Volcker Committee Was Manipulated, A Lawyer Charges
BY BENNY AVNI - Special to the Sun
April 13, 2005

UNITED NATIONS - The lawyer for a key witness who cooperated with the U.N. committee investigating the oil-for-food scandal says the panel allowed itself to be manipulated into discrediting his client by Secretary-General Annan's attorney, Greg Craig, a former aide to President Clinton.
The lawyer, Adrian Gonzalez, who represents Kojo Annan's former business partner Pierre Mouselli, said the Volcker committee was persuaded to discount the testimony of his client by Mr. Craig. Kojo Annan is the secretary-general's son.
Mr. Craig, a Washington attorney who was chief White House strategist in the Clinton impeachment proceedings, was able to contact the committee to pressure them, and the committee allowed itself to be manipulated by him, Mr. Gonzalez told The New York Sun in an interview.
Mr. Gonzalez, who is based in Paris, said his frustrations were shared by members of the Volcker committee. A spokeswoman for the committee, Katie Bergius, declined to answer questions from the Sun. The investigative body is led by Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Mr. Craig, who is now with the Washington-based firm Williams & Connolly, was appointed as special counsel to the White House during the Clinton administration and served as a legal troubleshooter during the scandal involving Monica Lewinsky, the struggle over Elian Gonzalez, and other cases.
Mr. Craig did not return several telephone calls from the Sun to his office.
Mr. Craig's work for Mr. Annan, U.N. officials say, is on a pro-bono basis. A U.N. spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said Mr. Craig had offered, as a friend, to help the secretary-general with his defense and that no U.N. funds are being used.
Mr. Clinton, who along with his former chief of staff Erskine Bowles, now works for the U.N. on a $1 a year salary, is expected to conduct a press conference today about tsunami-aid efforts alongside Mr. Annan.
The accusations by Mr. Gonzalez referred to a passage in the second interim Volcker committee report. In that section, the committee dismissed a key piece of testimony by Mr. Gonzalez's client, a Franco-Lebanese businessman.
Mr. Mouselli's testimony was crucial because it indicated that Kofi Annan knew in 1998 that his son planned to do business in Iraq. But according to a footnote in the March 29 Volcker report, the committee did not credit the testimony. In an accompanying press release, the committee added that having weighed all the evidence and the credibility of the witnesses, it concluded that the evidence was not reasonably sufficient to show the secretary-general knew in 1998 about the intention of his son's employer, the Swiss-based inspection company Cotecna, to bid for a U.N. oil-for-food contract.
Mr. Mouselli fully cooperated with the committee, Mr. Gonzalez said, and as Mr. Mouselli's lawyer he had been assured several times by committee staff members that the testimony had been credible and would be deemed as such. Mr. Mouselli had been allowed no opportunity to explain what the committee ultimately claimed was a conflict in statements between his direct testimony and an e-mail clarification his lawyer sent to the committee four days before the report was released late last month.
According to Mr. Mouselli's testimony, Kojo Annan told his father of various business deals he intended to conduct in Iraq prior to the time when the United Nations secured Cotecna's services. The elder Mr. Annan denied any such knowledge.
The potentially explosive testimony was shot down in the committee's report, which quoted an unnamed Iraqi ambassador for Saddam Hussein in Nigeria as saying Mr. Mouselli was unstable.
The report also said no independent witnesses could verify Mr. Mouselli's testimony about a conversation he had at a private lunch with Kofi and Kojo Annan in September 1998.
The most damning finding bearing upon Mr. Mouselli's credibility, however, is contained in the footnote, which says the committee does not credit the testimony because of an e-mail from his lawyer that contradicted Mr. Mouselli's account of that private lunch. Mr. Gonzalez said the e-mail does not contradict the testimony.
He also maintains that the idea to send that e-mail clarification was prompted by Mr. Craig on March 25. According to notes Mr. Gonzalez says he took during the phone conversation, Mr. Craig told him he did not care to discuss most of Mr. Mouselli's testimony.
All I care is whether they talked specifically about Iraq at that lunch, Mr. Craig said, according to Mr. Gonzalez's notes. Mr. Craig asked that question even though Mr. Mouselli also told the committee that he and Kojo Annan met with the Iraqi ambassador to Nigeria, and that on a separate occasion he and his partner spent a week at a U.N. event in Durban, South Africa, greeting potential clients in an enclosed zone through which people wanting to see the secretary-general had to pass.
Mr. Mouselli, in other words, was certain Mr. Annan knew of his son's hopes for business deals in Iraq, Mr. Gonzalez said, and that was the main point of Mr. Mouselli's testimony. Nevertheless, Mr. Mouselli could not say with certainty that the issue of Iraq specifically was discussed at that luncheon, Mr. Gonzalez told Mr. Craig. It was then, according to Mr. Gonzalez, that Mr. Craig asked if he could go to the committee with that clarification. Mr. Gonzalez said he thought it would be more appropriate if the clarification came from him, and then he wrote the e-mail.
In a subsequent conversation with a Volcker committee investigator, Mr. Gonzalez said, the investigator told him he did not think the e-mail contradicted Mr. Mouselli's statement.
Ultimately, however, Mr. Gonzalez said he did not blame Mr. Craig. I don't blame the lawyer, he said. He blamed those members of the Volcker committee who allowed themselves to be manipulated by Mr. Craig.