Safire: Scandal With No Friends (U.N. oil-for-food program)

WASHINGTON — How fares the multination cover-up of the richest rip-off in world history?

Obstruction of justice has never had it so good. Last month, after some badgering in this space and elsewhere, the House International Relations Committee announced it would look into the $5 billion kickback scandal in the United Nations' six-year Iraqi oil-for-food program, the largest humanitarian aid effort ever undertaken.

Our State Department, eager for U.N. help in Iraq, wants no revelations of U.N. ineptitude and corruption. It waltzed the committee staff around.

Senate Foreign Relations, however, not wanting to be upstaged by its House counterpart, called instant publicity hearings to blow off steam. Chairman Dick Lugar asked if some countries turned a blind eye to the rampant theft of aid that should have gone to hungry Iraqis because they "saw a money-making opportunity."

Senator Joe Biden chimed in, demanding that our ambassador to the U.N., John Negroponte, release the names of the U.S. companies that State has known for years have been part of the kickback scheme. Negroponte, soon to be our man in Baghdad working with the U.N., said that no such list had been compiled.

Meanwhile, because U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's son was on the payroll of the Swiss company hired to monitor the imports, and because Kofi's right-hand man had been in charge of the program rife with 10 percent kickbacks, the world's foremost diplomat announced he would appoint an independent panel to investigate.

He chose men of integrity: Paul Volcker, former U.S. Fed chairman; Judge Richard Goldstone, the first Balkans war crimes prosecutor; and Mark Pieth, a Swiss lawyer said to be an expert on money laundering.

End of cover-up, right? Wrong. Volcker properly required a Security Council resolution, which would presumably empower his panel to take sworn testimony and gain access to the U.N.'s corrupt contracts that enabled Saddam to build palaces instead of providing food to his people.

But such a U.N. resolution would reveal dealings with companies in Russia, France and China — all Security Council permanent members whose nationals had their hands in the till. As Senator Lugar suggested, some nations had secret profiteering reasons to keep Saddam in power.

To nobody's surprise, Vladimir Putin's government was the first to say nothing doing. Russia's U.N. spokesman said, "We understand the reputation of the secretariat is in question, but we do not think it is possible to adopt a resolution on the basis of mass media reports."

Of the 270 suspected kickbackers and recipients of illegal allocations of oil whose names were revealed by Al Mada, the Iraqi newspaper, one-fourth were Russian, including a member of the Russian Parliament and a former Russian ambassador to Baghdad. No wonder Putin wanted no "regime change," and now resists any serious investigation.

And what of those "mass media reports" about the scope of the corruption, which are backed by the initial findings of Congress's General Accounting Office? Editorialists have dutifully tut-tutted. Reporters have passed along some details of what the G.A.O. estimates is a $5 billion fraud (not counting $5 billion more in smuggled oil). The Financial Times, working with Italy's Sole, recently advanced the story, interviewing a middleman to show how an apologist for Saddam got $400,000 to finance a film.

But outrage that drives coverage is selective, and there is little establishment appetite to pursue this complex scandal. Speaking power to truth, Newsweek headlines "Anti-U.N. Campaign," and reports dark suspicions by U.N. bureaucrats that the scandal was "drummed up" by the doves' Iraqi villain, Ahmad Chalabi.

France's U.S. ambassador writes under "Oil-for-Food Lies" in The Los Angeles Times that "unfounded accusations . . . have been spread by a handful of influential, conservative TV and newspaper journalists in the U.S." He noted that all 15 members of the Security Council approved all the oil-for-food contracts, and "the complete contracts were only circulated to the U.S. and Britain, which had expressly asked to see them. . . ." (And State shut its eyes — and has no list?)

Lawyers and accountants hired by Iraq's Governing Council will appear before Chairman Christopher Shays' national security subcommittee on Wednesday. The Connecticut congressman offers journalists a useful briefing memo, but expect little coverage; this scandal has no friends.

