Spot the Real Headline
This text is from today’s New York Times, discussing oil-for-food:
The Volcker committee cleared Mr. Annan of using any influence in the awarding of an oil-for-food contract to the company that employed his son Kojo Annan, but it faulted him for conducting only a superficial inquiry into the company’s [Cotecna, the one that employed his son Kojo and paid him $300,000] relationship with the United Nations once conflict of interest concerns arose.
The report also accused Mr. Annan’s longtime chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, of shredding three years of office files covering the period when the program was in place and a second aide, Dileep Nair, head of the Office of Internal Oversight Services, for filling a high-level post in the program with someone who devoted virtually all his time to other matters.
Mr. Annan said that he accepted the panel’s findings and that in his case they amounted to exoneration.
Cleverly, the Times starts by setting the bar high at the question of direct influence. Somehow, that doesn’t quite manage to soften the impact of a top U.N. aide shredding piles of possibly incriminating documents. No cabinet secretary, for example, would last a day in Washington after such a finding by an inspector general or the GAO. How this is being heralded as an exoneration for Annan is simply beyond me. Regular readers already know that I’ve spent a few years prosecuting and defending criminal cases. Were this guy my client right now, I’d be stapling his mouth shut tighter than a Lutheran wallet.
Now, before you read the whole story and challenge my choice of the most newsworthy excerpt–and I invite you to do that, of course, but not just yet–take this little test and see what headline the Times put on this story:
a. Report: Top Annan Aide Shredded Oil-for-Food Documents
b. Report Faults Annan on Son’s Oil-for-Food Contract
c. Some Question Annan’s Viability at U.N.
d. U.N. Inquiry Exonerates Annan
Answer here, and it’s not exactly on the front page, either. Wouldn’t it be nice to see the Times do a headline on the U.N. that’s as hard-hitting and prominent as, say, this? Another headline you’re not likely to see: “Report Blames “˜Poor Tradecraft,’ Not Political Pressure, for Iraq WMD Errors.
Now guess which organization will reform itself faster.
Hint: it’s not the one whose staff members have diplomatic immunity from obstruction of justice charges. If there’s any truth to this report, Iqbal Riza should be staring into the maw of a 20-year hitch at Marion. Isn’t it patently questionable that Kofi Annan’s close aide could have destroyed all those heaps of documents without his knowledge? If I could prosecute Riza for obstruction, I’d be offering him 5 years at a medium-security pen if he’d give up his boss.