionaries to rise up against their dictator.

On February 25, 1998, however, 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." 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]."

In the aftermath of the war, Wolfowitz and his then-assistant Scooter Libby wrote the Defense Planning Guidance to "set the nation’s direction for the next century" that many saw as a "blueprint for U.S. hegemony." At the time the official administration line was one of "containment" and the contents of Wolfowitz’s highly controversial plan that included calls for "preemption" and "unilateralism" proved unpalatable to the more moderate members of the administration including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell and the President himself, so Cheney was charged with producing the watered-down version that was finally released in 1992. Nevertheless, many of the ideas outlined in the initial document have since re-emerged in the Bush Doctrine.

Wolfowitz fell out of favor under U.S. President Bill Clinton and left government for a short while.

Dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies

From 1993 to 2001 Wofowitz centered himself in academia where he was dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University and was instrumental in adding more than $75 million to the endowment, adding an international finance concentration as part of the curriculum and combining the various Asian studies programs into one department. He also put his years of political and defense experience to good use as a foreign policy advisor to Bob Dole on the 1996 U.S. Presidential election campaign and as a paid consultant for aerospace and defense conglomerate Northrop Grumman.

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" and in 1997 he became one of the charter members, alongside Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Richard Perle amongst others, of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) a neo-conservative think-tank founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan with the stated aim of "American global leadership" through military strength. According to Brandon Ericsson, who posts his articles on unknownnews.com, the PNAC advocated preemptive U.S. military intervention against Iraq and other "potential aggressor states" to "protect our vital interests in the Gulf".

Wolfowitz drafted the PNAC open letter to President Bill Clinton that began “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.” In the letter he criticises Clinton’s policy of “containment”; rejects the policy of multilateralism stating that “we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition”; and dismisses the effectiveness of inspectors as “it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production”. He states that the policy jeopardizes “the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil”. He dismisses the UN stating that “American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council” and “the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps”. He concludes that “removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power […] needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.” The letter, signed by Wolfowitz and 17 other members of the PNAC was submitted to Clinton on the eve of his 1998 State of the Union Address.

Later that year Wolfowitz testified before a congressional hearing 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” and lamenting the decision at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War not to delay the ceasefire until this had been achieved. During the course of his testimony Wolfowitz urged for the administration to support the 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. The pressure would eventually lead Clinton to signing into law the Iraq Liberation Act (1998) which made regime change official U.S. policy and later to the 1998 bombing of Iraq.

In 2000 the PNAC produced its magnum opus, the 90-page report on Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century. This advocated 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. Many of the ideas outlined here would later re-emerge when Wolfowitz returned to the Pentagon, but first he had to get there.

During the 2000 U.S. Presidential election campaign Wolfowitz served as a foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush as part of a group led by Condoleezza Rice that called itself The Vulcans.

Deputy Secretary of Defense

Wolfowitz is sworn in by David O. Cooke, director of Washington Headquarters Services, as the 28th Deputy Secretary of Defense, March 2, 2001.

Wolfowitz returned to government from 2001-05 under U.S. President George W. Bush serving as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense reporting to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Almost immediately upon confirmation he leapt into action in May 2001 during the height of Sino-American tensions that surrounded the U.S.-China Spy Plane Incident. Wolfowitz defused a very tricky situation when he ordered the recall and destruction of 600,000 Chinese-made berets that had been issued to troops, stating: "U.S. troops shall not wear berets made in China." Apart from this, Wolfowitz was for the most part sidelined in the early months of the administration, as Bush seemed to follow the containment policies of his predecessors, although former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill denies this was the policy in Ron Suskind's book The Price of Loyalty; the situation, however, would soon change drastically.

According to Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (2006), by Michael R. Gordon, chief military correspondent for the New York Times, and Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general, in which they detail the behind-the-scenes decision-making that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, during the initial months of the Bush Administration and prior to the September 11th attacks, "Wolfowitz sought to enlist the Joint Staff's support to develop a strategy for aiding an anti-Saddam resistance. Saddam had drained the southern marshes in Iraq to deprive Shiite rebels of a sanctuary, so Wolfowitz wondered if the dams could be bombed to re-create them. The Pentagon lawyers challenged whether such a strike would be consistent with the rules of war. Wolfowitz's view was that it would be more humane than leaving the Shiites to Saddam's mercy. Wolfowitz also wanted to know what it would take to arm and train Iraqi insurgents."

