This time, I had some actual training for the job. Working with John Mills had sharpened my pen, and though we never got to publish much of what we produced, at least we had material available when journalists came knocking on our door. I courted Barbara Crossette of the New York Times with graphics and data that showed the various improvements the Oil-for-Food program had brought about, but ultimately she didn’t run it. The story lacked that most essential ingredient that makes anything worth publishing: conflict. Unless we actually attacked Halliday or von Sponeck directly, and stirred up the debate that way, the newspeople weren’t interested.
Why didn’t we? I put the question to Pasha one night. “Why don’t you give an interview to CNN and attack von Sponeck? Call him a spokesman for Saddam!” Pasha said it would only make the controversy worse.
“If you want to last in this business,” he told me, “you have to fly under the radar.”
And unlike Halliday or von Sponeck, who opted to take early retirement and become freewheeling public figures, Pasha intended to last. He didn’t want to make waves. Going up against von Sponeck would make him unpopular with France and Russia. And he would wreck his increasingly smooth relationship with Baghdad. I sometimes wondered how Pasha managed to be the only guy in the whole system to stay on the good side of the Americans and the Iraqis at the same time. Even Annan couldn’t manage to do this; his statements would inevitably be interpreted as too close to one side in the conflict and offensive to the other, depending on the day. Pasha played a different game. He understood the true nature of politics, defined by Ambrose Bierce as a clash “of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.”
When the Americans or the Iraqis came to Pasha, it was not to talk politics. It was to talk business. The volume of money that went through our hands was such that a memo from Pasha could hold up billions of dollars. The only real threat to Pasha’s survival at the top of the UN food chain came from the thirty-eighth floor.
There were only so many under secretary general posts to go around. Several career bureaucrats were lurking in the shadows, waiting to be rewarded for their loyal services. And Pasha feared that any excuse would be good enough to designate him as “the weakest link” in the circle around Kofi Annan. He sure wasn’t liked up there, and he knew it. In fact, he suspected that the reason the thirty-eighth floor refused to rein in von Sponeck was that they enjoyed seeing Pasha’s operation undermined. If the controversy boiled over, it might give them an excuse to replace him. They wouldn’t even need to fire him. He had reached retirement age and was vulnerable to a smoother type of “coup.” So he knew better than to step into an open media squabble. He wouldn’t give them any excuse to screw him.
“It’s up to the thirty-eighth floor,” said Pasha. “If they don’t want to rein him in, it’s their problem. I don’t care.”
My problem was, I cared. I wanted us to be proud of what we were doing. I wanted to publicize it and have the media portray us as the good guys. I didn’t want to be associated with a massive failure. First, Halliday had accused us of genocide, and now von Sponeck was accusing us of criminal behavior. That got news.
Recent college grads who had come on board were wondering if they had come to work for an evil enterprise. The public’s perception of our work had been completely distorted. Protesters were walking around with signs that said, “UN = SS.” We, of all people, were now seen as responsible for the plight of Iraq’s population, even as we spent our days (and often our evenings and weekends) trying to improve it. The clerk at my gym kept trying to stop me on my way in to talk about “what the UN is doing to Iraq.” There had to be a missing piece in this puzzle. Was Kofi Annan even aware of how bad things were? I decided to find out. I had been told about a bright young guy working on the thirty-eighth floor—someone who had experience in Washington and had gone to Harvard. His name was Nader. I had been introduced to him through common friends, and I decided to invite him to lunch.
“So tell me something. Who’s really in charge here?” I asked him, rather bluntly, after we had spent about fifteen minutes sympathizing.
Nader lay down his fork. “How do you mean?”
“Well, come on. I mean, look at our operation. There’s no discipline imposed on anybody. People walk around claiming we’re responsible for a genocide! Does nobody on the thirty-eighth floor think that’s preoccupying?”
Nader nodded, searching for the right words.
I added, “I’m probably going to do something about this at some point. I don’t know what yet—maybe I’ll just leave this place, but not before I understand what’s going on. So that’s why I’m asking. Who’s in charge?”
Nader nodded for a few moments longer, then said, “Riza. Riza’s in charge.” Iqbal Riza was Kofi Annan’s chief of staff.
“Well, that’s good to know,” I said, “because from where I’m sitting, it looks like nobody’s in charge.”
“Trust me,” said Nader. “Nothing happens without Riza knowing about it or approving of it. I’ve seen him put people back in their place, and trust me, he’s capable of doing that.”
“So is it his decision to tolerate von Sponeck’s bullshit?”
Nader didn’t answer. You didn’t make it to the thirty-eighth floor by biting on this kind of bait.
“Or is it Kofi Annan’s decision? Maybe Kofi Annan doesn’t believe in the mission either.”
“I think he does,” said Nader. “It’s just hard for him to balance the politics of this. Between Russia and France on one side, the U.S. and the U.K. on the other. . . .”
“All he has to do is appoint competent people to the top posts. I mean, Pasha and von Sponeck don’t even speak to each other! They’re running the UN’s largest operation! Does Kofi Annan not realize the risk he is taking by ignoring this situation?”
