Paul Wolfowitz Interview with Charlie Rose, The Charlie Rose Show May 30, 2007 CHARLIE ROSE,HOST: Welcome to the broadcast. Tonight, a conversation with Paul Wolfowitz, the first television interview he has done since he announced that he would be leaving the World Bank. PAUL WOLFOWITZ, PRESIDENT, WORLD BANK: I’m not looking back. I’m looking forward. Are there things that I might have done differently? Did I maybe ruffle too many feathers by talking about corruption, by talking about governance, by cutting off some loans? I mean, there are a lot of misconceptions out there. I mean, one of the ones that I hear all the time is I cut off -- you would think that I cut off all lending by the World Bank, but you just heard the president say it correctly, we reached record levels last year, $9.5 billion, the most we’ve ever done for the poorest countries. We’re heading above $10 billion this year. It’s not that I’m cutting it off; it’s that I want it to go to the people who are using it right. And the people who are using it well don’t have enough. CHARLIE ROSE: We had intended to include tonight a conversation with the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad. He is a former ambassador to Iraq. That conversation will take place later this week. Tonight, Paul Wolfowitz for the hour. CHARLIE ROSE: Paul Wolfowitz is here. He resigned as president of the World Bank on May 17th. His resignation takes effect June 30th. He served as president since 2005, coming to the bank after serving as deputy defense secretary in the Bush administration. He brought changes to the bank and launched a major anti-corruption campaign aimed at recipient countries. He resigned following a controversy over a pay increase that was given to his companion, Shaha Riza. She was a bank employee who had to change jobs after he became president. Today, President Bush nominated a new World Bank president. He is former deputy secretary of state, Bob Zoellick. He also had some interesting words to say about Paul Wolfowitz. GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am pleased to announce that I will nominate Bob Zoellick to be the 11th president of the World Bank. He is a committed internationalist. He has earned the trust and support of leaders from every region of the world. He is deeply devoted to the mission of the World Bank. He wants to help struggling nations defeat poverty, to grow their economies and offer their people the hope of a better life. This man is imminently qualified. And when he takes his place at World Bank, he will replace another able public servant, Paul Wolfowitz. Paul is a man of character and integrity. Under his leadership, the World Bank increased its support for the world’s poorest countries to a record $9.5 billion in 2006. Half of this money goes to sub-Saharan Africa, home to some of the poorest folks. As Paul has helped steer more resources to these countries, he has instituted reforms designed to make sure that these resources are used wisely and achieve good results. In these and many other ways, Paul Wolfowitz has made the World Bank a more effective partner for development. I thank him for his dedication to the poor and his devotion to the good work of the World Bank. CHARLIE ROSE: Paul Wolfowitz has served in five other administrations. Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and George Bush 41. I am pleased to have him back at this table. We’ve had other conversations. And I should make note of the fact that we’re going to talk primarily about the World Bank and his experience there. I hope to talk to him at some point about Iraq. I hope that he’ll write a book about his experiences, but this evening we’ll talk about the World Bank primarily. And I begin there. Why did you want this job? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Well, really because of Africa. I remember -- I guess it was seven years ago, during 2000, reading up on Africa in connection with our then presidential campaign. And what came through was the desperation of Africa and the fact that in the last 25 years, most of the world has seen spectacular progress against poverty, especially in countries like China and India. Sub-Saharan Africa was the one part of the world that was going backwards and had the plague of HIV/AIDS and malaria. I knew about the need. So I came to the bank recognizing that this had to be the first priority for the bank. And the pleasant surprise for me was to discover that Africa has really started moving forward. I don’t want to exaggerate, I don’t want to say it’s the whole subcontinent, but some 15 countries, more or less, roughly a third of the population, seemed to be really on the right track now. And that’s exciting. CHARLIE ROSE: And that’s because? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: More than one reason. We tend to say -- and I think this is correct -- they’ve understood a lot about what makes sound economic policy. They’re starting to learn about the importance of the private sector. If you stop and think about it, all those half a billion people in East Asia and India that escaped poverty did it mainly because of jobs created by the private sector. Africa hasn’t had that. We can talk about the reasons, but they’re starting to change. But also there’s peace in parts of Africa that haven’t had it for 20, 25 years. We’re focused, as I think we should be, on Darfur. It’s a running sore, it’s a terrible tragedy. But Liberia, which I frankly thought might never see peace in my lifetime, thanks first to U.S. intervention and African intervention and now U.N. forces, has had peace for three years -- three or four years. And it has a first elected woman president in any African country. Congo, Burundi, Sierra Leone, even the Central African Republic. They’re in a -- and peace is the most important