Wolfowitz as Deputy Secretary of Defense.

The terrorist attacks of 9-11 proved to be a radical 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." He went on to clarify that "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." 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 Kampfner, "from that moment on, he and Wolfowitz used every available opportunity to press the case." The idea was initially rejected, mainly 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." Out of this came the creation of what would later be dubbed the Bush Doctrine, centering on "pre-emption" and American unilateralism, as well as the war on Iraq which the PNAC advocated in their earlier letters but first there was Afghanistan to deal with.

The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001 and victory was declared on March 6, 2002. Shortly after the start of this conflict Wolfowitz demonstrated his belief in American unilateralism when on October 10 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 would later go on to publicly announce, 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 Seymour Hersh, "little effort to provide the military and economic resources" necessary for reconstruction was made. This criticism would also re-occur after the U.S. invasion of Iraq later that year.

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. Kampfner claims that this was part of a systematic campaign by the neo-cons to undermine Powell while he was away on a peace mission to the Middle East. 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. 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". 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." 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.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz at a press briefing, November 21, 2001.

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 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." Setting his sights on Iraq, which he had identified as a key region during his time as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Regional Programs under U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Wolfowitz "saw a liberated Iraq as both paradigm and linchpin for future interventions." The difficulty was, as Seymour M. Hersh explains, "[a]fter a year of bitter infighting, the Bush Administration remains sharply divided about Iraq." Wolfowitz had a plan to sell the war to the more skeptical members of the administration as well as the general public as he later clarified "[f]or bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."

The job of finding these WMD and providing justification for the attack would fall to the intelligence services, but, according to Kampfner, as cited by Hersh [?], "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, borrowing an idea from their old Team B days, "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 a Pentagon source also quoted by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker 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."

Within months of being set-up, the OSP "rivaled both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency, the D.I.A., 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 further 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, as cited by Hersh [?], the CIA had ended its funding of the I.N.C. "in the mid-1990s when doubts were cast about Chalabi’s reliability." Also according to Kampfner, however, "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. The arguments however did prove effective and the administration continues to focus on the Hussein regime's long history of involvement with international terrorist organizations and the current predominance of Zarqawi's Al Qaeda in Iraq.

As documented by Hersh[?], Kampfner outlined Wolfowitz’s strategy for the 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 because, as Hersh clarifies, "any show of force would immediately trigger a revolt against Saddam within Iraq, and that it would quickly expand." The financial expenditure would be kept low because, as Kampfner explains, "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.

Although he may have had considerable influence in the Administration's decision to invade Iraq, in Cobra II, Gordon and Trainor depict Wolfowitz as having little influence on the actual implementation of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. For instance: "At the Pentagon, Wolfowitz and his aides had taken the idea of Iraqi assistance a step further. Dusting off his proposal, made during his years out of office, to arm and equip Iraqi insurgents, Wolfowitz's initial goal was to raise an indigenous opposition army. As first imagined the plan was bold: there would be thousands of Iraqi freedom fighters who would battle Saddam's forces alongside U.S. and allied troops. Abizaid, who had served on the Joint Staff before moving to CENTCOM as Franks' deputy supported Wolfowitz's concept. Like Wolfowitz, Abizaid wanted to put an Iraqi face on the invasion force. Most of the administration were skeptical, if not opposed, to Wolfowitz's plan...[General Tommy Franks] thought that an Iraqi force would just get in the way and gave no weight to the benefits such a unit might provide in terms of local knowledge and language." According to Gordon and Trainor, money was poured into the idea but it never got the necessary backing or planning: "Franks turned to Feith in a Pentagon corridor, letting him know where he stood: 'I don't have time for this fucking bullshit.'.... Rumsfeld was not pushing the idea very hard and Franks was not shy about taking on the defense secretary's subordinates.... The Defense official blamed bureaucratic obstacles and lack of enthusiasm on the part of CENTCOM. White House officials and CENTCOM said that the fiasco showed that Feith and his team were better at drafting conservative policy manifestos than instituting programs."

Wolfowitz with New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark at the Pentagon

The United States invasion of Iraq began on March 20, 2003 and victory was declared on May 1, 2003 but this was only the beginning of Wolfowitz’s problems. During the reconstruction work that followed "[t]he American planners portrayed a mixture of supreme confidence and woeful lack of preparation." Kampfner states "[t]hese clean-cut young Americans...were adherents of the Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld school of ‘revolutionary transformation’. They believed that, with goodwill, they could resurrect Iraq in a matter of months." This did not prove to be the case. Kampfner goes on to say that while "Rumsfield, Wolfowitz and Cheney had also invested considerable hopes in Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress," these would also prove to be ill-founded.

