Two Can Play The Leak Game

Bret Stephens follows up on allegations from Bank staffers that Wolfowitz' judges have ethical "issues." He focuses on an executive director at the Bank who's alleged to have a sweetheart at the bank that he moved into a job far beyond her qualifications. Stephens is careful to note this is an allegation as yet to be proved --it's the process that interests him, since the Board doesn't seem to have done anything about the allegation, contrary to its own rules. As he reports, the Bank Board is a closed loop, with no transparency or oversight. I'll leave you to read the details --looks very bad-- but here's the point.

Why does any of this matter? For one thing, it suggests the board lacks the most basic institutional mechanisms to police the conduct of its own members. This ought to call into question its fitness--and particularly Mr. Scholar's fitness--to judge the conduct of others. For another, the Daily Telegraph has reported that Mr. Scholar is likely to become Gordon Brown's chief of staff once the latter moves to 10 Downing Street.
But it matters most of all because the departure of Mr. Wolfowitz is being demanded by his most vehement critics to show that the World Bank is serious about setting the right example when it comes to governance. If it's a spring cleaning they want, why stop there?

Hey, vaunted free press: let's have that spring cleaning before Congress approves our contribution to the Bank budget a little later this year.

Update: the Samson strategy, let's call it.
P.S. New term of art here at W & W: Powerful American Unilateralist Hegemonic Neocons, or PAUHNs. See this comment.