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That's what is so horrible about this "scandal." She didn't. She was very well established as a major player in middle east development and an advocate for women's rights in the Middle East.
She was very much the reasonably high ranking professional at the World Bank before her significant other (a relationship begun after Wolfowitz and his first wife separated) happened to be appointed to run the place.
As soon as he was nominated Wolfowitz disclosed the relationship and recused himself from any involvement in personnel decisions related to her. It was the World Bank ethics committee that decided propriety required that she be trasnferred (against her will) to the State Deparment, given a raise, and a promotion (since she was being harmed through no fault of her own).
The ethics committee then instructed Wolfowitz to do it, despite his attempt to recuse himself.
The World Bank board of directors and ethics committee has already investigated this twice without finding any impropriety. This whole scandal is like some weird form of bureaucratic entrapment. The ethics committee requires Wolfowitz to give his girlfriend a raise and then he get slammed for it.
I despise Wolfowitz's policy views but it is really hard to see what he did wrong in this case.
But I feel really bad for Riza. She's a respected professional and since most people don't pay the slightest bit of attention to these stories beyond the headlines most everybody is going to assume she was a secreatary without typing skills, some kind of Fawn Hall.
(That said, there are some very valid, so far unexplained questions about possible influence at the DoD prior to Wolfowitz's departing the administration.)
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