Backstabbing for Beginners:

by Michael Soussan

  “What did they say?”

  “Pasha didn’t tell me. He only said they have asked to see your file now. They want to know who you are.”

  “You think I’m in trouble?”

  “No. I think you’re about to get promoted.”

  Suddenly, Cindy appeared at my door, saying, “Yiiiii, there you are!” She literally pushed my director aside, walked over to me, took my head in her hands, and landed a big kiss on my forehead. She then lifted my tie and pinched my, um, pectorals.

  “The Kid’s growing hair on his chest!” she said, looking at my director.

  “Aw!”

  “Good job, Michael. That was fucking ballsy!” she said.

  Cindy had her own turf battle going with von Sponeck, and my memo clearly played to her advantage. Shortly after she left, Pasha appeared at the door, wagging his finger at me, but smiling.

  “Careful, you!”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you ever send another memo like that without clearing it with me!”

  I thought I’d pass on answering that one. I took full responsibility for what I had done and would do so again.

  “Anyway,” said Pasha, “here’s your reply from von Sponeck.”

  He threw a fax on my desk. Von Sponeck did not address any of the points I had made. He just suggested that we should meet together to discuss them when he came to New York. When we eventually sat down together weeks later, Hans was quite respectful. But he did tell me that my memo had “hurt” him. He told me that the decision to resign had not been taken lightly, after more than twenty years spent in the service of the organization. And I also knew that his final meeting with Kofi Annan had been on the “cold side.” That was as far as the secretary general would go to signal his disapproval of von Sponeck’s actions. I would have preferred if Annan had reacted by imposing some actual discipline on the operation. But still, it was a clear change of direction from the tacit approval he had offered Halliday when he resigned.

  I felt bad for the assistant secretary general because I had ruined his resignation. After a long and frustrating career in the UN bureaucracy, a flamboyant resignation was considered something of a perk. One had a right to blow one’s top at least once before leaving, and an issue like the Iraq sanctions just seemed too tempting to pass up.

  After his resignation, von Sponeck arranged to receive payment for his anti-sanctions activities from a German firm that exported baby-milk powder to Iraq. The firm paid him a fee for writing articles in various low-profile newspapers, in order to gain favor with the Iraqi government. I learned about this when I read the final report on the investigation into the UN Oil-for-Food program, many years later. At that point, I must admit, I felt less sorry for undermining his resignation.

  The report noted that, as long as von Sponeck was not employed by the UN when he received a payment from the baby-milk exporter, he had violated no laws. However, the report also suggested that there should be a law barring former UN officials from profiting from their prior positions. At least Hans von Sponeck’s business inspired a good reform proposal.

  All in all, the memo generated very little action. But the “inaction” it generated was positive, as far as I was concerned. High-level UN officials stopped offering blind support for Saddam Hussein’s propaganda campaign. Word of Annan’s “cold” reception of Hans von Sponeck actually helped clarify that our boss did, in fact, support our mission. Another thing that stopped was the use of my nickname. Nobody called me The Kid again. Well, except for my friend Spooky, but even he upgraded me to Monsieur Le Kid. Pasha no longer told me to “shadap” at meetings. He listened carefully to what I had to say. And I was no longer required to take notes of Pasha’s meetings with Iraqi officials. That privilege went to my friend Habibi, who had been imported from our mission in Baghdad for that purpose. The significance of that last change did not hit me until suddenly, one day, I found myself holding the door for the Iraqi ambassador to the UN. I had held the door as a reflex, simply because I had been aware of footsteps behind me, and I was a bit surprised to find myself nose to nose with the Iraqi ambassador. As it happens, so was he. The unintended act of politeness on my part forced us to greet, and the first thing that came out of the Iraqi ambassador’s mouth after that was, “What are you still doing here?”

  “Well, I work here. Remember?”

  “I thought you were on your way out,” he said with a knowing smile, before walking on.