In Cobra II, Gordon and Trainor also state that, "Wolfowitz and his aides suffered another setback when the White House rejected their proposal for the establishment of a provisional Iraqi government." The State department favored "internals" whereas Wolfowitz had proposed exiles. Rumsfeld was also opposed to the idea because he believed that an Iraqi provisional government would "get in the way". When the US announced that it would be running the country for a year and that Iraqis would only have an advisory role, Iraqi opposition groups futilely objected. Activist and academic Kanan Makiya, who supported regime change and had ties to the Iraqi National Congress, wrote an op-ed piece denouncing the decision. Gordon and Trainor also believe that one of the crucial mistakes of the administration was initially sidelining Zalmay Khalilzad and bringing in Paul Bremer instead. The move was criticized by Colin Powell and it's unclear if Wolfowitz supported Rumsfeld's decision to sideline Khalilzad since Khalilzad had in the past been closely associated with Wolfowitz.

On October 26, 2003, while in Baghdad, Iraq, 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. Army Lt. Col. Charles H. Buehring was killed and seventeen others soldiers were wounded. Wolfowitz and his DOD staffers escaped unharmed and returned to the United States on October 28.

President of the World Bank

In January 2005, Wolfowitz was nominated to be president of the World Bank. The nomination brought praise and criticism from leaders worldwide. According to an editorial in The Wall Street Journal: "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."

Nobel Laureate in Economics and former chief economist for the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz, however, reportedly said: "'The World Bank will once again become a hate figure. This could bring street protests and violence across the developing world.'"

In a speech at the U.N. Economic and Social Council, Economist Jeffrey Sachs was also quite vocal in his opposition to 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."

Press conference at G8 Summit (Paul Wolfowitz stands on the right side of the photo)

He was confirmed and took up the position on June 1, 2005.

One of Wolfowitz's first official acts was to attend 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 formerly with the Bush administration, whom he appointed as close advisors with $250,000 tax-free contracts. Another appointee, Juan José Daboub has been criticized by his colleagues and others for attempts to change policies on family planning and climate change towards a conservative line."

Further information: § Ongoing criticism of Wolfowitz, and § Wolfowitz's leadership of the World Bank

In his public presentations, Wolfowitz sought to give 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 intention to heighten further his predecessor's focus on fighting corruption. However, 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. In addition, member countries worried that Wolfowitz's willingness to suspend lending to countries on grounds of corruption was vulnerable to selective application -- possibly in line with US foreign policy interests. In a heated 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, inter alia 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.

Political views

Many political analysts consider Wolfowitz a neoconservative and possibly a Straussian; he is known for his passionate advocacy of Israel and as an architect and staunch supporter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Although Wolfowitz's late father, Jacob, was "a fervent Zionist, and Wolfowitz’s elder sister, Laura, lives in Israel....Wolfowitz’s critics sometimes portray him as an unquestioning defender of the Israeli government, and yet he has publicly expressed sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians, and some Arab reformers regard him as a friend."

Pre-emption

Wolfowitz had been a long-term advocate of this policy to strike first to eliminate threats. According to Seymour Hersh; "The Pentagon's conservative and highly assertive civilian leadership, assembled by Wolfowitz, gained extraordinary influence, especially after September 11th. These civilians were the most vigorous advocates for taking action against Saddam Hussein and for the use of pre-emptive military action to combat terrorism.” Wolfowitz explained his position in a 2002 interview with Robert Collier of the San Francisco Chronicle in which he stated “I think the premise of a policy has to be we can't afford to wait for proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That is a way in which any number of terrorist regimes have, over the last 20 years, gotten away with doing things that I think encourage more behavior of that kind.” He clarifies that “you can't wait until you have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody did something in the past, you know that people are planning to do something against you in the future and that they're developing incredibly destructive weapons to do it with and that's not tolerable.” As Hersh explained, “Pre-emption would emerge as the overriding idea behind the Administration’s foreign policy.”

Iran

Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution Wolfowitz has been a notable backer of Iranian dissidents, including the bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi. Larry Franklin, who was both a member of his staff and an associate of AIPAC, has also been under investigation for alleged spying on US soil and leaking information in order to damage Iranian-US relations.

