Wolfowitz Hires Prominent Lawyer in Fight to Stay at World Bank

nytimes
WASHINGTON, April 23 — Paul D. Wolfowitz, signaling anew that he will fight for his job as World Bank president, has enlisted a prominent lawyer who defended President Bill Clinton against accusations of sexual misconduct to help convince the bank’s board that Mr. Wolfowitz has done nothing to justify being ousted.

Robert S. Bennett, the lawyer selected by Mr. Wolfowitz, said in an interview that before the bank’s board acted on charges of ethical lapses, he and Mr. Wolfowitz wanted more time to prepare a case showing that the bank president had acted properly on all matters that the board is investigating.

“I am very worried about the rush to judgment,” Mr. Bennett said. “We just had a wonderful example of that in the Duke lacrosse case. I have reviewed the essential documents, and I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Mr. Wolfowitz exercised good faith and that everything he did was in the best interests of the bank.”

It was unclear whether Mr. Wolfowitz intended to pay his legal fees himself or whether he would seek reimbursement from the bank. His latest sign of apparent determination to keep his job came as the furor over his record continued to spread.

Bank officials said that after several days of canvassing hundreds of employees, about 25 vice presidents of the bank were preparing to document that the overwhelming majority of the employees favor Mr. Wolfowitz’s departure.

The vice presidents met with Mr. Wolfowitz in the afternoon and some bank officials said that they would present their conclusions about bank sentiment to the board of directors, the 24 representatives of various countries and groups of countries that run the bank’s day-to-day affairs in tandem with the president.

The Financial Times reported on Monday that the independent agency within the bank that assesses the effectiveness of bank programs concluded last week that “swift changes in management” were needed to restore its credibility.

In addition, a group of more than 40 former top officials at the bank, many of whom departed after clashing with Mr. Wolfowitz, issued a public call for him to resign.

Mr. Wolfowitz has tangled with the board and staff members on various issues, especially his anticorruption agenda, since he arrived in 2005 after serving as deputy secretary of defense and a chief architect of the Iraq war. But anger erupted this month over Mr. Wolfowitz’s acknowledgment that he had played a much larger role than previously understood in the pay-and-promotion package given to Shaha Ali Riza, his companion, two years ago. Ms. Riza, who had worked at the bank for seven years, was detailed to the State Department at that time.

In the last week or so, concern over two other issues — family planning and the environment — was spreading new rancor in the bank, contributing to the criticism.

Documents have surfaced indicating that one of Mr. Wolfowitz’s two top deputies, Juan J. Daboub, a managing director and former finance official in El Salvador, had deleted language referring to “family planning” and “climate change” in separate bank documents.

Some bank officials charge that these changes were made at the behest of the Bush administration. But they say that Mr. Wolfowitz and Mr. Daboub have denied during internal meetings that they intended to carry out any kind of policy change.

“None of the editorial changes that were made at my direction changed, or intended to change, the bank group’s program in the area of family planning,” Mr. Daboub wrote in an e-mail message to the bank’s vice presidents last week.

On Monday, the bank’s chief scientist, Robert T. Watson, said in an interview that Mr. Daboub “literally tried to eliminate the words ‘climate change’ everywhere in a policy paper” but that the words were put back. He said he was “absolutely convinced” that Mr. Wolfowitz had no role in the efforts.

Nevertheless, bank officials said that these issues were roiling the bank and that many officials wanted the board to make them part of its widening investigation of Mr. Wolfowitz into matters beyond Ms. Riza.

Mr. Bennett, a longtime player in Washington’s legal and political scene, said in the interview that he had not completed his own review of the Wolfowitz documents but was convinced that, on the matter of Ms. Riza, he had acted in good faith and that whatever his shortcomings — such as becoming involved directly in the matter of her salary — were being seized upon by people with other agendas.

“I don’t see any hanging offenses here, certainly no violations of law,” Mr. Bennett said. “People with their own private or personal agendas are using this incident to accomplish broader goals inconsistent with the mission of the bank.”

Mr. Bennett would not give details, but Mr. Wolfowitz’s supporters maintain that European directors of the bank are using the episode to wrest control of the bank away from Mr. Wolfowitz and the Bush administration.

Mr. Bennett was the lawyer last year for Judith Miller, the former reporter for The New York Times who was jailed for refusing to testify to a grand jury in the investigation of the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame as a Central Intelligence Agency operative.

He represented Mr. Clinton in the case brought by Paula Jones and helped settle the lawsuit.