As I read the Saturday edition of the WSJ, it's nice to see some old friends. Good to see you again, Paul! With Alberto hogging all the front-pages this month, its nice to see you back in the limelight where you belong.

Paul doesn't get enough credit for being one of the master-minds behind our unprovoked, defensive invasion of Iraq. I was sad when he left the administration that we wouldnt see him much anymore.

But recent weeks have shown my fears to be ungrounded. Paul is back and with a vengeance. As supreme leader of the World Bank, Paul has once again shown the value of his leadership.

You go, Paul!

Wolfowitz Memo, Dictating Raises Given to Friend, Now Haunts Him

By GREG HITT

April 14, 2007

Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON -- The disclosure yesterday of a 2005 memo from World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz -- dictating the terms of his girlfriend's promotions and raises while on the bank's payroll -- is giving new ammunition to critics who seek his ouster and threatening to weaken him if he stays on at the bank.

Already, the public release of the memo and dozens of other related documents reflects the changing dynamic as Mr. Wolfowitz tries, with a mix of apologies and persistence, to hold onto his $400,000-a-year post as head of the world's biggest anti-poverty institution. With representatives of the U.S. and European governments at odds Thursday night over how many documents to disclose, Mr. Wolfowitz cut through the debate by asking that they all be released in an apparent effort to bolster his bid to keep his job.

In the August memo -- which wasn't reviewed by the bank's directors, ethics committee or general counsel -- Mr. Wolfowitz told Xavier Coll, vice president for human resources: "I now direct you to agree to a proposal which includes the following terms and conditions..." The memo went on to detail the salary that Shaha Riza, then a communications officer, would earn when she was assigned a job outside the bank at the bank's expense. It also set out her future raises and her status when she returned to the bank after Mr. Wolfowitz's term as president. She now earns a tax-free $193,590, about $61,000 more than before she was reassigned. It's not clear who besides Messrs. Wolfowitz and Coll knew all the terms.

...

The Bush administration's 2005 choice of Mr. Wolfowitz, an architect of President Bush's Iraq war, to run the bank was instantly controversial. His tenure has been marked by tension and criticism both from inside and outside the bank. But the past two weeks have been extraordinary: The March 28 disclosure of the details of Ms. Riza's salary led to chants of "Resign! Resign!" from some staffers gathered in the atrium of the bank's headquarters, and then to the emailed release of the previously highly confidential documents by the bank's board early yesterday morning.

Not to be outdone by Paul, its also nice to see Karl sticking around in the news. I know he is a modest man who likes to keep a low profile, but with Scooter in jail, someone has to keep the headlines off the President.

Computers are so complicated, arent they? Who can blame you for forgetting to back up your email? After all the effort it must have taken to avoid the White House email system and build your own, private system, its easy to forget that little backup switch. And who could keep 5M emails in their inbox without deleting a few? Honest mistake. It could happen to anyone.

White House Probes More Lost Emails

By JOHN D. MCKINNON

April 14, 2007

Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON -- The White House, already under pressure to explain missing emails from officials using a Republican Party system, says it is investigating reports that many more emails might have been deleted from its own system.

A White House spokeswoman said Friday that it is possible several million emails could have been erased. "I wouldn't rule out that there were a potential five million emails lost," said Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino. She emphasized, however, that "there was no intent to have lost them."

By day's end, another White House spokesman, Scott Stanzel, said that "we are aware that some White House emails may not have been automatically archived on the...server. However, we understand that such emails should have been preserved on backup tapes."

The 1978 Presidential Records Act requires each administration to maintain an adequate record of its actions and deliberations and preserve them for history, and recent administrations have archived emails. But White House officials raised particular concerns about the lost emails, according to CREW, because the loss meant that some emails relevant to the CIA leak investigation might not have been provided to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

A January 2006 letter from Mr. Fitzgerald suggests there were problems with the White House email archiving system. "We have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system," Mr. Fitzgerald wrote in the letter to lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former vice presidential aide who ultimately was indicted and convicted for lying to the grand jury. Mr. Libby's lawyers were trying to obtain possible evidence in the case.

The White House has conceded that many emails from 2001-05 on a separate Republican National Committee system that likely related to official administration business were deleted by the RNC. Those emails were being sent and received by White House political officials through accounts maintained by the RNC. The White House has said the RNC emails relating to official business should have been archived, just as White House emails should be.