Ugo Betti’s Corruption in the Palace of Justice was first performed in 1949. For all the times this drama has been repeated in real life lately, the late Italian playwright’s royalty account must be bulging. Ditto residual accounts for the work of another great Italian, director Elio Petri whose 1970 film Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion seems ripped from today’s headlines.
Of course I am talking about the various court processes and investigations we have had over the last decade from the OJ trial onwards. Most recently we have had a spate of nearly comical “internal investigations.” CBS’ look at their own Rathergate scandal (under the guidance of a former Attorney General of all things) was unable to conclude that the National Guard documents were forged, something a reasonably bright high school student can do on his or her laptop in a matter of minutes.
Now we have the Volcker Committee investigation into the United Nations Oil-for-Food program paid for (great Betti’s ghost!) by the Oil-for-Food program. This blog has had a special look inside at how this investigation has been working.
Most of the heavy-lifting, the interviewing of witnesses, has been conducted by three attorneys – Michael Cornacchia, Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan. All three are Americans and relatively unknown (at least via Google). They are also, reportedly, not skilled in foreign languages (Duncan speaks some French) – a handicap in an investigation where knowledge of Arabic at the minimum would seem to be valuable.
Cornacchia is the lead investigator, though Parton is apparently the one doing the more serious questioning. Parton is not a happy camper, however, and seems to have threatened to resign a few weeks ago because the committee was not pursuing leads they thought went outside their purview. To have had an investigator quit at that point would have created a mini-scandal of its own and a compromise was worked out to keep him. This could account for some of the equivocal language in the report.
It could also account for the displeased reaction of businessman Pierre Mouselli at having been characterized in the report as “unstable” by two former Iraqi Baathist ambassadors after the committee – notably Mr. Parton – had called him a cooperative and credible witness. Adrian Gonzales-Maltes, Mouselli’s lawyer, has written a formal letter of protest to the committee, denying that Mouselli has made “conflicting” statements as the report vaguely alleges. This again seems like a compromise on the committee’s part, inserted in order not to ruffle too many feathers. The all-important lunch meeting among Kofi and Koji Annan and Mouselli in Durban, South Africa has been particularly obscured. Mouselli was clear about his assumption that Kofi knew about his son’s visits to the Iraqi embassy in Lagos; the committee apparently was not.
Gonzalez-Maltes has also provided the committee with a wealth of new details about Kojo’s and Mouselli’s business dealings (company names, documents, etc.), which open up many possible avenues for investigation. More questions are sure to be raised by mainstream media reports known to be in preparation. The committee – and others – better be ready to answer them.
The over-riding question is whether this committee is truly qualified to conduct this inquiry – and not just for reasons of language insufficiency or “fear of flying” to the Third World. Perhaps they are simply over their heads. These three American lawyers were apparently startled when confronted by the reality of Nigerian jurisprudence. As I reported earlier, Mouselli’s lawyer in Lagos, known thereabouts as “Chief Johnny,” refused to relinquish Mouselli’s file, including his contract with Cotecna. I have just found out that the committee already has in its possession an earlier version of that contract, but it has been revised. Those revisions were made for a reason, of course, but so far only “Chief Johnny” knows why. And since he doesn’t want to be “collateral damage” (his words), he’s not talking. Who can blame him?
Let’s see: the committee didn’t come to the same conclusion you did so the investigators are incometent. Where did you get your info for your so-called report? On the telephone to somebody in France who told you he was so and so. How do you know who you were talking to? A real reporter would have gotten off his dead ass and gone to France and talked to this person one on one to make sure who he was. Ditto for somebody else you spoke with over the phone. Your piece on this issue had literally no named sources, was filled with innuendo, and was generally a piece of amatuerish shit. You ought to read Rosset’s stuff. Do you see shit like that? Hell no. That’s why the WSJ wouldn’t give you credit. I was once on the phone with somebody who told me he was calling from Zurich. My writing partner told me he thought the guy was using a cell from the NY office of Pru Bache where he was trying to unload phony stock certs. He called Pru Bache, and sure enough our guy in Switzerland was in line at Pru Bache. You talked to nobody over the phone, but you are right and investigators who actually talked to real people over and over again are wrong. I don’t know. Sounds fishy to me.
Go back to fiction writing, you sure ain’t a reporter.
“Parton is not a happy camper, however, and seems to have threatened to resign a few weeks ago because the committee was not pursuing leads they thought went outside their purview.”
That’s interesting. Would the “purview” at issue be investigation outside of UN officials, like tracing the whole OFF money scheme?
Kojo is small potatoes, IMO. Kofi probably had little day to day over the OFF business. Sevan is bigger, but could be just another UN official on the dole, to be sacrificed for the greater project.
