Kentucky Deserves Mitch McConnell To Come Clean On His Role In The Paul Wolfowitz World Bank Scandal

Paul Wolfowitz faces possible termination as the President of the World Bank this week for arranging a job at the State Department for his girlfriend Shaha Ali Riza and for her to be paid a higher salary than Condoleeza Rice. However, the New Yorker profile on Paul Wolfowitz’s tenure at the World Bank reminded us that this is only the latest edition in the Wolfowitz hiring scandals at the World Bank, which many also associate with his hiring of former Sen. Mitch McConnell aide Robin Cleveland:

Wolfowitz hired two American political operatives who were closely associated with the war in Iraq: Robin Cleveland…and Kevin Kellems, who had been with Wolfowitz at the Pentagon. Perhaps inevitably, Cleveland and Kellems antagonized many on the bank’s staff. “Their attitude was: We are brighter than other people, we know more than other people,” a bank veteran who recently left told me. “They were unaccountable because they had no direct-line authority. Officially, they were just advisers to the president, but in fact they were calling the shots.”

Cleveland, in particular, incited hostility. On Capitol Hill, where she had worked for Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, she was known as “the dragon lady,” because of her aggressive approach to negotiations.

The people of Kentucky deserve to hear Mitch McConnell answer the following questions:

1. How many conversations did you have with Paul Wolfowitz about hiring your aide Robin Cleveland?

2. When did the conversations take place and what transpired?

3. Have any members of the McConnell and Chao family financially benefited from investments of the World Bank since the hiring of Robin Cleveland?

Cross-posted at DitchMitchKY.com