May 9, 2007  U.S. Department of State reports that the #2 leader at the U.S. Department of State, John Negroponte will visit Quito, Ecuador, with his entourage, as part of a multi-nation visit, this week.

Negroponte is not only very late in visiting this once vibrant ally of the United States but fact-based reporting on Ecuador is so rampantly missing even as he is walking in to a zone fully prepared to present a false reality of the crisis in Ecuador.

In other words, Negroponte is steaming full speed ahead in to a trap set by the anti-US Bolivarians, sometimes called alternative democracy leaders, and more accurately called paid protesters from the Russo-Iranian axis of Hugo Chavez and George Soros-aligned NGO bank rolls.

These Fidel Castro-adoring thugs and drug runners intend to craft Ecuador in to a narco state and have already stripped the last vestiges of functional democracy in Ecuador, handing current president Rafael Correa full powers over their courts, their Congress and their military.

There is no rule of law any more in Ecuador and there is no one left to tell their truths, however much their local media has finally- and belatedly- commenced excellent reporting on the Correa end game. It seems everyone, from freedom lovers to the media, is very late at arriving at this moment where the only correct analysis of Ecuador is that it is today fully aligned with sub-world denizens of crime hiding under the false claim of verifiable political machinations.

Ecuador is no ally of the USA any more and cannot be honestly so deemed. 

(See AP story on Negroponte's visit here).
 
It is assured that the underlying problem facing Negroponte is determining any assessment regarding Ecuador will be impacted by the utter refusal of the Correa administration to reveal their own agenda for this now-failed state. Added to this is the affliction of the U.S. team to rabidly avoid fact-based analysis of what Negroponte will find in Ecuador in their own effort to appease and assuage the Correa team so as to present the false face that by ceding to the Chavez and Iranian political demands in Ecuador, Correa can somehow magically be saved...as long as the USA calls Ecuador its friend.
 
Friends of the USA are not residing in Carondelet Palace. This stunning news will come as a shock to the Negroponte team. While we wish it were the case, Negroponte, if he retains his own integrity at all, will determine this fact immediately. But to avoid the realities on the ground, Correa has cleverly set up a decoy/ a false agenda to distract and discourage on the ground analysis of the Ecuadorean crisis to dissuade Negroponte from reaching honest conclusions about the state of disaster which is underway.

In other words, Negroponte must analyze key features of the Ecuadorean collapse as they exist today and be prepared to satisfy the integrity demanded of his reporting by the high office which he holds and answer only unto his real boss: the American people who care more for honest reporting than they do for the cheesy game of appeasement, sometimes called permitting NGOS to run U.S. diplomacy, which is currently underway.
 
Although Correa and his team have sent a welter of pro-Chavez and pro-Bolivarian neo communists to Washington, D.C. this week in a doomed effort to deliver pro-Chavez propaganda ( also called lies) to benefit both Chavez and Correa, there are plenty of propagandists left in Quito this week to deliver their fake message to Negroponte. And there are thousands of paid, violent golpistas, sometimes called anarchists, who are in fact paid day workers on the Chavez-Correa bank rolls. They will be waiting to show Negroponte their hourly job which they call their reality. Unfortunately, this "reality" is not at all what most Ecuadoreans hold.
 
If Negroponte is to answer honestly to his boss- the American people- and the man whose confidence he holds, President George Bush, and if he is to be confirmed as Secretary of State to replace outgoing Condi Rice, Negroponte must show his commitment to U.S. ethical performance as well or, as have so many U.S. diplomats in the last decade, be sucked in to the vortex of Ecuadorean dishonesty and never ever survive with integrity intact.
As has been the case for over a decade, not one U.S. diplomat involved in Ecuador has not engaged in lying down with the dogs. Each one has woken up with fleas.
 
Ecuador is long past its initial flea infestation which began under then-president Buccaram of randomly corrupt and manipulative actors. Its infestation continued across the Mahuad years, even as Ecuador paid Jeffrey Sachs, at the urging of Peter Romero, tens of millions of dollars, to craft what essentially became the utter collapse of the Ecuadorean economy. 

Although the media did not hasten to decry the Mahuad-Jeffrey Sachs debacle in Carondelet Palace because Sachs is a close intimate and employee by any definition of George Soros and had the appearance of the blessings of the Clinton White House, no investigation of the facts commenced then as now.

