The AEI's Man to Clean Up the UN

Steve Clemmons keeps digging up the most interesting things on John Bolton.

And, perhaps why Senator Lugar is so ardent in his support.

I recommend a quick read of the Matthew Freedman interview with staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (I have linked it as a pdf file.)

Read here and here about some earlier revelations about Mr. Freedman -- particularly his role as a lobbyist on behalf of Ferdinand Marcos's government exactly when Senator Richard Lugar became one of the key pivots in turning U.S. support towards Cory Aquino -- for whom the present U.N. Chief of Staff Mark Malloch Brown then lobbied.

Matthew Freedman, by his own account, had a light load in John Bolton's office -- and maintained a private roster of consulting clients. During his interview, he would not discuss who those clients were -- but let's just suggest that TWN is pretty sure that his clients weren't AIDS hospices, charter schools, or organic farms. Freedman once lobbied for the Government of Nigeria -- and had a roster of very top end corporate clients in his past business activities.

Freedman has worked for Bolton for the last four years, has known him since 1981, was listed in the State Department Directory in Bolton's office, billed for 200 days of work -- while other staff report to TWN that they hardly saw him, and made approximately $110,000 plus per year (GS-15 level) -- while also making money from his roster of undisclosed private clients...

...If Bolton so badly managed his own office, not just in terms of abuse of intel underlings but paid a "management consultant" a six-figure salary for unclear services while the person maintained private clients -- who no doubt had an interest in his diplomatic and foreign policy access inside the State Department -- then why are we sending such a person to "clean up" the United Nations?

Bolton has no credibility as a manager in non-profit organizations. The one he ran -- the National Policy Forum -- had its non-profit stripped for inappropriate activities and funding irregularities.

And now we learn that he has hired an old pal to a low-stress, high paid position for more than four years -- with an ethical cloud hovering above the fact that he drew lots of government money while listed among State Department staff and got paid on the side by corporate and/or foreign government clients.

After lambasting Kofi Annan for not taking action towards staff and his son regarding the Oil-for-Food scandal, are Senators and the media going to turn a blind eye to this interesting possible set of ethical conflicts between Bolton and Matthew Freedman?

Well, they certainly turned a blind eye to Halliburton and Oil-for-Food. But that's their patriotic duty in a Time of War, right?

in 1998, Cheney oversaw Halliburton's acquisition of Dresser Industries Inc., which exported equipment to Iraq through two subsidiaries of a joint venture with another large U.S. equipment maker, Ingersoll-Rand Co.

The subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad through French affiliates from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, U.N. records show. Ingersoll Dresser Pump also signed contracts -- later blocked by the United States -- to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces destroyed in the Gulf War.

Former executives at the subsidiaries said they had never heard objections -- from Cheney or any other Halliburton official -- to trading with Baghdad.

"Halliburton and Ingersoll-Rand, as far as I know, had no official policy about that, other than we would be in compliance with applicable U.S. and international laws," said Cleive Dumas, who oversaw Ingersoll Dresser Pump's business in the Middle East, including Iraq.

Halliburton's primary concern, added Ingersoll-Rand's former chairman, James E. Perrella, "was that if we did business with [the Iraqi regime], that it be allowed by the United States government. If it wasn't allowed, we wouldn't do it."

Dumas and Perrella said their companies' commercial links to the Iraqi oil industry began before the U.N. Security Council imposed an oil embargo on Baghdad in the wake of its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

They returned to dealing with Iraq after the council established the "oil-for-food" program in December 1996, permitting Iraq to export oil under U.N. supervision and use the proceeds to buy food, medicine and humanitarian goods. The program was expanded in 1998 to allow Iraq to import spare parts for its oil facilities.

The Halliburton subsidiaries joined dozens of American and foreign oil supply companies that helped Iraq increase its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion in 2000. Since the program began, Iraq has exported oil worth more than $40 billion.

The proceeds funded a sharp increase in the country's nutritional standards, nearly doubling the food rations distributed to Iraq's poor.

I like seeing humanitarian aid- but I don't like seeing the nominated representative to the United Nations from the American Enterprise Institute damning the UN for what Cheney and other AEI members made money off of.