READ INTERVIEW WITH UN WHISTLEBLOWER BELOW JUSTICE FOR U.N. WHISTLEBLOWER LINDA SHENWICK! TAKE A LOOK INSIDE THE UN FILES Please contact the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House International Relations Committee on her behalf. Ask that Senator Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, demand Linda's reinstatement at her budget post at the U.S. mission to the U.N. LINDA SHENWICK WAS FIRED BY THE CLINTON- GORE ADMINISTRATION FOR TELLING CONGRESS ABOUT U.N. CORRUPTION Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Stephen Biegeun, staff director. Telephone - 202-224-4651 FAX - 202-224-0836 House International Relations Committee: Tom Mooney, staff director Telephone: 202-225-5021 FAX - 202-225-2035 Or use toll-free number to reach Capitol Switchboard and then ask for Senate Foreign Relations Committee or House International Relations Committee: 1-877-762-8762 Interview with U.N. Whistleblower Linda Shenwick Linda Shenwick has worked at the United Nations since the mid 1980s. A career public servant, she was the top U.S. official on budget and financial matters at the U.S. mission to the U.N. She was removed from that post by the Clinton Administration. Among her disclosures, as described during a September 23, 1999, appearance on the Fox News program, The O'Reilly Factor: she saw photographs of millions of U.S. dollars in cash being left on tables at the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Somalia in 1993. "Nobody did anything about it," Shenwick says. She briefed Madeleine Albright, then the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., about the problem, and Albright found it "interesting" and a "good story" but "didn't take any action to follow-up on it." Albright, she says, was "more concerned" that the scandal would become known outside the U.S. mission to the U.N. Shenwick says $3.9 million was subsequently stolen. ABC News Nightline, in a story about her case by John Donvan, confirmed that the information she was providing to Congress about U.N. affairs was accurate. By a 287-136 vote, the House of Representatives on July 21, 1999, voted for a resolution finding that Shenwick was being "persecuted" by the State Department because she "informed the Congress of waste, fraud and mismanagement at the United Nations." The resolution expressed the sense of Congress that State Department employees who perform their duties and exercise their responsibilities should not be demoted or removed from their positions. The sponsor of the resolution, Rep. Cliff Stearns, called Shenwick a "dedicated, honest, trustworthy civil servant who has been unfairly and illegally removed from her federal position." The following edited interview with Linda Shenwick and her attorney Victoria Toensing was conducted by Cliff kincaid, president of America's Survival, on September 21, 1999. QUESTION. How could you be forced out of your job for providing accurate information about U.N. affairs? ANSWER. Shenwick: I've been forced out of my job by the Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. And it was because I provided information to Congress about what was really happening at the United Nations as well as the efforts of our government vis a vis reform issues at the U.N. QUESTION. Why wouldn't the United States government want to root out corruption out of this world body? ANSWER. Shenwick: I believe that one of the reasons was that it's difficult to reform any organization, and the U.N. is an unwieldy bureaucracy and it's slow to make change. More importantly, they felt that as the true problems of the U.N. were exposed, two things would happen. One, those individuals in the State Department like Secretary of State Albright, who were involved with the U.N. and were responsible for reforming and managing it, would not look good in the eyes of the media and the American public. That was of great concern. And second of all, Congress, in exercising its oversight responsibility, would be slow or not willing to appropriate U.S. taxpayer funds to the U.N. if they had the true facts before them about what really is happening at the U.N. Toensing: It isn't always that the U.S. government had a policy of blinders over its eyes. Certainly during the early days that Linda worked at the U.S-U.N. mission, the Reagan Administration and Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick welcomed the information that Linda provided. QUESTION. What exactly happened to you? ANSWER. Shenwick: I was threatened that I would be transferred out of my job to a very undesirable position in Virgina, forced to relocate. My life and my home have been in New York City. I would be forced to take a position that had no relevancy to my work experience or background. When I began to fight that and engaged counsel and started a legal process, the State Department just toughened their position and did a variety of things to me. They precluded me from going to the U.N. to attend meetings and represent the U.S. Government at the United Nations on budgetary and management matters. I had been considered the U.S. Government expert in U.N. financial matters. Then I was precluded from talking to United Nations officials and my counterparts in other missions. I was precluded from having any substantive conversations with my colleagues at the U.S. mission to the U.N. Colleagues were told not to talk to me. I was told I had to have my door closed and sit in my office with my door closed eight hours a day. I was told I should not speak to anyone in the building unless they spoke to me first. I was precluded from exercising my supervisory responsibilities I