May 10, 2007, 3:01 pm
About a World Bank Girl
By Mike Nizza
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/about-a-world-bank-girl/With Paul D. Wolfowitz today getting more time to respond to charges that he mishandled his companion’s reassignment and pay package, it seemed like a good time to take a look at the woman in question, Shaha Ali Riza.
As opposition to President Paul D. Wolfowitz gathered at the World Bank in April, Web searches for images and references to the woman at the center of the controversy surged more than 1,550 percent on Yahoo. People were dying to see the face that launched a thousand critics.
A photograph from 2003 turned up, but Ms. Riza’s voice has been silent since she delivered defiant testimony to World Bank leaders looking in to the matter.
“Whatever happened to my confidentiality agreement with the bank?” she asked as leaks about her sprang from the institution. One that reached Salon claimed that she was known at the bank as Mr. Wolfowitz’s “neoconcubine.”
A profile of Shaha Ali Riza in today’s Washington Post describes her as an Oxford-educated women’s rights activist who speaks several languages, has traveled widely and has impressed many people with her intellect, including Sandra Day O’Connor, the former Supreme Court justice.
A friend tells The Post that Ms. Riza did not like being portrayed as a “bimbo” when she “has actually achieved a lot.”
The paper also dishes about where the couple first met (the National Endowment for Democracy); their common interests ( “spreading democratic ideals in Arab lands”); the paucity of public displays of affection when they started dating ( “one of the most well-guarded secrets in Washington and the Arab world”); and a friend’s lawyerly opinion on whether they would stay together ( “There is nothing that suggests the opposite for me at the moment”).