“I’m only a junior staff, like you. I can’t, you know. . . .”
“I know. I just wanted to give someone on the thirty-eighth a piece of my mind before . . . well, whatever I decide to do.”
My meeting with Nader was interesting, in that it confirmed to me that the hand on the UN ship’s steering wheel was Iqbal Riza’s. This was the man who put officials on shortlists for high-level posts and decided on issues as petty as office space allocations within the UN. When the Oil-for-Food scandal eventually broke, Riza would order all his “chronological” files shredded and resign before the investigation could be completed—a smart move for a man who definitely knew a thing or two about flying under the radar. Discreet as a cat, he would show up at official cocktail parties and walk around without speaking to anyone in particular, just observing the crowd. When a staff member spotted him and happened to be of high enough rank to be able to walk up to him and say hello, their conversation rarely lasted very long. Riza wasn’t much of a talker. He was a good listener, but one rarely got a sense of what he was thinking or how he would act on given information, if at all. His service to Kofi Annan was loyal, but it was unclear how much of the information that got to Riza filtered through to the UN chief. It was some time after my lunch with Nader that the thirty-eighth floor made a move on the propaganda front. A memo came down.
Annan had come across an article arguing our program was having no impact whatsoever on Iraq’s humanitarian situation. It was flat-out wrong, and Annan made a handwritten note on the margin of the news clipping: “We should not let them win this propaganda war.”
Iqbal Riza sent a memo with the article attached, and much was made of the fact that the secretary general “himself ” had taken pen to paper.
Well, the note landed on my desk, and the problem, of course, was that we had already lost this damn propaganda war. And we had lost it without a fight. We didn’t shoot back once. We just kept shooting ourselves in the foot and dodging bullets from our own, self-appointed leaders!
My intern had grown used to hearing me complain about our failure to wage the propaganda war, but there was something she didn’t quite understand.
; “Michael,” she said one day, “you complain and you complain and you complain. But you are a spokesman. . . . Why don’t you say something?”
“Because I can’t!” I shot back. “Pasha wants to fly under the radar, and Kofi Annan doesn’t want to rein in von Sponeck!”
“Why not?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I wish I could ask him that.”
“Why don’t you?”
I smiled.
“Why are you smiling?” she asked, earnestly confused.
“Because it’s a cute question. It doesn’t work like that. . . .”
“Don’t call me cute!”
“Not you . . . your question . . . agh!”
My intern was definitely not “cute.” She was drop-dead gorgeous. Castable in a James Bond movie. Her nickname was Turkish Delight, because she kept bringing delicious Turkish pastries to work and leaving them by the secretaries’ desk, thereby ensuring that they would grow fatter and that she would remain the slimmest woman in the office. Not that the secretaries ate all of them. Pasha soon became addicted, too. He would walk by after lunch and pick up a delicate little piece out of the box to take with him into the office. Twenty minutes later, he’d come out again to ask his secretary a question (which he would normally do through the speakerphone) and grab three more pieces. Later in the day, the entire box would lie in his garbage can, and there would be white sugar powder on the carpet next to his chair.
Now Turkish Delight had me on the defensive as I tried to explain why I couldn’t simply ask Kofi Annan to rein in von Sponeck.
“You know, I’m not that important in this place. I can’t just pick up my phone and call Kofi Annan. There’s a difference between being a full-fledged spokesman and just being an acting spokesman. I can’t take crazy initiatives like attacking another senior official or, you know. . . .”
Turkish Delight was nodding, so I figured she had gotten the point.
“So, like, you see what I mean. . . .”
“Yes,” said Turkish Delight. “You are acting spokesman but you are afraid to act like a spokesman.”
CHAPTER 18
Memorandum
FEBRUARY 21, 2000
UNITED NATIONS
OFFICE OF THE IRAQ PROGRAM
MEMORANDUM
FOR INTERNAL DISTRIBUTION ONLY
TO: Mr. Hans von Sponeck
UN Humanitarian Coordinator
UNOHCI, BAGHDAD
FROM: Michael Soussan
Program Coordinator, Acting Spokesman
UN Office of the Iraq Program
UNHQ New York
SUBJECT: UN Stance on the Humanitarian Situation in Iraq
I am writing, in my own capacity and for the record, to inform you that the stance you have adopted publicly does not reflect my views, nor those of a great number of staff.
I understand that it is not customary for a P3 [midlevel staff] to address a senior Assistant Secretary-General in such direct terms as I am about to, but I hope you will appreciate that, like you, I am following my conscience.
The fact that your statements have been left unanswered (even internally), and have brought no disciplinary action, leaves me and others confused about the actual policy of the Secretary-General with respect to our mission. By copy of this interior memorandum, I ask to be informed if the content below is not in line with United Nations policy, in which case I will respectfully take the consequence.
I started working at the United Nations almost three years ago. I traveled to Iraq several times and have witnessed, like you have, the plight of the people there. However, I was not blind to the domestic factors that contribute to their suffering, which are described in many human rights reports.
