Only time will tell, but he can’t be happy with Niles Lathem’s report in the NY Post this morning that former Oil-for-Food investigator Robert Parton, whose resignation from the Volcker Committee was first hinted at on this blog, is now going to talk to another committee – Henry Hyde’s.
Documents potentially devastating to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan were handed over yesterday to a congressional committee in an explosive new development in the U.N. oil-for- food scandal.
House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) announced that Robert Parton, who resigned in protest from the investigation headed by Paul Volcker, had complied with the panel’s subpoena.
Parton, who claimed Volcker probers had been too soft on Annan in their last report, turned over boxes of documents on Annan’s son, Kojo.
He also provided two drafts far more critical of Kofi Annan than last month’s final report, sources told The Post.
Meanwhile, the WSJ has a strained, albeit well-meaning, editorial in which they argue that the Hyde investigation of the Volcker Committee is an unnecessary detour from the prime location of the malfeasance – Annan & Company themselves. Not so. The very essence of the problem at the United Nations is the organization’s complete lack of any accountability. If the Volcker investigation is a continuation of that policy by other (perhaps more subtle) means, it must be revealed as such. And in the process, new revelations will point back at the Secretariat building.
As we used to say in another context, the struggle continues.
UPDATE: More on Kofi in the Ivy League from the estimable Cliff May.
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