The Volcker Contretemps
Republicans chase the wrong target on Oil for Food.

Friday, May 6, 2005 12:01 a.m.


Paul Volcker's probe of the United Nations' Oil for Food program has already turned over many rocks, and promises to turn over many more now that it is looking into the Security Council's oversight of the corrupt sanctions regime on Iraq. But all of a sudden the U.S. Congress seems more concerned with Mr. Volcker's credibility than with the U.N.'s. Leave it to Republicans to expose the capillaries but leave the heart of the matter untouched. 
We're referring to the contretemps involving Congress, the Volcker Committee and one of the Committee's former investigators, a man named Robert Parton. Mr. Parton and fellow investigator Miranda Duncan resigned last month from the Committee, apparently because they believe the most recent interim report was too soft on Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Both investigators are bound by confidentiality agreements they signed with the Committee, but Mr. Parton carried away a load of documents that Representative Henry Hyde's Committee on International Relations has now subpoenaed. 
At the same time, Mr. Hyde's Republican colleague, Connecticut Congressman Chris Shays, has written Mr. Volcker to complain that the findings on Mr. Annan were oddly muted and almost purposefully vague, as if to suggest a whitewash. Mr. Shays has also accused Mr. Volcker's Committee of reflexive secrecy or legalism, because it objects to the Parton subpoena. Mr. Parton has also surfaced with Beltway operative and former Clinton defender Lanny Davis as his legal counsel and adviser. Mr. Davis waited nearly a week to tell Mr. Volcker that Mr. Parton had been subpoenaed. Mr. Davis says he kept silent on the orders of Mr. Hyde's Committee, but it does raise the issue of which parties are really the ones keeping secrets. 
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From our own reporting and reading of Mr. Volcker's evidence, we understand how reasonable people can differ on how much Mr. Annan really knew about the bidding by a company called Cotecna that employed his son and won Iraqi Oil for Food contracts. Mr. Parton apparently thinks there is no way Mr. Annan couldn't have known. We happen to agree. But the Volcker Committee decided that it had found no smoking gun and so concluded that it had found not reasonably sufficient evidence. Mr. Annan took that judgment from the interim report and claimed exoneration--when of course it was no such thing. No wonder many in Congress are angry. 
But for Republicans to now focus their attention on the bona fides of the Volcker probe because of the claims of a disgruntled investigator is to shoot the wrong target. Sure it will get some good headlines for the Members, and it may even further damage Mr. Annan's credibility. But it will also damage the Volcker probe, perhaps irreparably, and just when his Committee is getting into the meat of the scandal, which is why and how Oil for Food got started and why it was allowed to prop up Saddam Hussein for so many years. 
Put simply, the Volcker Committee will be crippled if it cannot guarantee its witnesses--many of them not beyond reproach--that their confidential testimony won't end up being aired on C-SPAN as part of a Congressional hearing. This is especially so since many of the Committee's witnesses are not U.S. citizens and could not be compelled to cooperate with a Congressional or Justice Department investigation. 
All investigations that confront serious allegations of fraud, corruption, misuse and mismanagement must enjoy a degree of secrecy as evidence is being gathered, Mr. Volcker wrote Mr. Shays yesterday. It is also part and parcel of maintaining mutual confidence among staff members so that they can feel free to debate issues fully among themselves. 
The most preposterous implication is that somehow Mr. Volcker signed up for this unenviable task in order to engineer a coverup. So a former Federal Reserve Chairman would risk soiling a distinguished career in order to protect the U.N. Secretariat? 
As it is, what the Volcker Committee has already turned up is remarkable. We have learned that Benon Sevan, the U.N. bureaucrat responsible for Oil for Food, may have made money on the deal; that the U.N.'s selection of the program's prime contractors did not conform to its own rules; and that Mr. Annan's former chief of staff shredded potentially relevant documents even as Mr. Volcker's investigation was getting under way. 
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We have also learned that Kojo Annan met repeatedly with Iraqi officials in Nigeria in 1998 and later received as much as $484,000 from Cotecna. Not least, we have learned that it was Kofi Annan's own lax management, and his easy mixing of diplomacy with business, that created the conditions in which Mr. Sevan thrived. If this is a coverup, we need more of them. 
We aren't conspiracy theorists, but from the point of view of the U.N.'s most rabid defenders it's hard to imagine a better turn of events than this Congressional detour. Preoccupy the Volcker Committee with this side issue until its funding runs out in August. Chill its investigators, and its witnesses, into inactivity or silence. Damage Mr. Volcker's personal reputation, so that any final report can be attacked as suspect. The only people thrilled with all this must be the people who profited from Oil for Food.
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