From today’s Web Briefing: Ruth Wedgwood comes to Wolfowitz’s defense in the LA Times. Here’s the opener:

ON TAKING office, World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz set two priorities for the world’s premier development institution. He asked for a focus on Africa’s persistent poverty, and he targeted corruption that diverts aid dollars from the poor. African leaders endorsed this vision, but not all bank bureaucrats were thrilled by Wolfowitz or his policies. Still, any friend of the bank’s work should be dismayed by the disruption caused by a manufactured scandal at a time when the bank needs to replenish its coffers. The imbroglio rattling the World Bank during its spring meeting of finance ministers is a rehash of its clumsy attempt to resolve the status of Shaha Ali Riza, a veteran bank professional and Wolfowitz’s longtime romantic partner. The authors of this acrid affair have nakedly forgotten the standards of fairness and due process owed Riza, who is a member of the bank staff association and entitled to its fiduciary protections. And the scandal-mongers have recklessly ignored a written record of bank documents that serves not to condemn but to exculpate Wolfowitz. Moreover, the case reveals the bank’s executive board and its ethics committee as organs of haphazard judgment. In 2005, the ethics committee surprisingly denied Wolfowitz’s written request that he be allowed to recuse himself from all decisions touching on Riza’s status because of their relationship. Then it disqualified her from remaining at the bank yet insisted that she be compensated for this disruption to her career. Next, it insisted that Wolfowitz re-enter the chain of command to execute its advice concerning Riza. And now, board members apparently have criticized Wolfowitz for doing exactly what the ethics panel directed.

And here’s the kicker:

The most amazing thing is that all the facts were reviewed for a second time by the World Bank ethics committee last year, and again it found nothing wrong. The chairman of the ethics committee pronounced in a Feb. 28, 2006, letter that “the ethics committee decided that the allegations … do not appear to pose ethical issues.” It is hard to square the record with the entertaining claim that the World Bank’s president somehow concocted a do-nothing job for his girlfriend. It’s a bum rap, and one that women professionals in dual-career families might worry about.