Paul Wolfowitz, one of the proponents of the war against Iraq, took over as president of the World Bank last March, and there was much gnashing of teeth among development experts that such a controversial figure should be appointed to the world's premier development institution.
Now, reports coming out from Washington speak of plummeting morale because of Mr Wolfowitz's increasing reliance on a handful of advisers, some brought from outside.
According to the Financial Times, matters came to a head with the appointment last week of Suzanne Folsom, a figure with "close ties to the Republican party", as the new director of the Department of Institutional Integrity - the internal watchdog that investigates suspected fraud and staff misconduct.
Ms Fulsom was actually brought into the bank by James Wolfensohn, Mr Wolfowitz's predecessor, but it is her move to a unit that was seen as independent of the president's office that has pushed disgruntlement to a new level.
Specifically, according to the FT, staff are unhappy at the way Mr Wolfowitz is going about an anti-corruption drive.
"They charge that Mr Wolfowitz is relying on a handful of close political advisers, and complain about a lack of confidence in staff who work in difficult conditions in countries with inadequate governance," the paper reports.
It was Mr Wolfensohn, who first broke the taboo of talking about corruption in developing countries and the eradication of corruption is a key area for the bank.
The bank says it spends $10m a year on investigations and sanctions, more than all other multilateral development banks combined. It runs a global 24-hour a day anti-corruption telephone hotline, and has blacklisted 330 companies and individuals from doing business with the institution.
So it is not as if World Bank staff are unhappy with the institution's determination to root out corruption. What seems to rankle staff is Mr Wolfowitz's seeming lack of confidence in the Bank's own experts and staff, a mood that has led to the departure of several senior officials.
Besides elevating Ms Fulsom to her present position, Mr Wolfowitz has also brought in Kevin Kellems, formerly the communications director under the vice-president Dick Cheney; Robin Cleveland, a long-time aide to the conservative Republican senator Mitch McConnell; and Karl Jackson, an Asia expert under the first Bush administration.
The FT is not the only one to have picked up on staff ructions at the World Bank, which last year committed $20bn in loans to poor countries. A few days ago, Steve Clemons, who writes for the Huffington Post, picked up on the same theme.
He made the point that any bureaucracy will resist change when a new broom comes in as indeed was the case when Mr Wolfensohn was appointed president. Indeed the much-maligned Boutros Boutros-Ghali aroused much resentment when he tried to shake up the UN when he was appointed secretary general.
Still Mr Clemons concludes that the present tension seems to be deeper and more serious than any reorganisation can explain.
"Wolfowitz is not talking to his vice-presidents. He is withdrawing, and instead using Robin Cleveland and the likes of Kevin Kellems to do his bidding, and they are building massive ill-will inside the bank," he quotes one staffer as saying.
