Claudia Rosett, the journalist credited with uncovering the U.N. Oil for Food scandal, reports today that the first conviction in the case has come in.
While the United Nations frames its next response to crisis in the Middle East, its last grand venture in that region--Oil for Food--has finally resulted in a guilty verdict in open court. Last Thursday, a high-rolling, globe-trotting South Korean businessman named Tongsun Park was convicted in the Southern District of New York of conspiracy to launder money and act as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
It's unfortunate that Ms. Rosett didn't win a Pulitzer Prize for her efforts, but that fact serves only to diminish the stature of the Pulitzer. Nowadays it seems, a requirement of Pulitzer Prize winning journalism is that it be anti Administration in tone and substance, which Ms. Rosett's reporting is not.
It is unlikely that any of this would have come to light had not the U.S., over U.N. protests, toppled Saddam in 2003. Congressional investigations have since found that the U.N. program opened the floodgates for anywhere from $10 billion to $17 billion in graft, scams and smuggling, some of which went to pay for Saddam's palaces, weapons and rewards for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
A google search of the news today shows no mention of Park's conviction in either the New York Times or the Washington Post. Those news industry titans confer prizes upon themselves for revealing national security secrets, but can hardly be expected to report on developments that put the U.N. in a bad light or the War on Terror in a good one. But congratulations go to Claudia Rosett. She's the real deal.
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