Selected perspectives on Wolfowitz in the media

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

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz got a call 10 days ago from Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, dispatching him to a big rally here in support of Israel. The White House was stung by criticism from conservative Republicans over its policies toward Israel.

So last Monday Mr. Wolfowitz, who is one of Israel's staunchest allies in the administration, also found himself in front of the Capitol as Mr. Bush's emissary, drowned out by chants of Down with Arafat!

Mr. Wolfowitz, who is Jewish, was booed repeatedly when he spoke -- in his largely pro-Israel speech -- of the innocent Palestinians who were suffering, along with Israelis, from the bloodshed.

Mr. Wolfowitz has had his share of lightning-rod days as one of the administration's leading hawks. He is a strong advocates for building missile defenses and expanding the global campaign against terrorism, to include toppling President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. But Mr. Wolfowitz, the Pentagon's second in command, did not volunteer for political spear-catching duty....

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 (Viking, 2004), James Mann described him as "the most influential underling in Washington." According to Goldenberg, as well as various other sources, "A former colleague says[,] "Hawk doesn't do him justice. What about velociraptor?"

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."

Journalist and polemicist Christopher Hitchens, a friend of Wolfowitz, 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."

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."

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 [see above] that he asked to be introduced. Wahid, a leader of Indonesia's largest Muslim organization and staunch proponent of political pluralism said in an interview... 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."

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 Jose Ramos-Horta's comment that "Those who have suspicions and reservations should not have them because Wolfowitz is very humane and sensitive," adding: "Ramos-Horta said he had met with Wolfowitz several times when the current US deputy defense secretary was Washington's envoy to Indonesia between 1986 and 1989, a time when East Timor was still under occupation by Jakarta."

Other selected cultural portrayals of Wolfowitz

The title character of the novel Ravelstein (2000) by Saul Bellow was based on Wolfowitz’s mentor at Cornell University Allan Bloom, while the character of one of his students, Philip Gorman, whose father is a fellow professor who comes into conflict with Ravelstein and who goes on to work for the U.S. Department of Defense, is believed to be based on Wolfowitz. According to James Mann, in Rise of the Vulcans (2004), "Wolfowitz thought that the novelist’s portrait was simply inaccurate or possibly a composite based in part on some other Bloom students and their fathers."

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." She describes Wolfowitz as the "intellectual high priest of the Bush administration's hawks," observing prophetically: "Iffy grooming habits are the least of Wolfowitz's worries as he takes on the presidency of the World Bank."

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. Curtis' documentary series examines Wolfowitz's work with Team B and his various other roles in various administrations leading up to the 2003 U.S. Invasion of Iraq: "According to Curtis' BBC documentary, Wolfowitz's group, known as "Team B," came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed several terrifying new weapons of mass destruction, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a sonar system that didn't depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable with our current technology."

On January 30, 2007, after his visit to Selimiye Mosque in Turkey, news media released photographs of Paul Wolfowitz's socks, which had holes in them. A few days later, Today's Zaman announced that the Turkish Hosiery Manufacturers' Association sent him twelve pairs of socks.

Ongoing criticism of Wolfowitz

Wolfowitz's economic arguments pertaining to the Iraq War

On March 27, 2003, Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq war, told a Congressional panel that oil would pay for Iraq's reconstruction. According to his testimony "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.” Wolfowitz's prediction was incorrect, in the four years since his statement the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq has not been paid for by oil revenues and the dollar figures Wolfowitz estimated ($50 -100 billion) have not come to fruition. In light of this miscalculation, detractors have criticized his appointment to head of the World Bank.

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. 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." According to a profile of Wolfowitz published in the London Sunday Times of March 20, 2005, Riza "shares Wolfowitz’s passion for spreading democracy in the Arab world" and "is said to have reinforced his determination to remove Saddam Hussein’s oppressive regime." Riza's employment at the World Bank and the relationship between Riza and Wolfowitz reportedly pre-dated Wolfowitz’s nomination.

The reported relationship created further controversy concerning Wolfowitz’s nomination to head the World Bank, because the organization's own ethics rules preclude simultaneous employment of couples if one reports to the other even indirectly through a chain of supervision. Sharon Churcher and Annette Witheridge, in The Daily Mail, quote one World Bank employee as saying that "Unless Riza gives up her job, this will be an impossible conflict of interest" and an unnamed Washington insider as saying that, "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." Wolfowitz responded that "If a personal relationship presents a potential conflict of interest, I will comply with Bank policies to resolve the issue."

