The Post and the Foreign Agent

UPDATED BELOW




A week ago, with the Paul Wolfowitz scandal at the World Bank at full pitch, people following the controversy were surprised to see a passionate defense of Wolfowitz that appeared on the op-ed page of The Washington Post It read:

We must get beyond the current crisis at the World Bank, a careful examination of which will show that Wolfowitz was operating in what he felt was the best interest of the institution and with the guidance of its ethics committee.

The author was Andrew Young, the former civil rights leader and onetime US ambassador to the United Nations.



Young began his piece by invoking the memories of Martin Luther King Jr. and Martin Luther King Sr.:

"Daddy King" -- the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. -- was always reminding us that "hate is too great a burden to bear." Even after a childhood of racist oppression and the cruel assassination of both his son Martin by white men and his wife by a deranged black man as she sat at the organ of Ebenezer Baptist Church playing the Lord's Prayer, he daily affirmed that we must never stoop to hate.

Young's message was, don't hate Wolfowitz. Not even for starting the Iraq war. Young noted he had once fantasized about giving Wolfowitz "a good thrashing" for that. But then he got to know Wolfowitz and "decided to work" with him "as a brother." He came to see Wolfowitz as devoted to promoting development in Africa. "It is my appeal," Young wrote, "that we offer Paul Wolfowitz the same chance to learn from the misjudgments of the past and move on together to construct a more just, prosperous and nonviolent world."



This was quite an endorsement from a fellow who was trying to place the moral capital of the King family behind the on-the-ropes neoconservative.

The Post identified Young this way:

Andrew Young has served as executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, as mayor of Atlanta and as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He is co-chairman of Good Works International, a consulting firm offering advice in emerging markets in the Caribbean and Africa.

The bio left out a crucial fact: Young is a paid lobbyist for Nigeria. According to records Young filed with the Justice Department, he registered as a foreign agent for Nigeria and works to advance the interests of the Nigerian government in Washington. And Nigeria has been a supporter of Wolfowitz during the current imbroglio. The day after Young's article appeared in The Washington Post, Nuhu Ribadu, chairman of Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, published an op-ed in The New York Times headlined, "Why Wolfowitz Should Stay." With the Young and Ribadu articles, it looked as if Nigeria was mounting a coordinated campaign to prop up Wolfowitz.

Washington Post readers, though, had no reason to suspect that Young had any agenda other than a personal commitment to justice and social development. The Post did not mention he had a financial relationship with a government backing Wolfowitz. (Young is also a registered lobbyist for Tanzania and Rwanda.)

The other day, I emailed Fred Hiatt, the editor of the Post's op-ed page and asked whether the paper should have acknowledged Young's financial tie to Nigeria in the author identification. Hiatt politely replied:

I asked [Young] if he had any business connection to the World Bank, and he assured me no. So our description seemed reasonable. Perhaps you're right (if you're correct that he is currently taking money from these governments); on the other hand a reader might just as well think that someone offering advice on investing in emerging markets would have reason not to offend the World Bank, so I'm not sure a reader's wariness would be any higher with your description.

Hiatt is justifiably looking for the best interpretation of the available facts. And if his account is accurate, it appears that Young was not fully candid with him. But Post readers deserved to know that the man praising Wolfowitz was being paid by a government supporting Wolfowitz. With such information in hand, a reader of this article would have been in a better position to evaluate its argument.

Was the Young op-ed part of a Nigerian government effort to influence opinion in the United States (and elsewhere)? That's for Young--not Hiatt--to answer. I left several messages at Young's offices yesterday and heard nothing back.

You cannot blame a foreign agent for doing his job. But Post readers ought to have been told more about the man coming to Wolfowitz's rescue.

*****

UPDATE: Hours after the above item was posted, a spokesperson for Good Works International, Young's firm, sent me the following note:

Please be advised that the representation contract with the Government of Nigeria expired at the beginning of April 2007. GoodWorks continues to represent the Governments of Rwanda and Tanzania here in Washington. Ambassador Young is among those at GoodWorks registered as a representative of Rwanda and Tanzania.

Still, Young ought to have disclosed to the Post that he had just left the Nigerian payroll before writing the Post op-ed, and the newspaper should have shared that information with its readers.



Posted by David Corn at May 10, 2007 12:34 PM