So, our buddies the UN are complaining about the Fox News special on the OFF Scandal. The UN’s response:
The program that aired Fox Breaking Point on 19 September concerning the Oil for Food programme contained a number of inaccuracies. As the United Nations Secretariat’s offer to discuss the content of the documentary in a live studio interview immediately after its broadcast was not acceptable to Fox, we have chosen to put our observations in writing and have asked Fox to place it on its Oil for Food website. The program also raises allegations of impropriety about United Nations’ administration of the Iraq Oil for Food program. The Secretary-General and senior UN officials take all allegations of impropriety very seriously. In order to determine whether there is any truth to these allegations, Secretary-General Annan asked the former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank, Paul Volcker, to lead an independent inquiry into the programme. In order to preserve the independence and integrity of that inquiry, the Secretary-General will not comment on these allegations. (Pop over to the link from “complaing” to see the UN’s response about all the great things the UN did.)
Remember Benon Sevan saying “Even if 10 percent of the revenue was stolen, 90 percent got to the people it was intended for. Why does nobody report that?” Well, because criminal activity overshadows any good that may have come from the program. Because criminal activity is wrong. I bet Mark Hacking has done many good things in his life. But that approx .001 % of his life he did something very wrong. So, by UN standards, he should be let go.
Fox has responded to the UN.
Brian Gaffney, executive producer of the hour-long show, declared that “our sole objective was to prepare and broadcast a fair and balanced report, and U.N. accusations that it wasn’t are without foundation. We never made any effort to attack the United Nations for its sincerity in fighting terrorism or a number of other accusations that the U.N. has subsequently made about the television report.â€
Nor, Gaffney said, were the questions raised in the FOX investigation limited to the U.N. Secretariat alone, but covered the Security Council and its members, including the United States, France, Russia and China.
The UN wants to block investigations. While Paul Volker may be a great person and investigator, the OFF scandal goes seemingly to the top. How many people within the UN will cooperate?