It was no coincidence that Mahuad fled Ecuador, only to be housed by Sachs's friend, Ivonne Baki in her Boston domicile. And still no one asked where the money went- the state monies. Following the national disgrace of bankruptcy, no serious effort was made to rebuild functions in Ecuador except smallish band aids.

While busily applying band aids, not one president in over a decade actually provided leadership to rebuild Ecuador after the Soros-aligned team was done. There were plenty of locals to blame and scapegoat anyway.

Without principled leadership, the ship of state floundered, becoming an easy target for the take over by global mafias and their true allies from Caracas, whose well-honed plan has now been in play across Ecuador for over three months. A full scale infestation of dishonest, Cuban-Russian-mafia style actors as well as FARC-Middle Eastern money movers has replaced the flea-ridden two bit players in a world where every issue is parsed and manipulated beyond common sense and beyond rational thought.

Ecuador today is married in word and deed to the global community of criminals and extortionists, sometimes called the Russian-Venezuelan-Iranian axis of evil. And Ecuador today is crawling with the very same Soros-backed civic groups who daily advise Correa and his gaggle of Cuban-aligned cabinet members in their inexorable march into the doomed bosom of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro's criminal underbelly. 

Rafael Correa has no regard for the basics of contract law, functional diplomacy and has every intention to take U.S. monies while aiding U.S. enemies and destroying basic intellectual property rights (IPR) and the Bi Lateral Investment Treaty (IPR).

Correa must not be rewarded with an ATPDA extension for his malfeasance and crimes. The U.S. embassy in Quito claims mysteriously that they  are "suprised" that Correa breaks with the tenants of rule of law and has shredded the BIT with the USA. Surprised? We are surprised that these embassy spokespersons have the daring-do to reveal that they have not been monitoring factually Ecuadorean media and Correa's own words and deeds. It is precisely the BIT and IPR tools of opacity and respect that Correa and Chavez's money launderers fear.

And their refusal to respect even these fundamentals must not be rewarded, no matter what Soros, Correa or Chris Dodd demands.
   
There are questions that Negroponte must answer to satisfy his high post. He could start with these;
 
1. How long did it take for Correa's Patino, himself a Cuban-trained Sandinista and virulently dishonest manipulator, to see to it that his old Sandinista pal Paul Reichler was hired at Ecuadorean taxpayer expense as a primary FARC, Cuban, and Sandinista coordinator with the Soros teams and paid lobbyist for Correa and his marriage with Chavez?

Why was Reichler, with dizzying speed, leading Correa's cabinet members and Embassy officials in a game of propaganda across the U.S. government? Did anyone remind that it is a crime to lie to officers of the U.S. Congress?
 
Reichler, Correa's new mouth organ, is known as a defender of some of  history's worst mavens of crime, murder, and malfeasance such as the Sandinistas, Aristide of Haiti and the non-state terrorists currently relaxing in a Guantanamo holding facility. Reichler calls them paying clients.

Ecuador has just hired itself a top gun and he is firing at will. Already known for lying to various members of the U.S. congress and governmental agencies in Washington, the Patino-Correa-Reichler team is beavering away, with the aid and comfort of Senator Dodd's team, to lie some more to inform the feckless, hapless U.S. Congress and Bush team that Ecuador is in great shape, welcomes Americans, and sustains a very high direct foreign investment (DFI), really needs to manipulate interest rates and inflation to further manipulate their dishonest budgets and hide their own eroding employment, decimated Central Bank reserves and destroyed future.
 
It seems that Correa has no intention of being honest with the U.S. government. His own agents, who appear in Washington in wave after wave, apply Washington ambassador Gallegos in tandem with Correa cabinet officials to insist, against all facts, that DFI is up, Ecuador actually helps against the FARC (when Correa is rolling out the welcome mat to the FARC who have moved to Quito in droves), and that Ecuador will hate the USA if the USA fails to reward their bad behavior with a cost-free grant of an ATPDA extension which Ecuador neither deserves and has every intention of mismanaging.

Ecuador in no way warrants an ATPDA extension because there is no rule of law in Ecuador and under the Correa-Chavez plan, there will not be any rule of law at all.

By any definition, Correa's regime is a drug running zone and will soon commandeer the post of Guayaquil for more Chavez mischief.There is no due process in Ecuador, there is no equal protection under the law, and there is no free  speech any more in Ecuador, unless one croons CHE! love songs by the camp fire with the Correa cabinet of Sandinistas, Castro lovers and writers of pornography. These are not serious leaders of any nation but they are serious in their intention to destroy democracy in Ecuador and replace it with fake democracy, also called by the Soros-hacks as "alternative democracy."
 
