Fighting abuse at U.N.

She did her job at the United Nations. She did it well, too well to suit the Clinton administration. That’s why former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright hired someone to be her babysitter, then quietly dumped her when no one was looking. Her name is Linda Shenwick. She was our counselor for resource management at the United States Mission to the U.N. until 1997, when Albright put her on ice, then fired her two days after the 2000 election, while the nation was preoccupied with the outcome of the presidential race.

If President George W. Bush is serious about pursuing his vision of a U.N. “serving the interests of its member states,” instead of the other way around, he will restore Shenwick to that all-important position and he will do it sooner, rather than later.

As the senior official responsible for analysis of the U.N. budget, Shenwick’s job was to make sure our money was spent carefully and appropriately. When it wasn’t, it was her job to let the State Department and Congress know about it. Over the years, government officials, elected representatives on both sides of the aisle and members of the media have used her timely, accurate, unbiased information to press for much needed reforms.

Shenwick was not a political appointee. She worked her way up the hard way. She went to work for the State Department in 1979, right out of law school, under the administration of Jimmy Carter. In 1985, she was transferred to the United States Mission to the U.N. and received glowing evaluations for her work as an administrative and budget officer. In 1989, Vernon Walters, the chief American delegate, described Shenwick as a woman of “unshakable integrity and courage.”

Walters, as it turns out, was a prophet. Four years later, Linda would be tested as never before. Anyone with less intestinal fortitude surely would have broken under the pressure exercised by the political appointees of President William Jefferson Clinton. These people were not interested in the information in her reports. In fact, they tried to suppress it. Shenwick says that, at various times, she was threatened, not only with the loss of her job, but with the loss of her reputation.

In 1993, when Shenwick reported to Albright, then ambassador to the U.N., that she had seen photographs of stacks of cash left out on tables at a U.N. site in Somalia, nothing was done about it. A year later, as things began to unravel, the site reported that $3.9 million in cash had been stolen.

When Shenwick was ordered to put a lid on information that might portray the U.N. in a bad light, she had to make a choice: She could become a puppet of the administration or she could continue to do her job. Linda Shenwick was not a whistle blower in the true sense of the word. She simply refused to lie or withhold information from members of Congress or play the Clinton game of spin, forget or evade.

When a law was passed to tie U.S. contributions to the United Nations to reforms, Albright was unhappy, and was said to hold her directly responsible. “Never, had I experienced anything like that. From the Carter administration through the administration of George H. Bush, I always was encouraged to do every job I’ve ever held fairly and accurately.”

Shenwick had earned the respect of her international colleagues at the U.N., so much so they elected her to a seat on the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, ACABQ, an important position that was lost to the U.S. in 1996 when Albright refused to renominate her for the post.

Shenwick was asked to sit in on a negotiating session for the Helms-Biden Commission which was trying to work out a package of reforms in exchange for the U.S. paying almost a billion dollars in disputed dues. During the meeting, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., asked for assurances that none of this money would be going to U.N. agencies that are involved in controversial population control practices. He was assured by U.N. officials that it would not.

When the meeting was over, Shenwick felt that she had to inform the congressman that the information he was given was not correct. “It didn’t matter to me whether or not I agreed with Smith’s position or not. As an employee of the United States government, it was my job to see that a member of Congress was given accurate information. They went ballistic!”

When things began to heat up for Shenwick, members of the House and Senate wrote letters of support for her. One came from the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms, R-N.C. Although Albright went out of her way to maintain a cordial relationship with Helms, she sent Shenwick some subtle and not so subtle messages through the administration’s U.N. spokesman, Jamie Ruben. “Jamie, said to me, in a typical Jamie way, ‘You can’t be surprised at the way we are treating you. You’re not going to be treated like a normal career officer when you have all this support from these right-wing senators.’

“Then, he went on to say, with a look of disappointment on his face, ‘I don’t know how anyone like you, living in New York City, with your education, with all the benefits you’ve had in your life could want to be associated with people with those kinds of social values.’ It was not only inappropriate, it had absolutely nothing to do with how I was doing my job!”

In April of 1996, Albright called Herbert Donald Gelber out of retirement and created a position for him at the mission. It soon became apparent to Shenwick that his job simply was to “supervise” her. Shenwick’s suspicions proved to be correct. In December of 1996, Gilbert wrote up a negative report on her — the only negative report she had ever received — and left the following month. Albright then used the report as justification to “reassign” Shenwick. The fact that Albright fired Shenwick two days after the election — when she was headed out the door– was an act of arrogance and vindictiveness that should not be ignored.

Through the efforts of Chairman Helms and Joseph Biden, D-Del., an agreement finally was reached to trade the disputed U.N. dues for a slight reduction in rates. The people of the United States now will be responsible for paying 22 percent of the U.N.’s operating budget, down from 25 percent. Our share of the U.N.’s peacekeeping budget will go from 31 percent to 28 percent. However, there is much work left to be done. We have not made a dent in the waste, fraud and abuse inside this bloated unresponsive international bureaucracy.

Much of the current agenda of the U.N. is aimed at transferring the wealth of the United States to other countries, in the name of helping the poor. However, U.N. employees live high on the hog. For example, employees at U.N. headquarters are paid 20 percent more than employees who hold comparable jobs in New York City. Furthermore, these U.N. employees are reimbursed for their taxes, get cushy allowances to send their children to private schools. There is no code of conduct, no requirement that officials recuse themselves from matters in which they have conflicts of interest, and nothing to prevent nepotism. One senior U.N. diplomat placed his common-law wife on staff at a salary of more than $60,000.

And remember that it’s the people of the United States who are picking up roughly one-fourth of this tab.

If President Bush is serious about protecting property rights, individual liberties and national sovereignty, he must begin by cleaning out the Clinton political appointees at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. and within the U.N. structure itself who have dedicated themselves to the policies in “Agenda 21” which was adopted in 1992 at Rio de Janeiro’s United Nations Conference on Environment and Development.

As the largest dues-paying contributor, it has been the custom for the U.S. to request and receive a changing of the guard among U.S. employees at the U.N., when a new administration takes over. Mr. Clinton did not wait until he took office in January of 1993 to begin this process. Immediately after his election in 1992, he sent word to then U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali that he wanted Dick Thornberg, who was his under-secretary-general for management at the U.N., terminated. Thornberg was dismissed and the post remained vacant until Clinton was sworn in.

Gilliam Martin Sorensen, who is serving as an assistant secretary general, should be asked to leave. She is the wife of Theodore Sorensen, a Democrat Party operative. Thornberg’s successor, Joseph Connor, also should be asked to leave, as should Carol Bellamy, a liberal Democrat from New York who is serving as the executive director of the U.N. Children’s Fund.

Lastly, if Mr. Bush is serious about reigning in the waste, fraud and abuse at U.N., he will reinstate Linda Shenwick as counselor for resource management at the United States Mission. She is uniquely qualified for that important oversight post. More importantly, if Mr. Bush is serious about protecting dedicated and courageous public servants, he will restore Linda Shenwick, whose career abruptly was cut short because she refused to bow to political pressure and withhold information from the people’s representatives in Congress.