May 5, 2005
Congress Gets Subpoenaed U.N. Documents
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 
Filed at 10:24 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A former investigator in the U.N.-appointed oil-for-food probe on Thursday gave Congress boxes of documents concerning his findings on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, drawing an angry response from his former employer.
Lawyers for that investigation, formally called the Independent Inquiry Committee, said they are checking if that investigator, Robert Parton, violated a confidentiality agreement by giving up the potentially explosive documents. He did so under subpoena from Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House International Relations Committee.
Responding to criticism made by the IIC chairman, former Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker, Parton's attorney Lanny Davis said his client was required by law to comply with the subpoena.
''On multiple occasions on the telephone and in writing Mr. Parton asked the IIC and the U.N. whether he should defy congressional subpoenas,'' Davis said in a statement. ''The IIC and the U.N. refused to respond.''
Parton, a former FBI agent, has been the focus of heated controversy since he resigned from the committee in April because he believed the panel's most recent report was too soft on Annan. A second investigator, Miranda Duncan, resigned with him for the same reason.
Since then, speculation has swirled about the exact reasons why Parton believed the latest Volcker report, released in March, wasn't critical enough of Annan. The documents he gave Congress will almost certainly help settle that issue.
That Volcker report said Annan failed to properly investigate possible conflicts of interest surrounding an oil-for-food contract won by Cotecna Inspection S.A., the Swiss company where Annan's son Kojo worked. It criticized Annan for refusing to push top advisers further after they conducted a 24-hour investigation related to his son and found nothing wrong.
But Volcker's report cleared the secretary-general of trying to influence the awarding of Cotecna's $10 million-a-year contract and said he didn't violate U.N. rules. The oil-for-food program was set up to help Iraqis cope with international sanctions the United Nations imposed on Saddam Hussein's regime after his 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Hyde announced Thursday that he had subpoenaed Parton last Friday. He said he instructed his investigators ''to begin an immediate and careful examination of documents received from Mr. Parton.''
''It is my hope and expectation that neither the United Nations nor the independent inquiry will attempt to sanction Mr. Parton for complying with a lawful subpoena,'' he said.
A U.N. spokesman said Annan had been candid with the investigators and had nothing to hide.
''It's clear that the secretary-general has been extremely open with the Volcker investigation,'' spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. ''They've had access to him a number of times, they've had access to all his files, he's given them everything. So I don't know what Mr. Parton has, but on our part the secretary-general has been extremely open and extremely cooperative with the investigation.''
In a statement released later Thursday, Volcker repeated his belief that there was no cover-up and that his latest report contained all ''relevant factual information'' on Annan and his son.
''It is only the inferences drawn from those facts that are subject to different conclusions,'' and Parton and Duncan disagreed with the committee, Volcker wrote.
''However, it is the committee's responsibility to draw the conclusions from the facts that we believe are most appropriate.''
In addition to the statement, Volcker released a scathing letter in which committee lawyer Susan Ringler accused Parton of violating his confidentiality agreement by releasing the documents. Ringler's claim was made in response to a letter from Davis, in which the attorney defended Parton's decision to comply with the congressional subpoena and provide the documents.
Ringler rejected Davis' claim that Parton had repeatedly asked the IIC and the U.N. whether he should defy congressional subpoenas, saying Davis not been honest when he sought the committee's advice. She wrote that she had told him explicitly that Parton had immunity as a member of the U.N.-appointed committee. She said the subpoena should have been turned over to the United Nations or the committee.
''You apparently chose to ignore the direction provided by the U.N. and the IIC,'' Ringler wrote. ''Rather than being forthright, you chose to be disingenuous. The committee is reviewing this matter and its options.''
Associated Press writer Nick Wadhams contributed to this story from the United Nations.