Wolfowitz initially proposed to the bank's Ethics Committee that he recuse himself from personnel matters regarding Riza, but the committee rejected that proposal. 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. She transferred with a promotion and a raise of over $60,000, as well as guarantees of future increases. 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. 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. 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).

Wolfowitz's leadership of the World Bank

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

World Bank board members 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 and "a Roman Catholic with ties to a conservative Salvadoran political party"--repeatedly deleted references to family planning from World Bank proposals: "A copy of the report obtained by the Los Angeles Times [entitled "Strategy for Health, Nutrition and Population Results"] shows repeated deletions of references to family planning and contraception." According to Gaouette, "Women's health advocates said the situation was worrisome. 'There's mismanagement there,' said Carmen Barroso, a regional director for the International Planned Parenthood Federation. 'Wolfowitz appointed a guy in a very high position who felt free to censor in line with his personal beliefs. I think that's good grounds for sacking.'" According to Gaouette's account, Daboub "questioned staff outrage directed at him: 'To me this sounds like a storm in a glass of water,' he said in a recent interview. 'There is no reason understandable for this.'" In an email obtained by the Government Accountability Project and quoted by Gaouette, Madagascar country program coordinator Lilia Burunciuc wrote, "'One of the requests received from [Daboub] was to take out all references to family planning. We did that.'" Moreover, "Bank staff members dispute Daboub's claim that he made no changes to the Madagascar report. 'It's a blatant lie,' said one staffer who has seen the document. Like other internal critics, the employee requested anonymity because he said he feared for his job."

Gaouette observes that "The controversy has added fuel to anger at the bank over Wolfowitz's management style and his involvement in two unusual and large pay raises given to his girlfriend, Shaha Ali Riza, a bank employee on loan to the State Department.... Wolfowitz's problems have been compounded by revelations that Defense Department officials told one of their contractors to hire Riza for a short-term contract while Wolfowitz was the deputy Defense secretary. The Pentagon announced Wednesday [April 18, 2007] that it was looking into the matter.... These issues will be on the table as the bank's board of directors meets today [April 19, 2007] to debate Wolfowitz's future.

BBC News and other media outlets reported on the meeting in which Wolfowiz "faced" the World Bank's board of directors: he and his lawyer Robert Bennett continued to assert that he had engaged in no "conflict of interest" regarding "bogus charges" concerning the "promotion and pay rises" of his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, who was "seconded to the State Department" from the World Bank when he became its president in 2005, and that he had consulted the Bank's "ethics committee" about the matter before proceeding; he even "won a fresh endorsement from his former boss," President George W. Bush, who argued that Wolfowitz "should stay" head of the Bank and be "given a fair hearing." Attending a conference on education for the poor in Brussels, Belgium, amidst news reports that the World Bank ethics committee members disputed his claims, Wolfowitz insisted in a press conference that the controversy would not be "distracting" from the work of the World Bank. Yet, others are focusing on how "wary" Europeans are of potential international financial instability resulting from the continuing controversy affecting the World Bank president:

So guarded was the reception for Wolfowitz that Gordon Brown, Britain's chancellor of the Exchequer, canceled plans to appear on the podium with him at a news conference. British officials said publicly that Brown had decided to leave early to campaign in the Scottish elections. But privately they admitted that appearing side by side with Wolfowitz had become a political liability.

Wolfowitz initially escaped the hoard of reporters waiting to greet him at the entrance of the conference, held at the European Commission's headquarters, by entering the sprawling building through an underground garage. But at a news conference where former African child laborers discussed the importance of going to school and where Wolfowitz himself spoke movingly about his grandfather's lack of education, his discourse was disrupted by recurring questions about his stewardship.

Asked if he would resign and whether he was concerned the allegations against him were distracting from the bank's development goals, Wolfowitz stressed that the work of the bank was continuing.

"The work of the bank goes on," he said. "There are millions of poor people who depend on us, and we will continue that work. It's a matter of keeping promises made. We're talking about the long term, it goes beyond me."

But he sidestepped questions about his future, referring journalists to his testimony to a panel investigating his role in promoting Riza, for whom he helped arrange a pay raise, promotion and transfer to the State Department after he arrived at the bank in 2005. "The board is considering the issue," he said.