While former president Palacio inked the lasting effects of a lobbying deal with Roger Noriega to provide cover/make sure that Ecuador's theft of Occidental's property- about five billion dollars worth- was well hidden under the cloak of respectability...Roger's own erstwhile respectability, Roger Noriega himself is now used badly by the Correa-Chavez team who have every intention of proceeding in their regional squeeze to re unite the Andes in one bloc- their bloc.

To wit, Correa has lied about the domestic and regional benefits of the base at Manta, Ecuador. Correa wants drug surveillance removed from his happy aerial and ocean-bound drugs transshipment centers in Guayaquil and Manta.

Further, Correa demands that the public is misled and that no one grasp the concept that his team is beavering away to politically attack Colombia's Uribe and his principled positions. While President Uribe has led Colombia to a true economic and civil stability, itself no small miracle, Correa would like to see the USA cease its support for the fight against the horrifically violent FARC and plunge Colombia into a worse scenario than before Uribe- where thousands died annually just so the communist-narcoterror group known as the FARC could kill, rape, plunder and destroy- for fun and profit.

Today, any sharp analysis of the FARC must note its alliance with the Middle Eastern heroin trade and Middle Eastern narcoterror groups. The cocaine trade is increasingly irrelevant: it is the heroin trade that is remunerative.
 
While busily telling Washingtonians that Uribe is a good guy while aligned with the very souls pointing political and economic bullets at his back....and rearming the FARC with real bullets for their Kalashnikov rifles, Roger Noriega would serve a new found moral principle in returning his ill gotten gains from Ecuador and turn states' evidence on the role he has played to elevate this crime capitol of Quito.

Indeed, Noriega would do well to denounce his close relationship with Ecuador even as today the government of Ecuador is paying its own goon squads to chirpily decry and debase John Negroponte on the basis of lies and misinformation, all stemming from an illogical and visceral hatred owned by Senior Patino,  himself a Sandinista and Cuban-backed operative from the 1980s, whose intimate from the Sandinista years is today Rafael Correa's mouth organ....in Washington, D.C. and has effectively commandeered a cover over that Ecuador is wonderful even as Ecuador launches a horrific stream of lies and propaganda knowingly.

Instead of squeezing Uribe into an unprincipled leadership of the FARC and for the FARC, the better part of valor is to squeeze these Russo-Iranian-Venezuelan-Cuban-Sandinista liars, traitors and ninnyhammers, dimwits and dunces....who should go to jail at once.
 
2. Negroponte must know that his own career hangs in the balance on what he does here now in Quito. Will he report the facts or report the fake version?

Correa has just completed his self coup. Correa's unconstitutional and illicit auto golpe to seize all powers is finished and he rules unfettered by illegal presidential decrees of his own making. Correa controls the congress, the courts and while the media is very late to return to its primary function as news reporter in light of Correa's media shuttering, they too suffer his firm hand.

Free speech is closing even as Correa has instilled fear- real fear- by any who peacefully protest against his Cuban style paradise in Quito. Others who should retain independent thinking have been easily bought and sold with Chavez's monies like cheap beads in a bazaar.
 
The facts are this:

a. Ecuador is no longer a democracy by any assessment, even though it holds state mandated federal and local elections. All other democratic structures are wiped out. The courts, the government, the police, the military and the congress are all controlled by one man who today has dictatorial powers.

b. Correa is a liar and his entire cabinet are liars. Correa has rolled out the FARC and Venezuelan criminals and they have rolled in to Quito.

Negroponte must review the Venezuelan and Iranian deals with Correa because there is no longer an independent Congress in Ecuador whose function is to review Correa's opaque deals. Negroponte must surely note that without due diligence, his fact finding is based on propaganda- Chavez and Castro's political propaganda- which today has substituted any facts about Ecuador for its blatant misinformation campaign.

c. Negroponte must cease the gamesmanship proffered by Linda Jewell and her gang that lies to the U.S. public that Ecuador is growing economically and has attracted more and more direct foreign investment, when foreign investment is fleeing- running for the door in this lawless narcostate where no man enjoys due process or equal protection under the law.