I have also witnessed the dedication of a great number of UN staff, who unlike their successive leaders in the field have stayed on, under difficult circumstances, to help address the problems facing the Iraqi population.
They, sir, have a conscience too. And while they may not be able to just resign in frustration, you have to appreciate that they need to be motivated in their work in order to perform it well. In light of your statements, I have serious doubt about our ability to retain, much less attract, competent and motivated staff to work in Iraq.
Nobody ever told us the task would be easy. And nobody forced us to take on the job in the first place. But having accepted the job, I would have thought that we should do our utmost to ensure that it is done efficiently, and in accordance with our mandate.
Quite frankly, sir, if the UN staff members refuse to implement UN resolutions, who will take them seriously? And if we have no self-respect as an organization, who will respect us?
If other staff members were to follow the example set by Mr. Halliday and yourself, they would all resign, and the program, which remains the only way to meet the immediate needs of the Iraqi people right now, would stop functioning.
For the sake of staff morale, I plead with you to stop your media campaign for the time that you remain in the employ of the United Nations, and let us continue our work in a less politicized environment.
On the substance, I understand that you want sanctions lifted as soon as possible. Obviously, you are not the only person to hold that view. Some members of the Security Council share your view, and even a number of legislators in the United Kingdom and the United States have recently expressed such views. The difference is that they are lawmakers, and we are not.
If the international community loses trust in the United Nations to implement its adopted policies, it could have devastating consequences for the future of this organization.
I hope that you will take action to restore the confidence of the staff before you leave, and that a productive handover meeting can take place at headquarters.
CHAPTER 19
A New Wind
When I walked into the office the next day, my colleagues were looking at me strangely—almost as if they were afraid to speak to me. I detected a nervous smile on several people’s faces. I had upset the normal order of things by throwing the gauntlet at an assistant secretary general.
In doing so, I had leaned on the laws enacted by the UN Security Council. The assumption, of course, was that the Council was interested in enforcing its own laws, and that the institution hence carried inherent legitimacy as the central recourse in matters of international peace and security. The third act of our collective misadventure would prove this assumption tragically wrong. But in the meantime, it offered me cover to let out some steam and try to re-energize our operation.
I had been purposely provocative in asking the thirty-eighth floor to “inform” me if anything I said was out of line with our mandate—in essence, challenging them to punish me for my insolence.
The truth was that the team around Kofi Annan agreed with Hans von Sponeck’s criticism of our mandate. Their attitude toward the sanctions on Iraq had been passive-aggressive from the start. They would not openly oppose the United States and Britain’s policy of containment, but their laissez-faire attitude toward von Sponeck and Halliday had been no accident. The UN’s leaders had discreetly allied themselves with the positions of the anti-sanctions activists.
My memo reminded them that such an approach clashed with our official mandate and undermined our ability to perform our job. Though I had marked the memo “for internal distribution only,” everybody understood that our fax line to Baghdad generated copies for the Iraqis and the Americans alike. Our fax room in Baghdad was manned by local staff, meaning Iraqi intelligence agents, so the Iraqi regime would inevitably learn of its existence. And though we owned a crypto-fax, the only thing that machine achieved was to alert Western interceptors to the importance of a particular transmission. They got copies all the same. (In the lead-up to the Iraq War of 2003, a British intelligence analyst went public with the information that British services eavesdropped on Annan’s telephone conversations and shared the transcripts with Washington. The revelation created a mini-scandal but su
rprised nobody. The UN Secretariat finds various sorts of bugs throughout the building all the time and staff always assume their conversations are monitored.)
I had been careful not to copy Kofi Annan on the memo itself. Doing so would have been amateurish. By copying everybody except the secretary general, I had created the perfect hot potato. Only loose cannons sent direct correspondence to the secretary general, and this disqualified them from being taken seriously. Here I had created a problem for his entourage. Would any of them dare react to the memo without consulting the big boss? Of course not.
While I was getting settled at my desk, my director walked into my office with a big smile on his face.
“I want you to know that I’m behind you 100 percent,” he said.
“I just sought a clarification on our mandate,” I said, playing stupid.
“Come on, Michael. You knew exactly what you were doing,” he said, and forced a smile out of me. “But I want you to know, I support you 100 percent. I said so to Pasha yesterday evening.”
“Well, thanks. . . .”
“He had tears in his eyes, you know.”
“Who, Pasha?”
“Yes. He spoke fondly of you. He said you reminded him of himself when he was your age.”
“Oh. . . .”
“And he said von Sponeck fully deserved it. But he also said he would have preferred if you hadn’t questioned Kofi Annan’s political line. He said that went too far.”
“But that was the whole point,” I said. “I couldn’t care less about von Sponeck. He’s leaving, anyway. What I want to know is, where does Kofi Annan stand?”
“Well, they called Pasha up for a meeting last night, after you left. Kofi Annan had your memo on his desk. Pasha saw it.”
Backstabbing for Beginners: Page 24