Malloch Brown's 'Friendship'

May 14, 2007
The Wall Street Journal
Original Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117911224783801652.html

We'd like to apologize to Mark Malloch Brown for trusting a report in another newspaper that he was a mere vice president in George Soros's hedge fund empire. In a letter to the editor on the previous page, Sir Mark reports that he is in fact a vice chairman, which makes him an even more significant part of Mr. Soros's team than we suggested.
As for the rest of Mr. Malloch Brown's letter, it is a tribute to the skills he has developed during his long career in such multilateral institutions as the U.N. Such places require a certain rhetorical elasticity. He claims that he came to the World Bank last week not to bury Paul Wolfowitz but to praise him. Sure, and some of his best friends are neo-cons. As smooth an actor as Sir Mark knew exactly how his words would be interpreted amid the current bank controversy, and last week he didn't correct the news reports saying he had encouraged Mr. Wolfowitz's resignation. We can guess what Mr. Wolfowitz thinks of such friendship.
Mr. Malloch Brown's record in downplaying the Oil for Food scandal at the U.N. is well known, and he knows that Paul Volcker's adverse finding against former Secretary General Kofi Annan was first made as part of an interim report, not the final version. That's when Mr. Annan's future at the U.N. was most in peril, and that's when Mr. Malloch Brown pushed the public line that Mr. Annan believed he had been exonerated. There's much more, but you get the idea.