The laws today in Quito are meaningless. Correa rules by presidential decree and only his politburo enjoy protection for his new presidential goon squads, sometimes called his military and police. As is well known, half of Correa's military and police today follow Peru's Montesinos's plan to enjoy weapons running and drugs transshipments to aid and abet the FARC while lying to the public, claiming that they do not help the FARC when they do.

We can only hope that Negroponte rejects Luigi Einaudi's craven past policies, instilled across his pals Peter Romero and of course Roger Noriega, of the 1990s that some core behavior is better than none and thus reward these dishonest criminals with U.S. beneficence.

We somehow believe that President Bush is no supporter of the Clinton era gamesmanship of passive- aggressive enabling of narcoterrorists and drug traffickers. Drug running is not a grey area. Not in Peru. Not in Colombia and not in Ecuador, where drugs transshipments are soaring if anyone takes the time to review the data.

Like pregnancy, either one is or one is not involved in drug running and clearly, the Correa team is involved in drug running even as new stories emerge that about half their military is profiteering by weapons shipments and protection rackets for the FARC. The USA lost a lot of credibility and money by following the doomed to failure false face of the Einaudi/Soros plan. We assume Negroponte is not that stupid or craven. The fruits of these past failures in integrity are on the streets today in Quito, Ecuador.
 
3.  How much money is spent by the Russo-Iranian-Venezuelan axis to stage this anti-Negroponte and anti-U.S. theatre of so called activists in Ecuador this week?

How much of this staged virulence was factually reported pre-trip to Negroponte or was he, like so many Americans, kept factually in the dark by the U.S. embassy team, now claiming to be "surprised? "
 
4. International media reports today that Negroponte faces "friction" in Ecuador. This is misleading. Friction means that there is dialogue. There is no dialogue with Correa. Negroponte faces not friction but an avalanche of Correa's idea of democracy and truth telling: fake protests and well staged distractions.Correa has already performed his dialogue which is to close down dialogue and stage- quite publicly- a welcome mat for Negroponte which is full of hatred.

By deceiving the public that he is welcoming Negroponte, Correa shows his own face of deception and evil which has taken over. Correa, contrary to what US ambassador Jewell likes to gushingly relay about her friends in the Castro-Chavez-Correa triangle, has no interest whatsoever in dialogue.

Correa has never learned the adult skill of informed discussions. All who know him are aware of this. Correa, more stubborn than most Bolivians, simply rules by prejudice and acts like a spoiled teen ager- stamping his smallish feet and stages temper tantrums, using his state-backed goon squads to torment the public and present a fake theatre that Ecuador is seething with hatred for the USA, when this is not the case. But because the feckless passive-aggressive Ecuadoreans refuse to stand on principle to denounce their new princeling of adolescent behavior, Rafael Correa commandeers their nation in to a failed state, as is the case.

A failed narco-terror state of unending corruption is planned. Will Negroponte report on these facts or will we see more photos of him and Tom Shannon with their shoes off, donning goofy looking hats?  Friction in Quito? No- it is a staged gaggle of hatred to dissuade Negroponte from any adult behaviors.

We can only vainly hope that Linda Jewell has denounced Paul Reichler- and all his well paid cronies, sometimes called highly paid NGOs who are ensconced across Quito to deliver Correa's coup de grace in service to destroying democracy-- for his aid and comfort to the Russo-Iranian-Venezuelan-Cuban-Ecuadorean axis of evil. We also hope that the next time she even thinks to support a U.S. congressional swing of these well paid mavens of manipulation- whose sole intention is to lie to the U.S. congress- that her hand is stilled. It is still not acceptable to lie to the U.S. government and the U.S. congress, no matter how shamefully Linda Jewell prefers to aid and assist her pro-Chavez Senator Chris Dodd- Ivonne a Baki friends to mislead and misrepresent the U.S. public.
 
We object to the international media constantly telling us all that Correa is a U.S. trained economist. This is a bald lie. Correa attended a massive U.S. university well known for shopping mall degrees for money. Correa is not well educated. A quick review of his so called less than 100 page "Thesis" shows it shockingly full of typos, errors and blatant mishandling of statistical data to vainly try to prove that all international development destroys citizen growth and that capitalism and development are evil.

We guarantee that this is no U.S. highly trained economist but a communist propagandist who failed to prove in his "shopping mall" education that communism is economically sustainable and lifts peoples out of poverty. Correa's education, like his thesis and like his person, is shallow and fake. He is not a highly trained economist but himself a recipient of a so called doctoral education in under two years which he simply abused to try to prove his own flawed thinking that Castro's communism alone will save Latin America.