  His remark left me planted with the door in my hand. What the hell did he mean by that? Uh-oh. . . . Uh-oh! Had the Iraqis asked Pasha to get rid of me after seeing my memo? I remembered them asking Pasha to get rid of a number of staff, including Spooky, when we first visited Baghdad. And look what had happened to Spooky! Slowly but surely, he had been sidelined. Would the same thing now happen to me? Would I be extricated from Pasha’s inner circle?

  At the time of my chance meeting with the Iraqi ambassador, months had gone by since I had sent my Tomahawk cruise memo at von Sponeck—months during which I had been walking on air, enjoying a new kind of respect from colleagues. I had been promoted once again, with a commensurate increase in salary. My Swedish director had left and been replaced by another Swedish director. Though they were both very similar in some ways (they’d never attempt to operate any device without first reading the manual), they were very different in others. Bo Asplund had eventually blown his top at Pasha. The latter had been complaining that the operation wasn’t running as it should be, and Bo had replied, “Yeah, well, the fish rots from the head!”

  I don’t think anybody had ever spoken to Pasha like this. But Bo already had plans to return to UNDP, where he had been offered a new post.

  My new Swedish director was named Christer Elfverson. Initially, Pasha nicknamed him Smiley Face, but that nickname quickly proved inadequate; the more he learned about the program, the less he smiled. His arrival in the office was greeted with scorn. He would be Pasha’s fourth director in three years, and the first thing I said to him when we met was that I would probably be gone soon myself. I was getting ready to move on. We had expanded the program, but we had done nothing to actually quell the fraud that we knew was going on under the surface of public diplomacy. We had failed to stop Iraqis from rewarding political friends by exporting underpriced oil through middlemen, and we had failed even to address the fact that the Iraqis were demanding kickbacks from companies exporting humanitarian goods to Iraq. Finally, our observation mechanism in Iraq had become a big joke, in the sense that it never yielded actionable information about fraud by the Iraqi regime. The resignation of two successive humanitarian coordinators had made it impossible to reform our observation process.

  The last few issues fell squarely under the responsibility of the Program Management Division, which I coordinated and which my new director would head. Unless Pasha gave my new director the authority to remedy these failures, I didn’t see the point of sticking around. Corruption is like a ball of snow, goes the saying. Once it’s set rolling, it must increase. And by the time Smiley Face appeared at my doorstep to announce he had gotten the job of being my director, the ball of snow had long since set rolling. The propaganda war had been my first concern, because as long as the heads of our field mission acted as spokesmen for Saddam Hussein’s propaganda, we were politically paralyzed. Now we would have a new head of mission in the field, and I would have a new director in New York.

  Would things get better? Would we be able to begin addressing the corruption that seemed to be increasingly plaguing our operation? The signs were everywhere. Even the language we used to communicate on a day-to-day basis had accommodated the corruption as a fact of life. For example, “the 10 percent rule” was UN-speak for the kickbacks demanded by Saddam’s government on imported humanitarian goods. By mid-2000 Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan had even written an official memo to all of Iraq’s ministers asking them to inflate the prices of the goods they were importing into Iraq “by as much as possible”—a
nd at a minimum by 10 percent. The result of this policy was quite clear to us and had a direct impact on the quality of the items in Iraq’s “food basket.” The Iraqi government had enough money available to import the best-quality goods on the market. And it spent enough to do so. But with the kickbacks going to the government, the people ended up with the worst-quality food items: soap that caused skin rashes and so forth.

  I briefed Smiley Face thoroughly on the situation during our first meeting together and informed him that if nothing could be done to remedy this situation, I would probably leave soon, so if he took this job, he should probably start looking for a new coordinator.