On Tuesday [May 1, 2007], two former top officials at the bank issued new statements disputing the contention of Wolfowitz that they and others knew about his actions on behalf of the woman, who had been employed at the bank for seven years when he joined. The officials' testimony exposed the extraordinary discord at the highest levels of the bank after Wolfowitz became president.

After some delay, the World Bank board's decision on Wolfowitz's future with the organization is expected within a week. In their "Communication" of May 1, 2007, the executive directors of the World Bank Group state:

Following the April 16 statement of the Development Committee, the ad hoc group has continued its work, taking it forward in an orderly manner, with fair process and careful deliberation.

The ad hoc group has completed an additional round of interviews with the people involved and received a number of statements. It will now draw its conclusions from the information obtained from the documents and during the course of the interviews. It will then expeditiously prepare its report and submit it to the Executive Directors for their decisions.

The Executive Directors remain very concerned about the impact on the work of the Bank Group and are committed to the earliest possible resolution of the matter.

On May 5, 2007, Reuters reported that

More than 700 World Bank staff have signed a letter expressing concern and calling for a resolution of a crisis involving bank president Paul Wolfowitz as a decision over his leadership looms.

In a rare move, the 718 employees asked to add their names to a letter first circulated on April 26 by 46 World Bank officials working to implement the bank's anti-corruption strategy. The surge of signatures, on a public letter on the bank's website, reflected signs of increasing discontent.

The next 72 hours will be critical for the former No. 2 Pentagon official accused of violating staff rules by directing a high-paid promotion for his companion Shaha Riza, a World Bank Middle East expert, as an investigating panel prepares to announce its findings.

In the edition of New York Times of Monday, May 7, 2007, Steven R. Weisman reports from Washington, D.C. that by the weekend ending Sunday, May 6,

The World Bank committee investigating misconduct charges against Paul D. Wolfowitz, the bank president, failed to complete its review on schedule...but bank officials said the panel would eventually find that he violated bank rules barring conflicts of interest.

The committee, made up of 7 of the 24 members of the bank’s board, indicated last week that it would reach a conclusion about Mr. Wolfowitz on Saturday [May 5], and would transmit its findings to him to allow him to prepare for a rebuttal this week.

But no results were transmitted by early Sunday evening, though some officials said it was theoretically possible for the panel to finish later Sunday night.

Bank officials said the committee was also preparing a recommendation on what the full board should do in light of its finding but would not be disclosing that to Mr. Wolfowitz.

The committee is considering whether to recommend an outright removal or some kind of no-confidence vote that may persuade him to resign. That part of the conclusion is not likely to become known until later, bank officials said.

Later, on Monday, May 7, 2007, news media reported that Kevin Kellems, "director of strategy in external affairs and senior adviser" and "the right-hand man of embattled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz," has "resigned," which some commentators regarded as a "blow" to the embattled World Bank president and some analysts as "likely an effort to save his boss."

By Tuesday, May 8, 2007, according to Lesley Wroughton reporting for Reuters, amidst ostensible support for Wolfowitz from the United States and increasing concerns from the European community, the World Bank Group's ethics panel had already given Wolfowitz three days to respond to their findings (by Wednesday, May 9), eliciting a request from Bob Bennett, Wolfowitz's lawyer, that the Bank grant Wolfowitz at least the five days prescribed by its policies to respond to "such allegations," and, preferably, a full week, and the United States Treasury "urged" that the Bank accommodate Bennett's request for more time to respond. "European board sources" said that "Wolfowitz was unlikely to quit even though the panel's findings further damaged his credibility." Not attributing Wolfowitz's situation to his being an American, Dutch Minister of Finance and deputy prime minister Wouter Bos appeared less concerned about the process of how the World Bank selects its presidents, who are by tradition American, and more about the dubious "integrity" of this particular incumbent.

According to more recent press reports, the World Bank Group has given Wolfowitz until Friday, May 10, 2007, to respond to the "report by a special bank panel that accuses Wolfowitz of circumventing bank rules when he arranged for the compensation package." Whereas "[c]ritics - including many European countries, many on the bank's staff, aid groups and others - want Wolfowitz to resign," as they "contend that the controversy has tarnished the bank's reputation and could hobble its ability to raise billions of dollars from countries around the world to bankroll financial help for poor nations," Counselor to the President Dan Bartlett and White House Press Secretary Tony Snow continue the Bush administration's call for a "fair hearing" for Wolfowitz, "still" expressing "full support" for him.