We are not convinced of this effrontery and neither should be Negroponte. We are not sure any more what Tom Shannon thinks about Castro's communism but somewhere in his past, Shannon was not averse to defending democracy- functional democracy and not this new fake democracy sold by the Soros groups and Chavez called alternative democracy which is....a crude lie. President Bush really needs to wake up and insist that the USA only support functional democracy and not this phony democracy which is, like Correa's phony education, all about installing communism, sometimes called 21st Century Socialism, which is of course more correctly called Legalizing Global Criminals for Self Enrichment by Kleptocratic State Actors.
 
For Negroponte to embrace Rafael Correa, as Linda Jewell no doubt hopes, would be to observe the USA lying down with dogs so debased that their perfidy will have long lasting remnants in the annals of deceptive and destruction, ruinous statehood.
 
"Friction" in Ecuador is being sent to Washington in tandem with the Negroponte visit. This well paid "friction" includes a series of propagandists to further lie and provide aid and comfort to Rafael Correa. With no intention but to mislead the U.S. government, these advocates of the Chavez-style communism in Ecuador are debased and dishonest.

Included in the U.S. embassy-backed welter of propagandists is the always faithful InterAmerican Dialogue presentation of a man, Cesar Montufar, who has lived off the U.S. dole- U.S. AID dole for a very long time.

This week he will inform the so called Washington community that all not quite so wonderfully well in Ecuador. Cesar sheepishly tried to inform Washington on May 9 that Correa is making a power grab with his new constitution. This is however the opposite of what he claims he is paid to write for El Comercio in Quito.

Cesar has written on the wonderfulness of Correa and his power-grabbing constitution's necessities. Cesar likes to tell readers that he supports the assembly ( having worked hard to bring it about by any means possible) and now he is worried about Correa's power consolidation.

Cesar Montuffar not only failed his readers when he failed to professionally report that Correa is power hungry but also there is no way out with Correa.  We remind hereto that Cesar, who lived very well off of US AID, also ran a reprehensible piece in Ecuador's El Comercio  basically telling us all just why it is a good idea to steal  from U.S. companies and still he is honored with more U.S. funding support and a rare closeness with the U.S. embassy, who co ordinated his well times entrance to Washington to deflate any anti-Correa opinion and encourage the installation of the Chavez-Morales constitution in Ecuador.

Following close on his heels will be more delegations of liars- also called profiteers with the Correa-Chavez teams, seeking to impress the U.S. government and U.S. media that Ecuador is a morally stand up nation deserving of U.S. monies. This is a crude lie.

The Chamber of Commerce of Quito, itself terribly compromised today in back door deals with Chavez's agents across Ecuador, will tell the members of the U.S. government that even though Ecuador has performed nothing meaningful to "deserve" an ATPDA extension, Correa deserves this anyway because if the USA does not give Correa  what he wants, he will have a tantrum, as all good teen age temper tantrum throwers do perform.

Already Correa has said that Ecuador must have ATPDA extension. This is of course to provide a false employment for his land which, without US taxpayer give away of the ATPDA would be exposed for what it is: a land with unending unemployment because of Correa's doomed policies.

We can only wonder why anyone would prolong Correa's communism under the  cover of U.S. tax payers' monies, called an ATPDA extension for the undeserving and mreitless. Correa's government neither deserves nor warrants any U.S. give aways called an ATPDA extension.

The Correa regime deserves to have the ATPDA suspended immediately and all U.S. funding cut off. The Correa regime is not a democracy, is aligned with global criminals, is chock full of liars and has debased its presence before the global community.
 
If Negroponte is sucked in to the vortex of liars and enablers of this shockingly crude and dishonest gaggle of adolescents running Quito, he does not deserve to ascend at State Department in any leadership capacity.

If Tom Shannon  presumes to prepare Negroponte's Kool Aid, like some poisoned cocktail, of enabling  criminals in the Andes, Negroponte is lost. We are holding small hopes that Negroponte will stand on principle and not have his moral principles eroded by the very Kool Aid that got us to this dire moment in time.

The Andean region is falling like dominoes. Averse as they are to admitting this, the facts are clear. Negroponte must not be fooled by the new "engagement" plan for the Andes which is old fashioned appeasement and throwing in the towel which is also called surrender to communism.