blessing. It’s so much better than oil. Oil is more often a curse. Peace is unmitigated good. CHARLIE ROSE: All right, we’ll talk about that and how you feel about a whole lot of other issues. This is what Steve Weisman said in "The New York Times." "Paul Wolfowitz was ready to move on from the Pentagon in early 2005. He had been thwarted in his effort to become defense secretary, national security adviser, and the war in Iraq had deteriorated. So when the World Bank president came up, he jumped at the opportunity. It offered him a second chance to redeem his reputation and realize his ambitions, says a friend who has known him for decades." PAUL WOLFOWITZ: It doesn’t sound like a friend. It was not about ambition. I just have to tell you, it really wasn’t, and it wasn’t about redemption. It was about a chance to make a difference, in a bigger way maybe than what I felt I was doing then. And on an issue that I really care about, which is poverty and helping people have a different chance in life. I was American ambassador in Indonesia 20 years ago, and I dealt with the Philippines for three or four years before that, and I have seen what it’s like when people are struggling against the shackles of poverty. And Africa is such an important place. It can’t be left behind. And what’s gratifying to me is I think it really has a chance to catch up. CHARLIE ROSE: You made it poverty hand in hand with an anti-corruption campaign, because you believe corruption is somehow what? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Well, my predecessor, Jim Wolfensohn, said it. Corruption is a cancer on the process of development. You can’t be serious about development and then ignore corruption. CHARLIE ROSE: Because the money never gets to the needy. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: First of all, it doesn’t go where it’s supposed to go. That’s the first sin. But in many cases, it’s much worse than that. I met with a minister from -- former minister from an African country. He said corruption destroyed my country. It made -- turned public office into a chance not for public service, but for private greed. And it produced civil war and tore us apart. And the international community, he said, including the World Bank, just turned a blind eye while all this was happening. That’s just not acceptable. And I think we’re changing. CHARLIE ROSE: OK. Why did you heave? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: It started over allegations, which I’m very happy to say the board, after looking at all the evidence, accepts my affirmation that I acted in good faith and acted ethically, to resolve what was a difficult situation for the bank. But I also recognize we had gotten to the point where it was really not possible to be effective and to do what I wanted to do for the poorest people in the poorest countries, and especially to do it for Africa. I think Bob Zoellick has a chance to carry on that same work and take it to a higher level. And I will do everything I can... CHARLIE ROSE: I want to stay with that. But this is the first interview you have done on television, so it’s a chance for you... PAUL WOLFOWITZ: That’s true. CHARLIE ROSE: ... to explain to us exactly how you saw what was happening, what misconceptions there were, what you thought about, you know, what you did and why you did it, and how it became the subject of discussion about your future at the World Bank. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Look, you know, a lot of things go into -- I’m not looking back. I’m looking forward. Are there things that I might have done differently? Did I maybe ruffle too many feathers by talking about corruption, by talking about governance, by cutting off some loans? I mean, there are a lot of misconceptions out there. I mean, one of the ones that I hear all the time is I cut off -- you’d think that I cut off all lending by the World Bank. But you just heard the president say it correctly, we reached record levels last year, $9.5 billion, the most we’ve ever done for the poorest countries. We’re heading above $10 billion this year. It’s not that I’m cutting it off. It’s that I want it to go to the people who are using it right. And the people who are using it well don’t have enough. CHARLIE ROSE: OK, but let me -- I want to divide this in two. One, management and what you did there. But the controversy that became the centerpiece of this, which is your relationship and what happened. Just explain to us what happened so we can understand it from you. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: OK, but I don’t -- I mean, I don’t want to go into every gory detail. CHARLIE ROSE: I understand. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Basically, I came to the bank. I told them I had this friend who -- with whom I was very close, and therefore there was a potential conflict. And... CHARLIE ROSE: She worked at the bank. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: She worked at the bank. She worked there before I got there. There was nothing illicit about this. It was fully disclosed. I suggested that the best way to deal with it would be simply for me to have nothing to do with any personnel actions involving her. And we went through a couple of months of discussions. And the conclusion was that wasn’t satisfactory -- not my conclusion, but the conclusion of the ethics committee of the board -- and that she had to move outside the bank, and that I, as president, was responsible for making that happen. And that meant -- I mean, we didn’t have a right to tell her to leave. I mean, I was the one who created the problem. I did say, you know, I could resign, that might solve the conflict. They said, no, no, that’s not the right outcome. So we felt we were heading for a practical solution, where she would be compensated for the damage to her career. I think the big mistake we all made, frankly, was we could have come to the same solution if somebody else had done it, and it might not have been controversial. As soon as I’m the one making the decision, then, you know, if I had given her a nickel, it might have looked controversial. CHARLIE ROSE: OK, but did you suggest you didn’t want to make the decision in the beginning or not? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: No, I did not want to. CHARLIE ROSE: You did not want -- and you told the board or whoever, that was not something you wanted to do. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: That’s correct. But now we’re getting into what... (CROSSTALK) CHARLIE ROSE: ... I’ve got to have this. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I said, I said... CHARLIE ROSE: This is the first interview you’ve done and people want to hear from you, not from Bob Barnelli (ph)... PAUL WOLFOWITZ: It’s not something I wanted to do. Absolutely not. CHARLIE ROSE: You did not want to set compensation for her. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: And I didn’t want to tell her to leave. I mean, she was angry about it. So I was -- but I was the president of the organization. And it was the organization’s problem. And I think there was misinterpretation among myself and the board members involved. I’m not here to cast blame. In fact, I said, you know, the one thing I should not have done was put -- let myself be put in the middle of it. But I didn’t volunteer. I wasn’t looking to reward her. I wasn’t looking to do her any favors. I didn’t think I was doing her any favors. And as I said, I believe I acted ethically. I believe I was acting in the best interests of the institution. And the board has accepted that. And I’m glad they did. CHARLIE ROSE: And where is she now? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: She is on this external assignment that was part of the arrangement. CHARLIE ROSE: She’ll come back to the bank? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: That’s up to her and the bank. And believe me, I’m going to have nothing to do with it. CHARLIE ROSE: Must be tough for a relationship to do this kind of -- go through this. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: It’s not been easy. But she’s quite a remarkable, wonderful person. CHARLIE ROSE: A Muslim. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: A Muslim, feminist. An Arab Muslim... CHARLIE ROSE: Intellectual. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Very bright. Oxford-educated. Very impressive. Very committed to the idea of gender equality. Very committed to the idea of development, but.... CHARLIE ROSE: Painful for her, to say the least. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I think it’s been tough for everybody involved, frankly. CHARLIE ROSE: You have said the media -- you asked some questions of the media in things that I have read that you have said. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I’m not blaming anyone. It was -- I saw a headline that said I’m blaming the media. I’m saying people reacting to reports in the press that I believe were inaccurate. I don’t know where they came from. If I had read some of those allegations that, you know, sounded like I was just out of the blue out to give some generous reward to a friend of mine, I’d be pretty angry also. And the anger got stoked. And for a long time, I wasn’t able to state my side of the story, because this was under discussion in the board, and it would have been a violation.... CHARLIE ROSE: OK, but your side of the story is.... PAUL WOLFOWITZ: What I just told you. CHARLIE ROSE: What you just told me. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Yes, yes. CHARLIE ROSE: That you didn’t want to do this, but the board said you’ve got to do this. And you set this compensation, and that was it. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Let’s put it this way: I thought the board, the ethics committee was telling me I had to do it. I think we all share some responsibility in this. I’ve acknowledged mine. CHARLIE ROSE: It has also been written about that people at the bank had it out for you because they didn’t think that someone who played the role that you had in the war ought to be there. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Look, there were some people who had that view from the beginning. That’s not a secret. But I think there were other people who -- I’m not looking back. We were at a point -- to me, it was clear and this is what I said -- where if I tried to stick around, I might have persuaded some number of people that what I did was OK. But there were too many people that were too upset, and it was getting in the way of doing the business of the organization. CHARLIE ROSE: So in the interest of the organization, you... PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Well, I’ll put it this way: In the interest of the people we’re supposed to serve, which is the purpose of the organization. CHARLIE ROSE: The people who the bank benefits. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Right. Right. CHARLIE ROSE: But... PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Particularly the Africans. CHARLIE ROSE: OK. But it’s also said that at the time, that when you came there, that rather than reaching out to the bank -- a lot of people have written this, including David Brooks and a lot of others -- who said that this whole controversy about her leaving and her compensation was simply not an important issue. The important issue was that Paul Wolfowitz was not a good manager. Paul Wolfowitz did not take time to reach out to other people in the bank. And finally, that they in the end had all these grievances, and this issue gave them an opportunity to get him. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Look, I don’t think I’m a bad manager. I just give, you know, when I ran the American embassy in Jakarta, we were rated one of the four best managed embassies the year we were inspected. And I reached out to many people. Obviously, I ruffled some feathers as well. And they are -- it’s an organization of 10,000 people. Some are going to be with you; some aren’t. CHARLIE ROSE: Did you know, when you brought your own people there, did you know this was happening? Did you have any sense that this is a real opportunity for me? That I ought to do something? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I brought a lot of people to the bank, let me be clear about this. I brought people I’d never met before, like a Swedish banker, who is doing a great job running the IFC. I brought an Italian banker I didn’t know who’s doing a great job as the chief financial officer. I brought the former foreign minister of Spain, who is a woman, who is now the general counsel of the bank. One of the things I’m proudest of is I found and recruited two African women, both of them former ministers, and again I didn’t know them before this job -- one from Nigeria, one from Botswana -- who bring to the bank not just being African women, which I think is an important quality in and of itself, but the experience of actually having been a minister in a developing country. And believe me, I think that’s more valuable education than any number of graduate degrees. CHARLIE ROSE: Believe me, I want to talk about Africa, but I mean, these are things that you haven’t spoken to. One, this is David Ignatius. "Wolfowitz has failed at the World Bank not because his underlings were out to get him -- although many probably were -- but because he treated the organization itself as an enemy." PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Well, that’s not true. I mean, I’ve come to enormously admire many, many people in that organization, and I worked closely with them, and I’ve got quite a few, although it wasn’t an easy thing ever to say in public, who said I hope you’ll stay, because I like the kinds of changes you’ve introduced. So did I win everybody over? No. Did I ruffle some feathers? CHARLIE ROSE: Did you try is the question? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I tried very hard, but I also was determined to get some results. And I -- sometimes you’ve got to choose one or the other. Maybe I chose -- let me give you an example. We had this issue over the Chad/Cameroon pipeline. It was actually an issue that arose even before I came to the bank. I think there were demonstrators outside the bank, saying why is the bank lending money to a corrupt government and to rich oil companies to make money when it should be helping the poor? And we made an agreement, which was, I think, a very good agreement -- and the demonstrators were right about this -- that said a significant portion of the oil revenues -- actually, the oil royalties -- have to be devoted to poverty programs. Fine. I got there. About three or four months after I got there, around November, December of `05, the government of Chad basically said, "well, we don’t like this agreement, we’re going to tear it up." And at that point, I said, OK, well, then we’re going to suspend lending to Chad. Now, I think some people thought I should have consulted more widely before I made that decision. Some people may think I shouldn’t have made that decision at all. CHARLIE ROSE: I remember the controversy. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I don’t think there was any easy course. I believe the soft course of not confronting the problem would actually have made things much worse. And I do believe the end result, which was to get a new agreement, actually a better agreement with the government, took us about five or six months but it got us back on track. I think it was the right thing to do. Maybe it ruffled some feathers. Maybe some members of my board felt they were inadequately consulted. If that’s the case, you know, I’m sorry about that. But sometimes you have to make tough calls. CHARLIE ROSE: When you say without regrets, I mean, you know, you -- that you might have reached out, you may have -- this is what David Brooks says. "Let’s say you’re a Republican appointed to an important job in Washington. You’ll probably find that 90 percent of the people who work in your agency are Democrats, as are 90 percent of the media types who cover you and 90 percent of the academics who comment on your work. But here’s the thing to remember: There are Democrats and then there are Democrats. A quarter of the Democrats you work with are partisans, but the other three-quarters are honorable, intelligent people. If you treat these people with respect and find places where you can work together, they’ll teach you things and make you more effective. If you treat them the way you treat the partisans, they’ll turn into partisans and destroy you." Is David Brooks right? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I think I treated people with respect, including some people I had serious disagreements with. But for the most part, I found it was a very capable staff. I mean, let’s be clear. I didn’t bring in some 50 Americans to run the bank. CHARLIE ROSE: How many people who worked with you at the Pentagon came over to work with you? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: One. CHARLIE ROSE: One person. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: And one person from the Bureau of the Budget, from the -- Office of Management and Budget. CHARLIE ROSE: Just two people that you brought in from outside... PAUL WOLFOWITZ: We brought two people... CHARLIE ROSE: ... who were not at the bank when you came there. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Correct. And I promoted a lot of people in the bank. I am proud of having found a terrific water expert who happened to speak Portuguese. He’s now our country director in Brazil. I mean, I could go on. But let me go on. CHARLIE ROSE: Please. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I appointed a woman from Ghana who is a sanitation engineer as my chief of staff. Her deputy is a wonderful young man from Ivory Coast, brilliant economist. Working with them is a young woman from Belgium. None of these are people that I knew before. They’re bank staff. They’re career people. I mean, every single vice president that is there now, including ones that were there before I came, are people that I asked to stay. So I feel I have good working relationships with many of them. Some of them may be angry because of a particular decision. Some of them may feel that I didn’t listen enough. But it’s not because I don’t have respect for them. CHARLIE ROSE: What did you learn from this? This experience? You had a chance to go do something that clearly you believed in. The idea of we can make a difference in Africa. A whole range of opportunities, a range of forces that can come together, World Bank being one of them, can make a difference. You had two years there. You learned what? Not about the... PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Charlie, I think I did make a difference. I feel very good about what we accomplished in... CHARLIE ROSE: I didn’t say you didn’t. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Well, no, but that’s important. And I’ll give you another example. I mean, we have introduced a whole new policy, a rapid response policy. CHARLIE ROSE: Rapid response to? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: To emergency -- countries in situations of emergency. And we define emergency in a way that didn’t exist before. A country like Liberia that has a successful election is suddenly in a condition of emergency because the government has to produce results, and not in three years or six years, which is our normal timeframe, but in six months. And that means our procedures have to move more rapidly. It means that loans have to be approved much faster. It doesn’t mean you lower the safeguards, but it means you don’t go through the same kind of bureaucracy. Frankly, I think most people in the bank, especially the ones on the frontlines in country offices, trying to get the work done, would say there is too much bureaucracy. And in fact, after we approved this policy, one of my vice presidents, again, one that I respect a lot, said, you know, if we can do this in the poorest countries, we ought to be able to do it in the more advanced countries. CHARLIE ROSE: Where were all these people when push came to shove, all these people that you say you work with and who were on board about making a difference? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I think... CHARLIE ROSE: Why did it turn out the way it did? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I think -- I’ll go back to what I said. And I think it’s as simple as the facts didn’t get out in a coherent way, and it was difficult to get the facts out because I was constrained. CHARLIE ROSE: Just something you would do in all the things -- your heart was in the right place, your brain was in the right place and you were doing this kind of stuff. It’s hard to believe, you know, that you couldn’t get your story out. And that that led you to having to be where you are now, giving up a job you wanted very much to have. And you and I had a conversation about this, as you remember. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: And it’s a job I’ve enjoyed, and it’s a mission that I intend to keep working at. I really believe... CHARLIE ROSE: But this job meant a lot to you, because of, you know, for all the reasons -- you believed in the work of the World Bank. You believed it gave you a chance to show what you were about. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I still believe in the work, and I believe that we’ve set it on a much better course now. I think it’s much more focused on Africa, and I think it’s much more focused on governance. And there’s no question, look, there is no question that pushing through this governance agenda was controversial, and that a number of our leading shareholders, leading countries, were concerned that what we were going to do was going to get in the way of the mission of fighting poverty. I happen to think that’s wrong. And yes, I did take it on. And yes, I may have, you know, maybe I took it on, they would probably say in too confrontational a way, but I think it has to be confronted. I think one of the ways we slip into bad habits and bad practices is that it’s awkward and embarrassing to accuse a country or a minister in a country of stealing money. It’s not a comfortable thing to do. And I don’t like doing it either. And I didn’t like... CHARLIE ROSE: The people in Europe who were not upset at you because you were suggesting somebody was stealing money in a country, were they? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Well, we had, Charlie, .... CHARLIE ROSE: They had -- European leaders, I mean, including the... PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Everybody says, you’ll never find anyone who says they’re not against corruption. Everyone is -- but then there’s the but. They say, well, but, we can’t let -- our mission is development, not anti-corruption. We can’t get too focused on corruption; it will get in the way of development. I told you over and over again, we’re not cutting off money. We’re trying to put it in the right hands. But the fact is that we had quite a controversy in Singapore last fall over the governance strategy. We had quite a controversy over the suspension of lending to Chad. We had a controversy over several other loans that I think needed to be suspended. CHARLIE ROSE: And in your judgment, that’s what it was about, right there. