'The extent of the corruption is staggering,'' Sen. Norm Coleman told me. He is a freshman Republican from Minnesota completing his second year in Washington, and he was talking about the United Nations and its pious secretary-general, Kofi Annan. Coleman's comments are not the mere musings of an insignificant rookie senator, but the considered judgment of a committee chairman whose careful investigation reached the hearing stage today. After winning his seat against former Vice President Walter F. Mondale in 2002, Coleman was rewarded with the chairmanship of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He is conducting what could be the most explosive congressional investigation in years, probing the U.N.'s fraudulent oil-for-food program in Iraq and Annan's obstruction of the senatorial inquiry.
Coleman said this week's hearings will show that ''the scope of the ripoff'' at the U.N. is substantially more than the widely reported $10 billion to $11 billion in graft. But more than money is involved. These hearings also should expose the arrogance of the secretary-general and his bureaucracy. At the same time that he has refused to honor the Senate committee's request for documents, Annan has inveighed against the Fallujah offensive sanctioned by the new Iraqi government while ignoring the terrorism of insurgents. This is an unprecedented showdown between a branch of the U.S. government and the U.N. |