Given the prevalence of Canadians involved in this “investigation” and their interrelationships with Pargesa/Paribas/PowerCorp it would be hard to conceive that the project for this commission is to limit damage to the Canadian interests that seemingly almost wholly operated OFF. Or it’s just an amazing coincidence? Desmarais, Chretien, Martin, each seems to have connections to each other and to these entities, and the Canadians on board like Morden and Frechette.
Volcker is American, true. But what are the chances that it was a meaningless coincidence that Volcker was chosen since he sits on the international board of Power Corp and is a close friend to Paul Desmarais?
Imagine this scenario: OFF was managed by American companies with close interrelationships with American politicians. If the UN hired George Tenet to be “Executive Director responsible for the overall direction and coordination of the Inquiry staff, including primary responsibilities for liaison with governments” wouldn’t that be suspicious?
The Executive Director for the Inquiry is Reid Morden – formerly the head of the CSIS, the Canadian CIA. Of all the people in the world to pick..
Kofi’s just a small diversion, I think. Interesting, sure, but maybe just a sacrificial lamb. An attention-grabbing lamb, for sure, by virtue of his high noticeability.
Duke, did you read Mr. Simon’s earlier reports on the committee investigation? His first one, published BEFORE the report was released, was virtually confirmed in its entirety by the report itself. So now you are saying he is suddenly lying? Well, now it is up to you to prove that.
Also, in your anger, you may have missed his assertion that his major interest is the reform of the United Nations, not the humiliation of Kofi Annan.
Duke:
Your criticism of Roger is so off base as to be laughable. Your critique is on one part of the story.
Roger reveals names the and dissatisfactions within the Volcker team and suggests that there is an on going major media investigation.
You should understand that reading “between the lines” is as revealing as “reading the lines.” There is more here; it will hopefully all leach out.
Your scathing comments will become sillier than they appear right now.
Of plays, Vaclav Havel‘s The The Memorandum, along with his The Increased Difficulty of Concentration are each superb and hilarious works that help to reveal how sclerotic bureaucracies and their adopted forms of language and (mis)communications are used to evade and deny responsibility and advance confusion within the bureaucracy while simultaneously advancing a laughably thin veneer of respectability and gravitas among the bureaucrats at the helm of the organization. Both are genuinely instructive and hilarious when performed well.
Duke… Duck… D”UN”k as in slam dunk? I’ve never heard of you or seen your work. Could you be so kind as to direct me to the best you have to offer so I may assuage myself that you truly are who you say you are?
Good work Roger. I agree with exmaple’s view. The fact that a little pow-wow is to go on in Southern Ontario to determine what is in the cards for the UN reformers leads me to believe that little “smart political capital” is being spent on this initiative. It looks like damage control to me.
Getting back to Duke-Duck-D”UN”k… stop being a D*nk.
SPECIAL REPORT #1
This blog has new information from sources close to the investigation of the United Nations Oil-for-Food Scandal by Paul Volcker’s Independent Inquiry Committee.
Mouselli appears to be reliable. I have spoken to him briefly on the phone in Paris and at some length with his attorney Adrian Gonzalez-Maltes.
Source for first paragraph – and for info that follows is not necessarily Mouselli or Gonzales-Maltes.
SPECIAL REPORT #2
What follows is information that comes from only one source – Mouselli’s attorney Adrian Gonzales-Maltes.
SPECIAL REPORT #3
This blog has had a special look inside at how this investigation has been working.
I believe that Roger has provided sufficient information for a reader of moderate (or less) intelligence to adequately assess and weight the reportage. The WJS has provided corroboration through other sources of the reliability of the reportage of SPECIAL REPORT #1.
One might compare and contrast the number of articles written by the sterling journos of the WaPo and NYT on – oh let’s say Al Qaa Qaa or the Swift Boat Vets or – hell, pick any one of thousands. Generally based upon “highly placed sources who insist on anonymity” and printed by editors who will defend their reporters protection of sources to the point of sending them off to jail – Hi, Judith! – Martha said it wasn’t too bad.
Why do I think sour grapes when reading criticism of a “non credentialed” report that was a huge scoop? If Roger gets something wrong – he has the guts to admit it – and that has happened damned few times.
A stark (and starkly telling) contrast between two contemporary organizations can be seen between the absurdly ideologically endowed U.N. and the emerging Council for a Community of Democracies (CCD).