If this is "engagement," we want none of it for it is too "Foggy" to mean anything at all and certainly helps no one except those engaged in gay abandon of U.S. principles. THe Andean region is fuzzy enough by their own rejection of clear thinking. Andean folks do not need to import more fuzzy thinking at a time when the desparately need clear thinking- not coddling and enabling of extortionists, banking cartels, and drug runners.

Today Negroponte must spell out the differences between surrender to criminal cartels, also called the new Andean democracy, and functional/ real time U.S. adult-like diplomacy because we are not hearing or seeing this.

The Andean zone is chock full of the oh so engagingly deceptive Chavez-Cuban-Correa take over plan to enshrine the Russo-Iranian axis of evil. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear knows this. Engage with this? To what ends? Will Negroponte respond to his real boss- the American people or to his new master- the Soros-backed non-tax paying masters of pretext and instability for fun and profit- at the expense of freedom lovers? 

We will be watching and looking for a real road map of things that work (long abandoned) which includes functional law and order and functional democracy- not enabling of more crime. In fact, the USA knows what works. We have a decent road map already. It is past time to take it out of the trunk of the car and use it instead of hiding it away, as is the case. Otherwise, all this new "engagement" is a road map....off a cliff.
 
Like his predecessors, will Negroponte be sucked in to the disastrous, career-ending vortex of Ecuadorean dishonesty or will he answer to his employer- his real employer (the American people who deserve better than this gaggle of fools, sometimes called the government of Ecuador, who steal from Americans and are the very Americans who see no support when Ecuadoreans steal from our companies) - the facts? It is a defining moment. We are rooting for Negroponte to win.
 
We know that any Customer Service questionnaire regarding the US embassy in Quito from those who need it most- Americans- would show an abysmal track record. No sane business person has once been helped by that woebegone palace of intrigue and coordination for the Chavez/Correa and Soros-backed NGO realm whose instructions come from Chris Dodd and not their boss- the American people-  whom they treat as know nothings and pesky irritants that they must, like all good Ecuadoreans manipulate and get out of town..before anyone comments on what they are actually doing. What they are doing is crafting a welter of anti US behaviors that is the banking center for the new anti US nexus.

Ecuador is of course collateral damage already to the greedy Russo-Iranian-Venezuelan money machine. Correa is their bag man and one part of their strategy to squeeze and cut off Peru and Colombia. They call this the "scissors" plan.

Already, misinformed persons from the U.S. democratic party like U.S. Senator Leahy, on Dodd's instructions to assist their Soros-backed progeny, are causing harm to Uribe's principled position. U.S. ambassador Jewell, instead of calling the Wall Street Journal reporting as "too strong" should instead pay attention to the facts and cease the on going cynicism which is foolish in extremis.

We provide a full text here from The Wall Street Journal so as to not confuse folks in Quito who would like to pretend that they do not get the facts.The same Russo-Venezuelan-Cuban-Iranian axis, so virulently and dishonestly attacking principled positions today, do truly intend to see enshrined a carbon copy of the Chavez-Morales-Correa communism constitutions in the USA. To avoid this fact is to avoid where Chavez and Soros are spending their Axis money- lots of money- to instill their brave new and excessively dirty- world called alternative democracy.
 
There is only one analysis of Ecuador that holds up today. Ecuador today is a failed and lawless state, fully married with the Chavez bloc and more recently marrying with the Iranian bloc. It is a place where courage and dignity have run and justice is denied at the point of a gun. And that gun is soon to be a Chavez- supplied weapon of choice by the FARC, the Kalashnikov.
 
-Pedro Camargo for ECrisis
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REVIEW & OUTLOOK     Wall Street Journal

Axis of Soros

The men and motives behind the World Bank coup attempt.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007 12:01 a.m.  

Mark Malloch Brown spoke Monday to a crowded auditorium at the World Bank's headquarters, warning that the bank's mission was "hugely at risk" as long as Paul Wolfowitz remained its president. Only hours earlier, news leaked that a special committee investigating Mr. Wolfowitz had accused him of violating conflict-of-interest rules. A coincidence? We doubt it.

