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Cover Story

Kofi’s black box syndrome

by Judi McLeod, Canadafreepress.com

November 22, 2004

The United Nations staff union expressing lack of confidence in the senior management of the world’s largest bureaucracy is the same one that drummed out Denis Beissel of hidden "black box" infamy.

Beissel, the UN official who took receipt of a black box flight data recorder from a downed 1994 aircraft, unearthed a decade later in a locked file cabinet in Kofi annan’s Peacekeeping Department, departed the scene following a highly publicized clash with the UN staff union.

Charged with attempts to bust the employee group and suppress criticisms of the UN’s executive, Bissel headed off into the retirement sunset in 2003.

When reporters demanded to know why a black box flight data recorder would turn up 10 years later in a locked file cabinet in annan’s office, spokesman Fred Eckhard played mum.

"There is no black box, I don’t know what you’re talking about," Eckhard told reporters, reinforcing his comments with the pretext of peeking under his desk.

The black box syndrome keeps cropping up to torment annan.

Within the space of days after denying its existence, Eckhard was backtracking and ready to admit that a black box had indeed been found in annan’s locked file cabinet.

The recorder is believed to be the one from the fatal 1994 plane crash that killed the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, leading to large-scale massacres in africa, which the UN estimates killed more than 600,000 people.

Once the box was found, smooth-talking annan registered surprise: "It sounds like a foul-up, a first class foul-up."

When it comes to the fine art of the flip-flop, annan and Eckhard make even John Kerry look like just another piker.

Eckhard pulled black box tactics out of the rabbit’s hat on the Dileep Nair scandal.

Last spring, anonymous letters accused Nair, chief of the Office of Internal Oversight Services, and UN head honcho against waste and corruption, of favoritism, sexual misconduct and harassment against employees.

Eckhard stated last week that an international investigation had concluded allegations against Nair were groundless, adding that annan "had every confidence" in Nair.

But in a letter to the union’s president, annan’s chief of staff said Nair had also been told to "exercise due caution when making personnel-related decisions".

While annan is being outed by his own union, Washington keeps pressing the UN doorbell over the UN’s management of the oil-for-food program in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

a U.S. Senate probe estimates Saddam illegally pocketed more than US $21-billion during 13 years of UN sanctions.

While UN administrators were either asleep at the switch or looking the other way, Saddam used some of the money to give "rewards" of $25,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

Meanwhile, looks like Kofi annan is going to need a much bigger carpet for hiding black boxes.

Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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