http://villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/images/liz-cheney,-shaha-riza-50mi-thumb.jpgWhat's this??? you will have to read the SECOND article to find out. The first article is from this week. The second article is from 2005 when this whole thing started.
Riza was unhappy about leaving the sinecure at the World Bank. But in 2006 Wolfowitz made a series of calls to his friends that landed her a job at a new think tank called Foundation for the Future that is funded by the state department. She was the sole employee, at least in the beginning. The World Bank continued to pay her salary, which was raised by $60,000 to $193,590 annually, more than the $183,500 paid to the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and all of it tax-free. Moreover, Wolfowitz got the state department to agree that the ratings of her performance would automatically be "outstanding". Wolfowitz insisted on these terms himself and then misled the World Bank board about what he had done.
Exactly how this deal was made and with whom remains something of a mystery. The person who did work with Riza in her new position was Elizabeth Cheney, then the deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. And Riza's assignment fell under the purview of Karen Hughes, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. But these facts raise more questions than they answer.The documents released by the World Bank do not include any of the communications with the state department. How did Elizabeth Cheney come to be involved? Did Wolfowitz speak with the vice-president, Dick Cheney, for whom he had been a deputy when Cheney was secretary of defence in the elder Bush's administration?
Riza, who is not a US citizen, had to receive a security clearance in order to work at the state department. Who intervened? It is not unusual to have British or French midlevel officers at the department on exchange programs, but they receive security clearances based on the clearances they already have with their host governments. Granting a foreign national who is detailed from an international organisation a security clearance, however, is extraordinary, even unprecedented. So how could this clearance have been granted?
State department officials familiar with the details of this matter confirmed to me that Shaha Ali Riza was detailed to the state department and had unescorted access while working for Elizabeth Cheney. Access to the building requires a national security clearance or permanent escort by a person with such a clearance. But the State Department has no record of having issued a national security clearance to Riza.
State department officials believe that Riza was issued such a clearance by the defence department after SAIC was forced by Wolfowitz and Feith to hire her. Then her clearance would have been recognised by the state department through a credentials transmittal letter and Riza would have accessed the state department on Pentagon credentials, using her Pentagon clearance to get a state department building pass with a letter issued under instructions from Liz Cheney.
But state department officials tell me that no such letter can be confirmed as received. And the officials stress that the department would never issue a clearance to a non-US citizen as part of a contractual requisition. Issuing a national security clearance to a foreign national under instructions from a Pentagon official would constitute a violation of the executive orders governing clearances, they say.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sidney_blumenthal/2007/04/dances_with_wolfowitz.htmlAs the New York Times more or less reports this morning, the Bush regime is pumping $50 million into an agitprop scheme run by Cheney's non-gay daughter, who works in the State Department. Once again, the Times is being duped and is duping its readers. For one thing, Steven R. Weisman's story says this with a straight face:
"In many ways we're seeing that veil of fear is lifting," said Elizabeth Cheney, the State Department's official in charge of promoting democracy in the Middle East and the vice president's daughter. "We're seeing something very real happening across the region in terms of progress toward opening up societies, opening up political systems and economic systems."
What the paper doesn't say is that this is the project that World Bank chieftain Paul Wolfowitz sent his girlfriend, Shaha Ali Riza, over to the State Department to work on. I broke the news on September 22 of that creepy pairing of Cheney's daughter and Wolfie's gal pal. The least the Times could have done was mention that Riza is involved.
Insiders at the World Bank now tell me that Riza, a World Bank employee, is not only still getting paid by the bank but that she got a "non-competitive promotion" the day she left the bank in mid-September on "external assignment" to State.
And now she gets to play around with $50 million on some half-assed scheme to slop some cheery pastels on our tortured Middle East policies.
http://villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/2005/11/morning_report_219.php
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