Mr. Malloch Brown, remember, was until last year Kofi Annan's deputy at the United Nations. In that position, he distinguished himself by spinning away the $100 billion Oil for Food scandal as little more than a blip in the U.N.'s good work, and one that had little to do with Mr. Annan himself. Last week, Mr. Malloch Brown was named vice president of the Quantum Fund, the hedge fund run by his billionaire friend George Soros. A former World Bank official himself and ally of soon-to-be British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Mr. Malloch Brown would almost surely be a leading candidate to replace Mr. Wolfowitz should he step down. Not surprisingly, Gordon Brown cold-shouldered Mr. Wolfowitz at a recent meeting in Brussels.

The bank presidency would be a neat coup for Sir Mark, and not just because the post has heretofore gone to an American. He also stands for everything Mr. Wolfowitz opposes, beginning with the issue of corruption. Consider Mr. Malloch Brown's defense of the U.N.'s procurement practices.

"Not a penny was lost from the organization," he insisted last year, following an audit of the U.N.'s peacekeeping procurement by its Office of Internal Oversight Services. In fact, the office found that $7 million had been lost from overpayment; $50 million worth of contracts showed indications of bid rigging; $61 million had bypassed U.N. rules; $82 million had been lost to mismanagement; and $110 million had "insufficient" justification. That's $310 million out of a budget of $1.6 billion, and who knows what the auditors missed.

Mr. Malloch Brown also made curious use of English by insisting that Paul Volcker's investigation into Oil for Food had "fully exonerated" Mr. Annan. In fact, Mr. Volcker's report made an "adverse finding" against the then-Secretary-General. Among other details, the final report noted that Mr. Annan was "aware of [Saddam's] kickback scheme at least as early as February 2001," yet never reported it to the U.N. Security Council, much less the public, a clear breach of his fiduciary responsibilities as the U.N.'s chief administrative officer. Mr. Malloch Brown described the idea that Mr. Annan might resign as "inappropriate political assassination"--a standard he apparently doesn't apply to political enemies like Mr. Wolfowitz.

Mr. Malloch Brown never made any serious attempt to reform the U.N. beyond the cosmetic, while doing everything he could to block the real reforms proposed by Americans Christopher Burnham and former Ambassador John Bolton. He was, however, energetic when it came to lecturing Americans about what they owed the U.N., such as joining the "reformed" Human Rights Council (whose only achievement to date has been to castigate Israel), pursuing a "new multilateral national security," and otherwise empowering the likes of Mr. Malloch Brown, his multilateral mates and their tax-free salaries.

Views like these help explain why Mr. Malloch Brown is in such favor with Mr. Soros, who has publicly suggested the U.S. will need a "de-Nazification" program to erase the taint of the Bush Administration. So close are the two that Mr. Malloch Brown lives in a suburban New York home owned by Mr. Soros. Mr. Malloch Brown says he pays market rent, though reporting by the New York Sun's Benny Avni disputes that. In any case, it's safe to assume that Mr. Soros's widely published views are close to Mr. Malloch Brown's somewhat more guarded ones.

So it's not surprising that many on the World Bank staff would cheer Mr. Malloch Brown: He's perfect for an institutional culture in which "progressive" thinking goes hand-in-glove with a tolerance for corruption. That culture has been on vivid display in the Euro-coup against Mr. Wolfowitz. This weekend the committee investigating the claims dropped 600 pages in the president's lap and told him he had 48 hours to respond--in direct violation of World Bank staff rule 8.01, 4.09, which states that "the amount of time allowed a staff member to comment [on an investigative report] . . . will not be less than 5 business days." Following protests from Mr. Wolfowitz's lawyer, the committee gave him 72 hours.

This is the same kangaroo court that last month leaked its guilty verdict to the Washington Post before Mr. Wolfowitz even had a chance to plead his case. Our sources who have seen the committee's report tell us it is especially critical of Mr. Wolfowitz for daring to object publicly to the committee's methods and thereby bringing the bank's name into disrepute. The Europeans running this Red Queen proceeding prefer that they be able to smear with selective leaks without rebuttal.

Mr. Malloch Brown warned on Monday that, if Mr. Wolfowitz stayed as president, European countries might withhold funding from the next financing round for the bank's International Development Association. We hope he's right, though we know few European finance ministers who aren't eager to throw good money after bad. Still, it's a remarkable bit of chutzpah for the man who downplayed corruption at the U.N. to seek the ouster of the man who has fought to reduce corruption at the World Bank.

If the Bush Administration now abandons Mr. Wolfowitz as he faces a decision from the bank's board of governors, it will not only betray a friend but hand the biggest victory yet to its audacious enemies in the George Soros axis.

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