The Audacity of Shaha Riza's statement to the ad hoc committee is just breath-taking. Attorney at her side (the same woman who went after Valerie Plame and accused her of not being 'covert'), Shaha took Paul Wolfowitz's defiant tone and selective culling of the facts.

Speaking of her professional accomplishments, she left out her gig at SAIC. Since her G4 visa prohibits working other than at the Bank, it's good she has an attorney.

Quoting from her performance evaluations, she does not mention anything other than the final comments. No ratings on deliverables or behavioral assessments, and we don't even know whether she quoted past managers accurately, or in full.

Claiming discrimination for not being promoted, she does not mention that the narrowness of her geographic experience by itself would probably account for her not being cleared, either for an in-situ promotion or for a communications manager position. Presumably there are minutes of those meetings, if the Board asks to see them, as they should.

Defending the salary she was given on promotion, before she left to work for Liz Cheney, she reminds us that hers is "within the same range", omitting that it's unusual--and against the rules--to get a nearly 40% raise on promotion and a guarantee of annual raises so high and so controlled as to be improbable, year on year, for a decade. She does not mention the deal about her promotion to the next grade, or to be a Vice President if her career was impeded for a full decade.

Decrying the release of her personnel information, she seems remarkably well-informed about the spouses of two other senior staff, one of whom left years earlier (and whose spouse, by the way, a woman of some talent, spent some time outside the Bank at an international NGO in Europe). As for the source of the op-ed piece in the WSJ, I guess we know now... (NB, as well, that the author of that shrill piece was the editor of one of Conrad Black's papers. Lord Black is before a jury in Chicago for his misbehavior at Hollinger Group, on whose board sat Richard Perle, a neocon buddy of Shaha's boyfriend. The allegations against Lord Black include using corporate funds for various lavish expenses by and for his wife.)

Ah, yes, this is all sounding familiar now.

And speaking of the limbo on her professional career, how are things at the Foundation for the Future these days, Shaha? Busy?

Deep Insider ~ May 01, 2007

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