  Smiley Face pledged that he would fight corruption wherever he found it. I warned him that it was not always easy to work with Pasha, but he said he considered himself senior enough to make decisions on his own. I began feeling confident that we would indeed be able to put a dent in the corruption that was affecting the operation. We would now be free from having to fight the propaganda war against our own leadership in the field. Kofi Annan’s new appointee as humanitarian coordinator in Iraq was Tun Myat, from Myanmar, and Tun had sworn to the secretary general that he would not resign in protest over the sanctions as his two predecessors had done.

  This new element of stability in our field operation, coupled with a director who strongly supported my views, gave me confidence that we would be able to do some good. In addition, Pasha kept saying that he wanted his new director to be more of a “hands-on” manager. “I’m tired of doing everything myself,” he kept saying, and I just couldn’t believe our luck. Finally, the big boss was ready to delegate responsibility. Had Smiley Face somehow managed to charm him? All in all, it was a golden opportunity to get the operation back on track. All I needed to do was get my new boss up to speed on the issues, and we’d be ready for action.

  Well, almost. I would also need to get him off on the right foot with Cindy.

  CHAPTER 20

  Turf Warriors

  “So , Cindy,” I said, standing confidently outside her office door. “Are you going to be nice to my new boss?”

  “You mean the Elf?” she said, referring to his last name, Elfverson. “What kind of a stupid name is that?”

  “Cindy. . . .”

  “What?” She tried to look innocent, but that devilish smile on her face wouldn’t go away.

  “I’ve come to plead with you,” I said. “I really think he’s a good guy. I’m sure we can find a way for you two to work together. He really seems nice. . . . People even call him Smiley Face!”

  Cindy looked at me for a moment, then said that she felt like eating a “slab of red meat.”

  “Er . . . sure,” I said, trying to kick the image of Cindy munching on a raw steak with blood dripping down her chin.

  We went to Palm, the Italian restaurant on Second Avenue that is a notorious New York Mafia hangout. Dimly lit, with sawdust on the floor and checkered red-and-white tablecloths, the place felt like it belonged to a different decade. This was the place where the five families had struck deals with one another. And the occasional business dispute had left blood on the floor more than once. In retrospect, the setting was appropriate for the discussion that followed.

  Sitting in a booth and chowing down on rare steak, Cindy and I carefully tiptoed around the real subject of our meeting until the last bloody bite. At that point, she took a large gulp of red wine and asked me point-blank: “So, Mikey, what is it you want?”

  The waiter, an old Italian fellow who looked like he had witnessed enough dirty deals in his life, decided he would stay away from this one.

  “I want you to get along with my new director,” I said. “I want a truce.”

  “Michael, we’re talking here. What can I give you? Do you want to join my side of the shop?”

  Join me, and we shall rule the empire together!

  “No. I want you to get along with my boss. The Program Management Division has certain responsibilities, and I want us to be able to—”

  “Michael, the Program Management Division won’t exist anymore in six months.”

  “What? ”

  Cindy just smiled.

  “But Pasha said he wanted a hands-on manager! He said—”

  “How long have you worked for Pasha now?” asked Cindy.

  “About three years.”

  “So don’t you get it yet?”

  “Get what?”

  “Whatever he says, he means the opposite. There are plans in place.”

  “Plans?”

  “The office will be restructured. And I don’t want your boss to interfere.”

  “Are you getting a promotion?” I asked.

  “That’s none of your business,” said Cindy.

  While she was clearly the person who wielded the most power in the office, Cindy’s grade level was still quite low. My job description and her own were just one grade apart, and I knew she wanted to establish herself as chief of office, a rather unusual title, which would allow her to yield more power than a traditional special assistant. Clearly, such a change meant that she would pull more office functions under her control, and this would come at the expense of the Program Management Division.

  “I promise you he won’t interfere,” I said. “As long as we can do our work.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Cindy.

  “He’s my fourth director in less than three years. Does it always have to be this way? Can’t you make an effort?”

