I truly wonder sometimes about the New York Times. Judith Miller was not the only reporter to be bamboozled by Ahmed Chalabi. But her case was one of the most long-standing, thorough-going and troubling — and it has never been fully or adequately addressed.
Today, Miller writes about the Volcker investigation into alleged corruption in the UN’s oil-for-food program. And Chalabi, though not mentioned by name in the article, is at the center of that story.
The investigation, you’ll remember, has several layers. Two key questions are a) whether the former regime skimmed money off the funds generated by the program (a given, and something that was known before the war) and b) whether the regime used oil-for-food funds to give bribes and kickbacks to various diplomats, politicians and international luminaries, including Benon Sevan, the head of the UN office that administered the program.
The second, far more inflammatory charge is the heart of the matter. Indeed, it is the accusation that got the whole series of investigations at the UN, on Capitol Hill and in Iraq under way. And that charge stems entirely from a series of documents discovered by members of Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress.
We’ve noted earlier Chalabi’s rather suspicious unwillingness to allow anyone who can even remotely be considered an independent observer to review these documents to determine their authenticity — something which, given Chalabi’s track record, is rather more than a matter of passing concern. And Miller’s article reveals that Volcker still hasn’t gotten to see them.
According to the Times, he has still “not yet received the original list of oil vouchers supposedly awarded to diplomats and United Nations officials, which was published by an Iraqi newspaper several months ago. Nor had he determined how his panel would vet such documents to see if they were forgeries.”
Perhaps it’s difficult at the moment for Chalabi to produce the documents and verify their authenticity given that he is apparently holed up in Tehran on the run from counterfeiting charges in Iraq. But then irony is no defense and he’s had plenty of time already.
Miller repeats the charges against Sevan, as well as his denial. But she would have done better to note the highly dubious source of the original allegations.