had over 11 staff members. Ultimately I was precluded from entering the building and coming to work at all starting on June 20. My telephone lines had been cut. My computers had been terminated. My access to my word processing system was blocked. And an armed guard was posted at my office. My salary was terminated. QUESTION. Some might say the Clinton Administration has the right to have their own people at the U.N. and they have the right to get rid of Ms. Shenwick. ANSWER. Toensing: First of all, there are laws against it. I am not sure if the Clinton Administration cares about that. But the laws are the whistleblower laws of the U.S. Federal law says that if a person provides the information that Linda provided, the government cannot retaliate against her. That's exactly what they did. The problem is that there is a method under the law for carrying out this right. You have to take your cause of action to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC). Linda's cause of action has been before the OSC for over two years. And they have done nothing. So they have not made a final decision yet on her case. Even if they made a final decision, the decision they would make is whether they would support her to go before yet another body called the Merit Systems Protection Board. So, in a way, the OSC is deciding whether to be her lawyer or not before that special board. But it shouldn't take two years. Meanwhile, she's been cut off from salary and the Office of Special Counsel has done nothing about it. This has gone on for four months now. So the procedure that's in place right now to protect whistleblowers really doesn't work and needs to be evaluated. QUESTION. Could American U.N. officials be prosecuted for covering-up this information or discrediting Linda Shenwick? ANSWER. Toensing: There could be a prosecution for covering up or conspiracy to conceal, for aiding and abetting. It's not a far cry from already being covered under the law. I used to be a federal prosecutor. Federal prosecutors have brought those kinds of cases in the past. The problem is, do you really think this Justice Department will prosecute? QUESTION. On an ABC Nightline show, reporter John Donvan confirmed that the information she provided was accurate. But he said people objected to her style. ANSWER. Toensing: She's tough...It takes toughness to get things done. And that's exactly what Linda has been. For some people, that's really great. They want somebody tough making sure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are not squandered. But for some other people, it gets in their way. QUESTION: Is the Congress supporting your case? ANSWER. Shenwick: Yes. Senator Charles Grassley has put a hold on three Ambassadorial nominees in August [to force a resolution of the case]. Congressman Cliff Stearns introduced legislation condemning the actions of Secretary of State Albright and the State Department. I have numerous other supporters in both the House and Senate and I am delighted in that. I hope that leads to rectification of my situation. QUESTION. What is rectification? ANSWER: Shenwick: I would like to be made whole again. I would like to have a career-enhancing position in my field, which is dealing with U.N. administrative and financial matters in New York City. I would like my file cleaned out because one of the ways they attacked me was by giving me unsatisfactory performance evaluations and writing very uncomplimentary and unflattering memos about my performance in general. I would like my attorney's fees paid. Toensing: It's important to know that, in regard to the performance evaluations, they just brought in somebody from retirement for the whole purpose of giving her a bad evaluation and then made up things or they said something like, 'She didn't use the fax machine the proper way,' when that was the way everybody in the whole office used the fax machine. So it was a concerted effort. It was very directed in order to make her look bad. She's SES - senior executive service. No member of the senior executive service has ever received an unsatisfactory evaluation and yet we know of stories where people have done things illegally. And yet for 'not using the fax machine the proper way' and all these little silly things that they made up, they gave her an unsatisfactory evaluation. Why? There is a statute which says if an SES receives an unsatisfactory evaluation, she shall be transferred from her job. That was the basis for trying to get her out. QUESTION. Most people would say that you deserve, at the very least, to have your old job back. ANSWER. Shenwick: I would love to have my old job back. I believe the U.S. Government has not been well-represented on financial and budgetary matters since I was removed from my position. It's important to note that one of the things I did was represent the U.S. Government on a financing committee that approves peacekeeping budgets like Kosovo and East Timor. And since Secretary Albright removed me from that position, the U.S. has not had a representative on that committee for over two years now while this committee has made recommendations on the Secretary-General's budgets, including his very, very large and significant peacekeeping budgets. QUESTION: What faith should the American people have in this administration or the U.N. that the reforms are taking place? ANSWER: Shenwick: Members of Congress, as well as taxpayers, should be very concerned as we continue to appropriate millions and billions of dollars in support of the U.N. without having, frankly, someone like me in the position that I was in. Even if there might be some