-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.newyorkpost.com/living/10670.htm Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.newyorkpost.com/living/10670.htm">New York Post Online Edition: Living</A> ----- WHISTLE-BLOWER BLUES By NILES LATHEM ------------------------------------------------------------------------ LINDA Shenwick sits in her Manhattan apartment watching the roiling debate between the Clinton administration and Congress over America's $1 billion debt to the United Nations with more than a little interest. Her career and her reputation are depending on the outcome. The petite and intense 44-year-old former budget expert at the U.S. mission to the United Nations is the one that started all the fuss in the first place by raising a series of red flags about nepotism and financial skullduggery at U.N. headquarters. She disclosed that the U.N.-chartered private jets once a week so that judges on the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal in Rwanda could be paid their salaries in cash. She revealed that war crimes judges at the Hague "co-mingle" their personal funds with U.N. accounts. She once questioned why $3.9 million in cash was sitting on top of a desk at U.N. office in Somalia rather than in a safe and was told "don't worry, we spend it very quickly." She blew the whistle on a scam in which American employees at the U.N. were getting inflated tax-bill rebates from U.N. headquarters. But Shenwick has paid an enormous price for her candor. She claims her former boss, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, has accused her of being a loose cannon and engaging in a right-wing conspiracy with Republicans in Congress to undermine U.S. foreign policy. She says that for two years she was ordered to sit in her office with the door shut, forbidden to talk to colleagues. She says she was threatened with financial and professional ruin unless she quit. In June Shenwick arrived at her office to find an armed security guard stationed outside the door. She was informed that she'd been placed on unpaid leave and was escorted out of the building. "That was the worst part of this whole ordeal," Shenwick said as her eyes welled up in tears. "This was my government, and they treated me like I was a spy," she added before quickly composing herself. Now in the midst of a bareknuckle brawl with the most powerful people in the world, Shenwick is determined to fight to get her $120,000-a-year job back. "I have felt the full pressure and weight of the U.S. government, which is determined to destroy me, and I can tell you it's not a pleasant feeling. But [it] has motivated me to fight. I'm not going to just roll over on this," she said. Shenwick has retained high-powered Washington lawyer Victoria Toensing, who is trying to invoke the federal laws that would entitle Shewick to a grievance proceeding at the Merit Systems Board (the federal agency that protects whistleblowers). Congressional Republicans have taken up her cause. Earlier this year, Senate GOP Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) put a hold on the nomination of Richard Holbrooke as ambassador to the U.N. in response to the case –– then agreed to release it after hearing that Albright and Holbrooke were rivals. They then held up confirmation on three Clinton administration ambassadorial appointments. Last week a group of 53 (mostly Republican) House members signed a letter to Albright demanding Shenwick's reinstatement. If State refuses, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) warned that the administration's efforts to get the U.S. to repay its $1 billion debt to the U.N. could go down in flames on the House floor. "We'll have to look at U.N. funding," Stearns told The Post. "Here we are debating the issue of how these funds are being used and we see a political vendetta against a woman who blew the whistle on waste and fraud and abuse at the U.N. I don't understand why they are not supporting her instead of harassing her," Stearns added. "Congress cannot function if government employees cannot communicate with Congress about wrongdoing," Grassley added. The State Department and the U.N. mission have refused to discuss the details of the Shenwick case, citing privacy laws. Behind the scenes, people close to Albright described Shenwick as "abrasive," and "insubordinate" whose relations with colleagues and U.N. diplomats had soured. Shenwick was also accused of ignoring Clinton administration's polices and expressing her own views during meetings with other U.N. officials. Albright's spokesman Jamie Rubin, who followed her from the U.N. to the State Department and who clashed several times with Shenwick at the U.N. over her disclosures, told reporters recently that any suggestion that Albright's motive for seeking Shenwick's dismissal was political or that she was acting outside normal procedures to destroy someone's career is "simply and absolutely false." Shenwick joined the State Department after law school in 1979 and moved to New York in 1985 where she worked as a budget analyst for the U.S. mission with the title Counselor for Resources Management. She said she received three glowing evaluations between January 1987 and July 1989 in the Reagan and Bush administrations for her job performance and was appointed to the prestigious Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ ) –– a group that monitors all U.N. finances. She first encountered controversy in 1989 when she turned in a report to