Volcker's U.N. Cleanup
The Russians are blocking a proper Oil for Food probe.

Monday, April 19, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

Meanwhile, back at the United Nations Oil for Food scandal, the news leaked Friday that Secretary-General Kofi Annan has picked Paul Volcker to lead a three-man panel to investigate what we now know was a Saddam Hussein skimming operation. What we'd also like to know is why it is taking so long for the Volcker appointment to be formally announced.

Mr. Annan first offered the job to Mr. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman, some two weeks ago. It shouldn't take this long to close the deal--unless some members of the U.N. Security Council really don't want a probe. Word is that Mr. Volcker, who is nobody's toady, doesn't want to lend his reputation to this exercise unless the Security Council passes a new resolution calling on members to cooperate with his team. Under pressure from the U.S. and Britain, Mr. Annan has agreed.

But, lo, the Russians are objecting to any resolution. "We don't mind for the Secretary-General to appoint the commission but we don't see the need to support his decision in the form of a resolution," says Russia's U.N. Ambassador Gennady Gatilov. In other words, he wants Mr. Volcker to serve as eyewash for the U.N. but without the political clout to expose what really happened. We don't suppose it is a coincidence, comrade, that Russians were among Saddam's best business partners. No word yet on where the French stand on a resolution, but we can guess.

The Oil for Food program was designed to let Iraq sell some oil to finance food and humanitarian aid for Iraqis hurt by sanctions against Saddam's regime. But we have learned that Saddam skimmed off as much as $10 billion to build his own palaces and pay off apologists for his regime around the world.

Only last week, Detroit businessman Shakir al-Khafaji admitted to the Financial Times that he received Oil for Food allocations. Mr. al-Khafaji had earlier denied receiving such allocations in an interview with our Robert Pollock, who recently reported that Mr. al-Khafaji had helped to finance a pro-Saddam documentary by former weapons inspector Scott Ritter and had donated to antiwar Congressional Democrats. Another hearing in Congress is scheduled this week into what is already the worst corruption scandal in U.N. history.

A new resolution would be especially helpful because Security Council nations and members of the U.N. Secretariat have been implicated in the scandal. If Mr. Volcker is going to conduct a credible probe, he'll need the political clout that a new resolution would provide. We trust he's also asking for an independent staff of his own choosing and ample funding. And while a public accounting is necessary, we hope Mr. Volcker will also conduct the probe with an eye to U.S. banking and other laws that may have been broken.

All of this relates not merely to a "look backwards," as Mr. Gatilov dismissively puts it, but directly to the U.N.'s current ambitions in Baghdad. Iraqis now know that the U.N. and some of its leading members conspired with their former dictator to fleece them of their national wealth. The very least Iraqis should expect is that the U.N. will come clean about its sins and punish those who profited at their expense. George Bush, John Kerry and others who now want to give the U.N. control in Baghdad should also settle for nothing less.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004976

"That couldn't possibly be the child predator Scott Ritter could it?"

The very same. But not directly.

The vouchers were actually issued to an Iraqi-American business man named al-Khafaji. His personal profit from the deal is estimated at $1 million-plus. In turn, al-Khafaji bankrolled Ritter's documentary, to the tune of $400 grand.

Khafaji also played tourguide for the Congressmen who visited Baghdad in December, 2002 -- "Baghdad Jim" McDermott (D-Wa), David Bonior (D-Mi) and Mike Thompson (D-Ca). Khafaji was also a substantial campaign contributor, as well. To the Democrats, of course...

and that simply cannot be contested anymore since the release of the Verona Project

The Verona project has shut up a lot of the State Department apologists whose tune was "No, man...you just don't understand. It's just that the State Deparment is just like really entirely progressive, dude...and has a much more like enlightened view of international relations, man...more than like the Defense Department."

The Verona Project, and it's incontestable revelations of the flat-out traitorism of many US government officials, needs to be mashed into the faces of every idiot liberal that starts playing that tune again.

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