UN Oil-for-Food Program
Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the Committtee, I thank you for the opportunity to testify here today. Speaking as a journalist, I would like to tell you that when I fir...
Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the Committtee, I thank you for the opportunity to testify here today. Speaking as a journalist, I would like to tell you that when I fir...
Some headlines seem designed to invite a one-word rejoinder, and so it is with a recent article on Slate:...
It should have raised red flags when both Syria and Russia approved of Kofi Annan’s February 23 appointment as the Uni...
When David Kay recovers from his weapons hunt, there's another Iraq-related quest I'd like to send him on. It's time a top intelligence team went scavenging for the real numbers on...
The U.N.'s Worldwide Inventory Problem
Having stood trial for almost a month in a Manhattan federal courtroom, 83-year-old Texas tycoon Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. struck a deal Monday. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United Nat...
When the new U.S. Congress convenes in January, there may be revived interest in oversight of a runaway United Nations. The U.N. system is fueled by billions every year in U.S. tax dollars, but h...
Is the godfather of the Kyoto treaty a public servant or a profiteer?
The United Nations likes to sell itself as a mentor of good governance. But the recent deep-sixing of a damning in-house report suggests it might more honestly advertise itself as an example of h...
In case anyone’s lost track of Kofi Annan, it’s time for a reality check. During his final year as self-styled “Chief Diplomat of the World” at the UN, he...
In the UNDP welter (see post below) of botched and missing records, violations of the UN’s own rules, derelictions of duty, aid, comfort and dual-use procurement for a murderous totalitaria...
Having stood trial for almost a month in a Manhattan federal courtroom, 83-year-old Texas tycoon Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. struck a deal Monday. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United Nations' former Oil for Food program for Iraq. Brushing past me on his way out of the courtroom -- he's clearly familiar with my writing on the subject -- he shot a remark: "You ought to be happy."
Before the United Nations can save the planet, it needs to clean up its own house. And as scandal after scandal has unfolded over the past decade, from Oil for Food to procurement fraud to peacek...
In what surely qualifies as the single-most-promising United Nations reform effort to date, federal prosecutors in New York, jointly with the New York District Attorney, have just announced the i...
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan delivered his farewell speech Monday, squandering yet another opportunity to apologize for his failures and come clean about the U.N. Instead, he used...
At United Nations headquarters, Secretary General Kofi Annan likes to imply that the Oil-for-Food era is over (“If there was a scandal” was his locution earlier this year). But Down U...
Not so long ago, Kofi Annan was up to his ears in the Oil for Food scandal, and his legacy as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations was on its way down the drain. He was ducking que...
While the United Nations frames its next response to crisis in the Middle East, its last grand venture in that region -- Oil for Food -- has finally resulted in a guilty verdict in open court. La...
Oil-for-Food has had its first airing in federal court, and the verdict is in. South Korean businessman Tongsun Park was accused of conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein�...
While United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has already dismissed the Oil-for-Food scandal as over and done, within the wood-paneled walls of a Manhattan courtroom it has just come to life....