Reply #6: But she is a foreign national....

[DeSwiss]

...and as such, she would need to have some type of clearance. Even at SAIC. The job she held was purportedly was to aid the Pentagon in developing plans for the nascent Iraqi government in 2003 as it related to women's issues.

However, the post she held at the State Department's Foundation for the Future would require national security clearance as her work assignment fell under the purview of Karen Hughes, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, and she reported directly to Elizabeth Cheney. Yet no one has the paperwork at State showing she has clearance. They said she has to have it to work there....

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"A spokeswoman for Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, said the Defense Department's policy office directed the company to enter a subcontract with Shaha Riza, under which she spent a month studying ways to form a government in Iraq."

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/18/worldbank.wo... /

"Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Wolfowitz, a former No. 2 official at the Pentagon and key architect of the Iraq war, may have recommended Riza for the job, but she was also recommended by others and was uniquely qualified."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070420/ts_nm/worldbank_wol...

"Riza was unhappy about leaving the sinecure at the World Bank. But in 2006 Wolfowitz made a series of calls to his friends that landed her a job at a new think tank called Foundation for the Future that is funded by the State Department. She was the sole employee, at least in the beginning. The World Bank continued to pay her salary, which was raised by $60,000 to $193,590 annually, more than the $183,500 paid to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and all of it tax-free. Moreover, Wolfowitz got the State Department to agree that the ratings of her performance would automatically be "outstanding." Wolfowitz insisted on these terms himself and then misled the World Bank board about what he had done.

Exactly how this deal was made and with whom remains something of a mystery. The person who did work with Riza in her new position was Elizabeth Cheney, then the deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. And Riza's assignment fell under the purview of Karen Hughes, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. But these facts raise more questions than they answer.

The documents released by the World Bank do not include any of the communications with the State Department. How did Elizabeth Cheney come to be involved? Did Wolfowitz speak with Vice President Dick Cheney, for whom he had been a deputy when Cheney was secretary of defense in the elder Bush's administration?

Riza, who is not a U.S. citizen, had to receive a security clearance in order to work at the State Department. Who intervened? It is not unusual to have British or French midlevel officers at the department on exchange programs, but they receive security clearances based on the clearances they already have with their host governments. Granting a foreign national who is detailed from an international organization a security clearance, however, is extraordinary, even unprecedented. So how could this clearance have been granted?

State Department officials familiar with the details of this matter confirmed to me that Shaha Ali Riza was detailed to the State Department and had unescorted access while working for Elizabeth Cheney. Access to the building requires a national security clearance or permanent escort by a person with such a clearance. But the State Department has no record of having issued a national security clearance to Riza.

State Department officials believe that Riza was issued such a clearance by the Defense Department after SAIC was forced by Wolfowitz and Feith to hire her. Then her clearance would have been recognized by the State Department through a credentials transmittal letter and Riza would have accessed the State Department on Pentagon credentials, using her Pentagon clearance to get a State Department building pass with a letter issued under instructions from Liz Cheney."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/04/19/wolf...