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Maybe it was -- look, maybe I could have done it differently. Maybe I could have consulted more. Maybe if it weren’t me and somebody else doing it, look, I’ve said from the beginning... CHARLIE ROSE: Somebody who’s not an architect of the war, and all that. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: I’m not an architect of anything, but somebody who is not so closely associated with a controversial Iraq policy, yes. But I do think you have to push. And I think -- I mean, I saw in Indonesia, where I was ambassador for three years, that for much too long, donors, including the World Bank -- in some ways, the World Bank worst of all -- didn’t say boo when everybody knew that Suharto and increasingly his children were stealing money in a shameless way. And that doesn’t mean they should have cut off Indonesia, no. But they should have been clearer that there are standards that are expected and standards that are going to be enforced. Because when you do that -- and this is really important -- when you do that, you empower the people in the country themselves to take on their own issues. And I do think that the most successful development comes when people in the countries themselves take charge. And that’s what’s happening in Africa. Let me give you another -- I mean, John Githongo is a wonderful man, a Kenyan, who was a minister in the government, who actually had to flee to Great Britain with his files because he had found so much bad behavior in that government. It’s a very tricky thing. If the bank then goes in and says, well, there are no problems here, we’re going to just lend money regardless, a man like John Githongo is disempowered. And I think what we found we can do in Kenya is to distinguish between those programs that are actually making a difference and those where there really is serious misconduct. CHARLIE ROSE: Has the Iraqi war, your tenure at the World Bank, changed the way you see the world in any significant way? In terms of what the world -- what works, doesn’t work, what assumptions are wrong, what new truths are apparent? PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Look, I think every single day changes the way you see the world. And frankly, I would say I’ve always seen the world as a rather complex place, where most of the decisions you have to make are not black-and-white; they’re not clear cut. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to make decisions. And what I would say... CHARLIE ROSE: But you’re an intellectual... (CROSSTALK) PAUL WOLFOWITZ: You keep wanting to go backwards. I want to say... CHARLIE ROSE: No, no, I don`t. I want to understand how we see the future, because you come to the place you do with a set of values and a set of assumptions and a set of circumstances that in the end has resulted in you not being able to do work that you care deeply about doing. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Well, let me put it this way... CHARLIE ROSE: And so I’ve got to understand all this. (CROSSTALK) PAUL WOLFOWITZ: ... you say nobody understood. I had... CHARLIE ROSE: You say nobody understood. You say the media didn’t do the job. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: No, I’m not blaming the media. I said... CHARLIE ROSE: OK. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: ... people reacted to inaccurate reports about the so-called ethics issue. And once they had reacted, it’s hard to calm it down. That’s all I said. I’ve heard from African presidents. I’ve heard from African citizens. I’ve heard from African corruption fighters. I’ve heard in a very strong voice from Africans that they appreciate, No. 1, the emphasis I put on Africa, but secondly, the emphasis I put on governance. And they understand it and appreciate it. And I had one former bank staffer, who had given up what has to have been a comfortable job in Washington to go and work in a very, very difficult -- in his country, which is a very difficult African country -- came up one night and said, "please, don’t give up, because we need the kind of focus that you’re putting on the tough issues." I have learned, and I believe it’s critical, that Africa is making progress, and the key to that progress is, in fact, people taking issues of governance seriously and not looking the other way when a dictator like the former Mobutu in Zaire puts $5 billion in a Swiss bank account. One of the things... CHARLIE ROSE: Robert Mugabe and everybody else. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Well, don’t paint them all with the same brush. The fact is now in Nigeria... CHARLIE ROSE: No, I wasn’t (inaudible) the same brush, he did, Mugabe... PAUL WOLFOWITZ: There are fewer Mugabes around. Mobutu... CHARLIE ROSE: Mugabe’s crime is not putting money there; his crime is the way he’s running his country. PAUL WOLFOWITZ: The point is, there are people, for example, the head of the Economic Crimes Commission in Nigeria, who are seriously going after corruption. And one of the things that we did at the bank that I’m proud of is help the Nigerians get $500 million back from Swiss bank accounts that had been stolen by the former dictator Abacha. That kind of activity is happening. The finance minister of Malawi came to see me about a year ago. And he said, "my predecessor is in jail for corruption, and I have no intention of following his example." That is I believe the new Africa. And it’s not every country in Africa and it’s certainly not Zimbabwe, but it is a growing number of countries. CHARLIE ROSE: | 