  “You don’t expect me to change, do you now?” She said it with a guilty, infectious smile. Cindy, it appeared, was perfectly aware of how I perceived her. She knew she was controlling, scheming, and aggressive with men in positions of power. But it was as if she couldn’t help it. She was a fighter—a born turf warrior. She drew her energy from conflict. It wasn’t even personal. She just wasn’t about to let “that pip-squeak little shit” think he could walk in there and start running the place. Then she repeated, “Just tell me what you want. Maybe you and I can work something out.”

  “I want a sane working environment! That’s why I confronted von Sponeck! I want us to work together and do a job we can be proud of! But maybe he was the wrong person to confront.”

  Cindy’s expression lost its muscle, as her eyes zeroed in on mine.

  Are you threatening me, Michael? She didn’t say it, but she might as well have.

  “All I’m saying is, I don’t understand why you always have to—”

  “Look, Michael, this isn’t Disneyland, OK? Dickheads like your boss are the reason I lost ten years in my career. Male chauvinist . . . cowards!”

  “Cindy, come on. . . .”

  “No, Michael! You just don’t get it.” She went on to talk about the number of times guys like my boss had undermined her, causing her to be passed up for promotions. She wanted to promote herself one grade, and to do that, she needed to pump up her job description. If my director took up all of the key responsibilities in the office, her promotion would not go through. It was a zero-sum game, the way she saw it. My director was in her way. The choice she was offering me was to step aside in return for a favor.

  “I’m not going to step aside, Cindy. This guy is my director, and we’re going to get to work on a number of issues. Whether you like it or not.”

  Cindy paused to take her third glass of wine. She sipped it with renewed calm, then laid her eyes on my pack of cigarettes.

  “Give me one,” she said.

  “Cindy, you don’t smoke.”

  “I said give me one! ”

  “Hey, OK. . . .”

  Cindy took a dragon drag and looked up at the plume of smoke, almost pensive.

  “You’re a smart kid, Michael. But you’re too young. You don’t understand what it’s like to be stabbed in the back. From one day to the next, you’re crushed, you’re nothing. You think you’re popular, Michael? You think you’ve got friends? Wait till you’re down. You’ll see how many of those cowards come to your aid. There’s only one way t
o deal with these spineless bureaucrats. . . .” She made a fist, as if squeezing a ball sack. “It’s about control.”

  I chuckled, laid my napkin on the table, and crossed my arms. She must have read the disdain on my face.

  “I guess you’ll learn soon enough,” she said, cryptically.

  “Learn what?”

  “What it’s like.” She looked around for a waiter.

  I made a last plea for her goodwill, and Cindy countered by asking me “one last time” if she could do anything for me.

  “It’s up to you, Cindy,” I said, looking at her straight in the eye. “But if you’re screwing with my new boss, you’re screwing with me. And that’s not a threat. It’s a promise.”

  With that, her expression turned cold.

  The stage was set for a confrontation, and we both knew it. I insisted on paying the bill, as a last gesture of goodwill. She didn’t argue over it. She was already deep in thought. We said few words to each other after that. A certain sadness set into both of us as we parted. We rather liked each other, after all. And now we would have to fight.

  Initially, I thought myself wise to have drawn a line in the sand with Cindy. What I didn’t fully understand was that for me to challenge Cindy to a game of bureaucratic hardball was the equivalent of Kid Rock challenging Garry Kasparov to a game of chess. I could make a ruckus, all right. But I had no experience waging a protracted turf war. I had no actual battle plan to deal with Cindy beyond warning her that I might get mad and hoping she’d back down. She, on the other hand, had planned her attack against my boss twenty moves in advance. And it began with a bureaucratic banana peel.

  Shortly after my director took up his post, Cindy arranged for him to brief the Security Council on the “progress the UN had made in improving its observation mechanism in Iraq.” Initially, Christer was flattered by the opportunity to brief the Security Council. He popped his head into my office with a big smile and waved the memo. After I read it, I looked up at him and said, “Uh-oh.”

  “What?” asked Christer, suddenly worried.