There are several telling ways in which the contrast can be viewed, one is to read the bios of the leading figures within each organization. Kofi Annan himself is not untypical of the career diplomats who populate the UN’s upper echelons, steeped in an education and career that emphasizes status quo realpolitik and ideological presumptions that in turn are variously derivative of Old and New Left assumptions, together with latter-day adumbrations provided by pomo theorists such as E. Said, among others still. By contrast the bios of those who head the CCD reflect a thoroughgoing commitment to both democratic ideals and human rights as conceived within classical liberal terms (Locke, Montesquieu, the founding fathers, etc.) as well as careers steeped in the pragmatics and challenges of the real world – i.e., not only distinguished scholarly and diplomatic pursuits, but also career commitments in the fields of business and free enterprise more generally, militaries, journalism, jurisprudence, philanthropy, etc. In others words instead of lopsided careers steeped in education and abstract theory and heavily listing to port, even-keeled careers wherein both pragmatism and idealism receive due attention and respect.
I’m sure quite a few Americans through the years have been “startled” by the machinations of third world governments and the inner workings of their societies. Are these three particular Americans in over their heads? No doubt they are. (Was Judge Lance Ito any more or less competent than his fellows on the LA County bench? Probably not, but he was in way over his head…as was Marcia Clark, as was Christopher Darden, etc etc etc.) Perhaps that was the plan all along.
This is not at all on topic, but Duke compels me to mention it now. Roger, I must say that although you as a writer of fiction are a man of prodigious talent, your writing here, filled as it is with the many wonderful cultural references and fine use of language, reflecting as it does not only a first-rate mind but a highly evolved ethos, is a joy to behold. You send me over to Answers.com more than any other writer out there and for that alone I am truly grateful. Thank you.
Roger:
Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s 1970 Nobel Lecture said everything you need to know about the UN.-
“A quarter century ago, in the great hope of mankind, the United nations Org, was born. Alas, in an immoral world, this too grew up to be immoral. It is not the UNO but a United Governments Org. where all governments stand equal; those which are freely elected, those imposed forcibly, and those which have seized power with weapons. Relying on the mercenary partiality of the majority the UNO jealously guards the freedom of some nations and neglects the freedom of others. As a result of an obedient vote it declined to undertake the investigation of private appeals- the groans, screams, and beseechings of humble individual PLAIN PEOPLE- not large enough a catch for such a great organization. UNO made no effort to make the Declaration of Human Rights, its best document in twenty five years, into an OBLIGATORY condition of membership confronting the governments. Thus it betrayed those humble people into the will of the governments they had not chosen”
Duke, are you suffering from premature Oraculations?
(Sorry, couldn’t resist….)
Duke:
Roger has been right more often than wrong whereas you are just an ass.
Thank you Roger and keep up the good work.
Duke, my ass. The man’s a surly peasant.
Mark,
Perhaps Duke is just suffering from the big P.E:
Posting Envy
According to the usual suspects, corruption only matters if it’s Halliburton. The UN and all NGO’s are off limits. You’d think these folks would welcome reform before their beloved institution hits bottom. But, noooooooo. Hang the messengers instead.
Kevin, thanks for the Solzhenitsyn quote!
Personally, my favorite part of Duke’s post was the part where he was almost duped by some guy on a cellphone and Duke’s partner was the one who knew something was fishy.
The lesson is that some people can spot a phony phone call and some can’t. The confirmation of Roger’s info by the WSJ and others shows he’s in the first category; Duke’s story shows he’s in the second.
The writer “exmapleleaf”[second posting] has the real story. Claudia Rosett has written a couple of things about the Canadian connection and just last month Mark Steyn wrote extensively about the same thing. It was about oil all along but it wasn’t the Americans going for the development of the Iraqi oil fields, it was a consortium of companies in Canada led by a Corporation called “Total Corp.”
The post above: “Given the prevalence of Canadians involved in this “investigation” and their interrelationships with Pargesa/Paribas/PowerCorp it would be hard to conceive that the project for this commission is to limit damage to the Canadian interests that seemingly almost wholly operated OFF. Or it’s just an amazing coincidence? Desmarais, Chretien, Martin, each seems to have connections to each other and to these entities, and the Canadians on board like Morden and Frechette.”
Don’t know who Desmarais, Chretien, Martin, Morden and Frechette are? Go here and be enlightened, darnest thing you’ve ever read. The site has a good search engine also, start punching in those names and see where the links lead, newpaper stories, Times, Washington Post, etc., good reading. Here is the site. “Friends of Saddam” shttp://acepilots.com/unscam/archives/001890.html
Duke ó Have you ever heard a report of a UN scandal that DID turn out to be wrong…?
Ron:
Righto.
Remember Steyn breaking the news about the Chretien-Desmarais family connection? It was “news” because the Canadian press is completely cowed or owned by Power Corp.
Total Oil, formerly TotalFinaElf, had interests beyond OFF – previous drilling rights contracts given to it by Saddam, dependent on the removal of sanctions.
PLEASE!
Let me make clear……
The “Duke” posting here IS NOT
Duke of DeLand of
http://pekinprattles.blogspot.com
I DO NOT want to be confused with this man of even less talent than I possess!
Duke DeLand