Subpoena Power
BY BENNY AVNI
May 2, 2005

How ironic. When he took on the task of heading up the oil-for-food investigation, Paul Volcker brushed off criticism that without subpoena power, his committee would be toothless. Now rebel investigators under him, as well as a key witness whose testimony he has pooh-poohed, are about to be subpoenaed by Congress.
And even worse for Mr. Volcker, the plan to subpoena the two investigators who have quit the Independent Inquiry Committee, Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan, plus a former business partner of Kojo Annan, Pierre Mouselli, is designed to expose inadequacies in the U.N.-mandated investigation by showing that it went too soft on Secretary-General Annan.
Mr. Volcker phoned key legislators, trying to convince them to stay away from Mr. Parton and Ms. Duncan, both of whom signed confidentiality agreements upon joining the IIC. But congressional subpoenas trump those agreements. Mr. Parton respects the congressional committees and their work, his lawyer, Lanny Davis, told me, adding that Mr. Parton hoped a solution could be worked out between the United Nations and Congress.
It might be too late for that - Mr. olcker's weekend phone calls did not sit well with legislators. We should have an opportunity to talk to the two investigators, Senator Coleman, a Republican of Minnesota, told CNN yesterday. I am very disturbed that they [the United Nations] assert some kind of immunity.
Mr. Parton and Ms. Duncan drafted parts of the second Volcker interim report. In particular, they refuted Kofi Annan's contention that he was unaware that the Swiss shipping inspection company that employed his son, Cotecna, planned to do business with the U.N.-run oil-for-food program.
Mr. Annan claims he never used his U.N. position to help his young and inexperienced son by steering some business his way. The denial seems incredible not only because fathers, by nature, try to help their children. More tellingly, after careful examination of the details in Mr. Volcker's second interim report, a leap of faith is required to accept the committee's ultimate conclusion that the evidence is not reasonably sufficient to support the charges against Mr. Annan.
That part of the Volcker report was the basis of Mr. Annan's declaration of exoneration after the March 29 release of the report. The committee did its utmost to discredit Mr. Mouselli, the French-Lebanese businessman whose testimony was the smoking gun in refuting Mr. Annan's contention.
Mr. Mouselli described to me recently how he had originally learned the secrets of oil dealings from Marc Rich, a man who was pardoned in President Clinton's final days in the White House. After speaking with Mr. Rich, Mr. Mouselli met Kojo Annan - a young man with all the connections - who passed on such tricks of the trade as how oil vouchers worked in Nigeria years before Saddam Hussein caught on and employed similar bribery techniques in Iraq.
Mr. Parton and Ms. Duncan took Mr. Mouselli's testimony. In it, he described several incidents that make it seem impossible for Mr. Annan not to have known that his son was trying to direct Iraqi business toward Cotecna. Most, but not all, of the details of those transcripts are noted in the Volcker report.
But Mr. Volcker decided that Mr. Mouselli was not credible. It is hard to escape the suspicion that this finding might be based on political sympathies - the conclusion that likely prompted the resignations of Mr. Parton and Ms. Duncan.
In Mr. Volcker's report, Mr. Annan is described as contradicting his own testimony, mostly by failing to remember events. Anyone can forget, but an adversarial investigator might use such lapses to advance the discovery of truth. In Mr. Volcker's report, that strategy is never used against Mr. Annan, but it is used to bring down Mr. Mouselli.
The federal investigators in New York's southern district use more potent tools - like threat of imprisonment - against figures such as Saddam's unregistered agent Samir Vincent, in order to get to the big fish on the oil-for-food food chain. The tool Congress has is subpoena power.
Without any such tools, Mr. Volcker has played catch-up, even though he has a staff of more than 70 and a minimum budget of $30 million. Congress now promises not only to revisit past questions on Mr. Annan but also to examine whether Mr. Volcker's investigation can honestly tell the definitive oil-for-food story, as it claims to try to do. As Mr. Volcker hints his mandate now could be extended, this is a good question to ask.