Muttering at the World Bank

The political antipathy is evident in the relish with which many staffers call attention to Cleveland's role in a scandal involving Pentagon contracts for aircraft leases. In that case, e-mails showed that Cleveland -- who was overseeing the Defense Department budget at the OMB -- sought help from Air Force Secretary James G. Roche in securing a job for her brother with a defense contractor at the same time as Roche was seeking Cleveland's support for an air-tanker lease deal. Asked for comment, Cleveland said: "The U.S. attorney's office looked into the matter and notified me that there was no basis for any further action."

Wheeler, the acting managing director, sought to soothe the staff in an interview posted on the bank's internal Web site. "It's natural for the President to want to have around him some people who he has worked with in the past and who can help him settle into the new organization," Wheeler said.

The staff gave his comments a thumbs down, as measured by their use of a system allowing them to rate the comments with one star ("not very informative"), two stars ("somewhat informative") and three stars ("very informative"). More than 1,100 of them had responded yesterday with an average rating between one and two stars, a far larger number of respondents and lower rating than is usual for the Web site.

Some of the sharpest criticism has targeted Folsom's appointment to run the Department of Institutional Integrity. A staffer at the Republican National Committee in the 1980s who also worked in the 1989 inauguration of President George H.W. Bush, Folsom went to work for a major law firm in the 1990s, specializing in ethics law. She came to the bank in 2003 as a counselor to Wolfowitz's predecessor, James D. Wolfensohn, who assigned her to help manage the bank's relations with the administration and Congress. Her star has shone brightly under Wolfowitz, who named her acting director of the watchdog unit in October and made the appointment permanent on Jan. 17.

Folsom's detractors note that she had little experience as an investigator. The bank's staff association circulated a letter citing widespread "dismay" over her appointment as well as Kellems's. The letter expressed concern that the bank needs to set a pristine example in its hiring practices, for developing countries that are trying to avoid cronyism.

In an interview, Folsom disputed suggestions that politics played a role in her appointment. "I haven't had a political job since my 20s. I'm in my 40s now," she said, adding that the main reason for her selection by Wolfowitz was his belief that as acting director she invigorated a once-lethargic department with a long backlog of investigations. "Talk to people" in the department, she said. "They're energized."

They are, judging by conversations with staffers who spoke on the condition they would not be identified. "I've been pleasantly surprised," one said. "Things are no longer languishing. We now have street cred within the institution. . . . They're starting to put some teeth in the anti-corruption-speak."

Kellems, who attracted notice in the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" as the Wolfowitz aide who helped comb the deputy defense secretary's hair, shrugged off concern over the personnel moves. "Anytime there's a transition to a new leader, especially one at a public institution, it's only human nature that that will bring with it varying levels of unease," he said. "There's been far less of that unease to date than many of us expected."

But there is no ignoring the hullabaloo. "At one meeting, someone stood up and said that they heard the reason I got this job was because my son worked for Wolfowitz at the Pentagon," Folsom said. "My son is 9. If he worked at the Pentagon, I want the back pay."