Forthcoming Wolfowitz biography

A new biography, entitled Paul D. Wolfowitz: Visionary Intellectual, Policymaker, and Strategist, by Lewis D. Solomon, Van Vleck Professor of Law at George Washington University, is being published by Praeger Security International, a division of Greenwood Publishing Group (expected publication date: May 30, 2007).

See also

• American imperialism
• Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA)
• Neoconservatism
• Project for the New American Century
• Wolfowitz Doctrine
• World Bank Group

References

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.

Other biographical accounts

• Boyer, Peter J. "The Believer: Paul Wolfowitz Defends His War". The New Yorker. November 1, 2004. Accessed May 3, 2007.
• Cassidy, John. "The Next Crusade: Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank". The New Yorker. April 9, 2007. Accessed May 3, 2007.
• Goldenberg, Suzanne. "The Guardian Profile: Paul Wolfowitz". The Guardian. April 1, 2005. Accessed May 1, 2007.
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• "Paul Wolfowitz, Velociraptor". The Economist. February 7, 2002. Accessed May 1, 2007. (Premium content; subscription required.)
• Plotz, David. "Paul Wolfowitz: Bush's Testosterone Man at Defense". Slate. October 12, 2001.
• "Profile: Paul Wolfowitz. BBC News. March 17, 2005. Accessed May 2, 2007.
• "Profile: Paul Wolfowitz: Hawk with a Lot of Loot Needs a Bit of Lady Luck". The Times. March 20, 2005. Accessed May 3, 2007.
• Schmitt, Eric. "Man in the News; The World Is His Stage; Paul Dundes Wolfowitz". The New York Times. March 17, 2005. Accessed May 3, 2007. (TimesSelect subscription required.)
• Solomon, Lewis D. Paul D. Wolfowitz: Visionary Intellectual, Policymaker, and Strategist. New York: Praeger Security International/Greenwood Publishing Group, forthcoming (May 30), 2007. ISBN 0-275-99587-9 (10). ISBN 978-0-275-99587-4 (13). 216 pp.

Recent commentaries and speeches by Wolfowitz

• "Commentaries" by Paul Wolfowitz. Online postings. World Bank Group, web.worldbank.org. October 11, 2005–April 12, 2007. Accessed May 5, 2007.
• "Paul Wolfowitz's Remarks at Education Conference, Brussels". "Speeches". World Bank Group, web.worldbank.org. May 2, 2007. Accessed May 5, 2007.
• "Speeches" by Paul Wolfowitz. Online postings. World Bank Group, web.worldbank.org. June 24, 2005–May 3, 2007. Accessed May 5, 2007.

Interviews

• Tanenhaus, Sam. "Bush's Brain Trust". "(George W. Bush, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol, former Pentagon official Richard Perle)". Vanity Fair July 2003. AccessMyLibrary. July 1, 2003. Accessed May 1, 2007. Cf. U.S. Department of Defense News Transcript.
• "U.S. Department of Defense Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) News Transcript" of telephone interview of Paul Wolfowitz, conducted by Sam Tanenhaus. "Presenter: Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz". Press release. United States Department of Defense. May 9, 2003. Accessed May 2, 2007. ["Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with Sam Tannenhaus [sic], Vanity Fair".] Cf. Tanenhaus, "Bush's Brain Trust", Vanity Fair July 2003.
• "U.S. Department of Defense Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) News Transcript" of "Wolfowitz interview with the San Francisco Chronicle", conducted by Robert Collier. "Presenter: Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz". Press release. United States Department of Defense. February 23, 2002, accessed April 18, 2007. ["Interview with Robert Collier, San Francisco Chronicle".]
• Warner, Margaret. Paul Wolfowitz interview. The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, September 14, 2001.
• Weymouth, Lally. "'I'm Not a Unilateralist': Paul Wolfowitz Wants the World to Understand Him". Newsweek, April 4, 2005.