the State Department Inspector General which stated that the wife of the then U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering had violated competitive bidding requirements on furniture purchases and catering services. The matter was cleared up internally. Nobody was punished, and the report did not hit the public domain. But in September 1992 she first found herself compromised publicly. "I was ordered by my superiors to tell a Washington newspaper reporter that there was no nepotism at the United Nations and that United Nations procurement practices were transparent. That bothered me because I had evidence directly contradicting that official line," she recalled. "So two hours later I picked up the telephone and gave this reporter the real story," she said. These were the first of a series of devastating disclosures by Shenwick that were picked up by The Post, CBS's "60 Minutes" and the Washington Post, among others, that created an uproar in Congress over financing the United Nations. Among these disclosures was that the U.N. spent millions to publish outdated reports, including $715 a page on a book commemorating its 50th anniversary. She reported that millions were spent on construction of a lavish U.N. convention center in Ethiopia that was never used and gave Hill staffers insights into no-show jobs and nepotism at U.N headquarters. In 1993 the backlash started. Albright, nominated as the Clinton administration's first U.N. ambassador, championed "assertive multilateralism," –– in other words, forming global alliances to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals in Bosnia, Haiti and the Persian Gulf using the U.N. as a centerpiece. Damaging disclosures about corruption at the U.N. did not fit this agenda, said Shenwick. So it was unfortunate that it was at this time that Thomas Pickering needed the Senate to confirm his appointment as ambassador to Russia. Shenwick's report about his wife surfaced. Albright, says Shenwick, hit the roof when she heard it was Shenwick who had turned Pickering in. A few months later, Shenwick again drew Albright's wrath when she helped former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.) draw up a list of 120 questions about waste and fraud at the U.N. during nomination hearings of David Birenbaum for a top management and reform job. Pressler put a hold on the nomination when he was not satisfied with his answers. Shenwick said she was merely following State Department regulations which require full compliance with congressional requests for information. But Albright was furious, snapping at a staff meeting: "The president wants this nomination, and you are impeding it," Shenwick says. In the following months Shenwick was gradually stripped of her duties, given "unsatisfactory," job performance ratings, shunned by Albright's staff as a conspirator with right-wing senators and urged to seek employment elsewhere. She was "papered" with memos questioning her usage of phones and fax machines and once even angrily criticized for eating breakfast at a staff meeting. Eventually she sat in her office with nothing to do, ordered not to talk to anyone unless she was spoken to first. "I was told by senior management at the mission that I would lose this fight and that it would destroy me professionally and financially," Shenwick said. Last April she was offered a job at a Department of Energy lab on Varick Street in downtown Manhattan. But she was told by the lab's director that she was being forced down his throat by Bill Richardson, who succeeded Albright at the U.N. and had recently become Energy Secretary. What's more, the State Department was willing to provide to Energy $2.5 million in taxpayers' money to pay for projects for Shenwick. Shenwick turned down the job. A second offer was made to a State Department warehouse in Arlington, Va. She was even ordered to attend a week-long training session on warehouse procedures. On her return from that trip, she discovered the armed guard outside her office. Plus, her phone had been turned off and her computer screen emptied. She is now on unpaid leave pending a transfer and is banned from the U.S. mission First Avenue headquarters. Meanwhile, Richard Holbrooke, the new United Nations Ambassador, has spent the last week trying to get Congress to repay $1 billion in debts the U.S. owes to the United Nations, warning that U.S. prestige, foreign policy and its seat on the General Assembly are at stake. But until the Shenwick case is resolved there will be a cloud over the issue, all sides agree. Why, she was asked, didn't she just make life easier for herself and quit a few years ago and find a new job? Her eyes brightened with fierce pride as she responded: "I don"t have a political agenda. My goal was not to hurt the United States. I didn't do anything wrong. All I did was tell the truth." Linda Shenwick, a 44-year-old former budget expert at the U.S. mission to the United Nations, has paid an enormous price for her candor. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Story Index | Home Delivery | Contact Us | How to Advertise Customer Service | Privacy Policy | E-Mail Directory Other Newscorp Sites New York Post®, nypostonline.com™, nypost.com™ and newyorkpost.com™ are registered trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc. Copyright 1999 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved. ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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