very qualified people left behind at the U.S. mission, my case and what has happened to me has had a terrible chilling effect on their ability to analyze and report the facts as they currently exist at the U.N. in a fair, apolitical, and transparent manner. I also want to make it clear that I provided information to members of Congress regardless of their party or political affiliation. I'm a career officer of the State Department assigned to the U.S. mission to the U.N. and I was also considered an uncompensated U.N. official. Anyone who was interested in getting information so they could perform their oversight function more effectively, I gave it to them. I didn't ask if they were Republicans or Democrats. As a taxpayer, I would be extremely concerned about what is happening at the U.N. I don't think the reforms are significant and I don't think they have been implemented efficiently. I think the best thing about the reforms, frankly, is the public relations job the U.S. Government and the U.N. have done to lead taxpayers and members of Congress to believe that the U.N. is better today than it was a couple of years ago. And I'm not quite sure that it is. It's true they're talking about their problems more and that's good. But there are a lot of U.N. officials, including senior Americans at the U.N., who spend a whole lot of time putting a different spin on it and keeping information from Congress in order to keep U.S. taxpayers money flowing quickly to the U.N. without conditions. I've very concerned because the U.N. has just entered into two operations that are probably going to be budgeted on an annual basis of about $2 billion. That's for Kosovo and East Timor. And I'm really concerned that those operations will not get the kind of budgetary scrutiny that the U.S. taxpayers deserve and should be demanding before Congress appropriates that money. I'm still in touch with some of my congressional colleagues on a staff level and I'm amazed when they tell me what the State Department briefings have been like in the last 45 days -- the misrepresentations that State Department officials have made. The message is coming from the top. I believe now that the State Department believes they can get away with that. QUESTION. On the Nightline show, Cynthia McFadden, who was sitting in as the host of the show, introduced it by saying that journalists usually love a whistleblower but they're not quite sure what to make of your case. Why are the media ambivalent about you? ANSWER. Shenwick: I don't know. I have very good contacts in the media and they certainly enjoyed contacting me and being the recipient of all the information I provided for them when they were writing their stories about the U.N. Part of it might just have to do with the fact that the institution that I'm providing information about - the U.N. -- is something that they like. I like the U.N., too. But it's almost like a romantic thing - they don't want to hear bad things about something that they like. Maybe the State Department has done a very good job spinning and putting out very bad information about me. QUESTION. You're not anti-U.N. You're not calling for the elimination of the U.N. You want to make it better. ANSWER. Shenwick: That's right. I have devoted a substantial portion of my professional career and I intend to continue my activities in a very constructive way about making the U.N. stronger. One of the things I think is really sad about what the Clinton Administration did was they let the U.N. down. They knew the U.N. was weak and it had a lot of institutional problems. But they pushed it into the spotlight in Cambodia and Somalia and made it a focal point of their foreign policy and it just wasn't ready for the spotlight. Then they weren't there when the problems began, to really support it, fight for it and fix it. That's really unfortunate. QUESTION. What are some obvious abuses at the U.N. that could be terminated immediately? ANSWER. Shenwick: First of all, there's no rules against nepotism at the United Nations. There's no standard code of conduct that applies to all compensated U.N. officials. The real class of travel for international civil servants is business class. Senior officers in the U.N. get a bonus per diem -- that's travel expenses that they don't have to support with any underlying receipts -- plus a bonus of as much as 40 percent of whatever that daily travel assistance was. The U.N. is a very labor intensive organization. They have very weak classification standards, which is how you determine how their jobs and pay levels are set. On average, they receive 15 percent higher salaries than U.S. Government employees and we are the best paid civil service in the world. The U.N. is 15 percent better. Recently, while the U.N. was saying they were bankrupt, the International Court of Justice received over a 50 percent increase in their pension benefits. They proposed it, they lobbied it, and it was supported by the U.S. Government and the Secretary-General and a U.S. citizen who is employed as the undersecretary general for management, Joseph Connor. There's no vesting period. It could be six months. It could be one year and there's no contribution required on behalf of the judges. QUESTION. I understand the U.N. pension fund is worth over $15 billion. ANSWER. Shenwick: Yes. It's the best pension fund in the world. It just goes to show you that when U.N. employees put their mind to it, they can manage something perfectly. I've often cited that as an excellent example of the management skills that exist at the U.N. (30)

 

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