How friend of Wolfowitz got a contract

The Defense Department directed a contractor in 2003 to hire a World Bank employee and companion of Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon’s No. 2 official at the time, to do work in Iraq, the contractor said.

The contractor, Science Applications International Corp., “was directed by the office of the secretary of Defense for policy to enter into a subcontract with Shaha Riza,” said company spokesman Ron Zollars.

At the time of the contract, Douglas Feith headed the policy office and Wolfowitz was deputy Defense secretary. Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq war, left the Pentagon in 2005 to become president of the World Bank.

Wolfowitz is fighting to keep his World Bank job after disclosures that he helped bank employee Riza get a high-paying job at the State Department in 2005, shortly after he took the development bank’s helm.