Uncovering Scandal at the U.N.

Uncovering Scandal at the U.N.
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
By John Gibson

Two bits of news on the U.N.'s corrupt Oil for Food program by which Saddam Hussein tried to bribe members of the Security Council...

Now it turns out that Secretary-General Kofi Annan's son Kojo was also on the Oil for Food gravy train to the tune of about $150,000 a year.

And did you read in Monday's Los Angeles Times that Iraq is investing $3 billion in its oil fields next year, at which time it will exceed output of the Saddam regime?

Considering the so-called insurgents are trying to blow up oil facilities every day, that's quite an accomplishment.

FOX News Channel's Jonathan Hunt also went to France to interview the former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua.

He was listed as a recipient of oil vouchers — also known as bribes — from Saddam. This was the method by which the Iraqi dictator beat the sanctions against his government.

Some people suspect Pasqua was the conduit to distribute Saddam's dirty oil money around the French system, wherever it had to go in order for the French to tend to Saddam's interests on the world stage.

You might have noticed the French did just that.

Now Pasqua denies any wrongdoing, which you expect — he could hardly admit to doing Saddam's dirty work.

But you get to see him deny. You get to see Hunt pester him, you get to see him deny again, in a fashion that could be described as not exceptionally convincing.

By the way — near as I understand it — even if U.N. officials are eventually identified as part of Saddam's plot to cheat under U.N. sanctions... not much will happen.

The officials are, after all, basically beyond the law... that is, unless you foolishly expect the U.N. itself to do something about its own crooked executives.

That brings me back to an item at the top. Annan's son was in on the scam. The secretary-general says he is disappointed to learn about it.

You can expect he will express similar disappointment when the investigators he has hired find his own officials were bought by Saddam's dirty money.

That's My Word.