Other media reports and accounts

• Brooks, David. "Giving Wolfowitz His Due". The New York Times. March 8, 2005, Op-Ed. (TimesSelect subscription required.)
• "Challenges for Wolfowitz and the World Bank". Center for Global Development.
• Churcher, Sharon, and Annette Witheridge. "Will a British Divorcee Cost 'Wolfie' His Job?" The Daily Mail. March 20, 2005. (About reaction to Wolfowitz's nomination to head the World Bank.)
• Davis, Jack. "Paul Wolfowitz on Intelligence Policy-Relations", Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 39, No. 5 (1996).
• Goldenberg, Suzanne. "Bush Nominates Wolfowitz for World Bank". The Guardian. March 17, 2005.
• Hersh, Seymour M. "Annals of National Security Selective Intelligence: Donald Rumsfeld Has His Own Special Sources. Are They Reliable?" The New Yorker. May 12, 2003. Accessed May 8, 2007.
• Hughes, John. "A World Better Off with Wolfowitz at Bank Helm". The Christian Science Monitor. May 18, 2005. (Discusses Wolfowitz's personal character.)
• Juma, Jamal [M.] "Cementing Israeli Apartheid: The Role of World Bank". Left Turn Issue no. 18 (Winter 2006); and Linda Heard, "US Free Trade Agreements Split Arab Opinion", Al-Jazeerah, March 9, 2005; both "Sources" cited in "Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007: #9, The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall". Projectcensored.org. Online posting. 2007. ("Community Evaluator: April Hurley, MD; Student Researchers: Bailey Malone and Lisa Dobias.") Update provided by Juma with link to further information. ["Jamal Juma' (Jumá?) is Campaign Coordinator for the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (www.stopthewall.org).... For further information on the World Bank please refer to Stop The Wall: Fact Sheet 920."] Accessed May 2, 2007.
• Lekic, Slobodan (The Associated Press). "Indonesia Rights Groups Decry Wolfowitz". ABC News. March 22, 2005. Cf. "Indonesia Rights Groups Decry Wolfowitz". Kabar-indonesia Indo News. March 22, 2005. Accessed April 16, 2007. (Defunct links.) See High Beam Research for alternative access. Accessed May 8, 2007.
• Macewan, Arthur. "New Man at the World Bank: Wolfowitz at the World Bank". Dollars & Sense (archives). May 5, 2005. Accessed May 8, 2007.
• Milbank, Dana. "Intelligence Design and the Architecture of War". Washington Post. December 8 2005.
• "Paul Wolfowitz" at The Huffington Post – Updated news. Accessed 2 May 2007.
• Paul Wolfowitz's political donations listed by Newsmeat. Accessed May 5, 2007.
• Purdum, Todd S. "The World Bank Nominee; Bush Makes His Mark". The New York Times. March 17, 2005. (TimesSelect subscription required.)
• Sipress, Alan, and Ellen Nakashima. "Jakarta Tenure Offers Glimpse of Wolfowitz". The Washington Post. March 28, 2005. (On Wolfowitz's tenure as Ambassador to Indonesia.)
• "TimesTopics: Paul D. Wolfowitz" – The New York Times News Archive (Some require TimesSelect subscription for full access; others free full access.)
• Vidal, Gore. "The Enemy Within". The Observer, October 27, 2002, Review. Rpt. in lawyersagainstthewar.org, accessed May 7, 2007. Rpt. as "Goat Song: Unanswered Questions––Before, During, After 9/11". Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta. New York: Nation Books/Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002. ISBN 1560255021 (10). ISBN 978-1560255024 (13).
• "The War Behind Closed Doors". Frontline. Public Broadcasting Service. February 20, 2003.
• "Wolfowitz Watch". Bank Information Center, bicusa.org. May 7, 2007. Accessed May 8, 2007. ("BIC has specifically dedicated this webpage to monitoring Paul Wolfowitz’s presidency. The page is intended to inform individuals, civil society organizations and the media, by providing facts and linking to analysis on President Wolfowitz's appointments, speeches and travel schedule. BIC’s intention is to help the public both monitor President Wolfowitz's decisions and interpret their significance." Cf. Key Issues.)

Other related external links

• "Communication from the Executive Directors of the World Bank Group". Online posting. World Bank Group, web.worldbank.org. May 1, 2007. Accessed May 5, 2007.
  • "All News". May 7, 2007. Accessed May 8, 2007.
• "Compensation of the President, Executive Directors and Alternates, Management and Staff". World Bank Annual Report 2005. Accessed May 8, 2007.
• Wolfowitz, Paul. "Statement by Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank Group WB/IMF Spring Meetings 2007". Worldbank.org. April 12, 2007. Accessed May 1, 2007. (Video and audio links.)

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