Special Reports
Bush administration is stacking the UN with neocon ideologues
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Jul 25, 2008, 00:16

(WMR) -- The Bush administration has been packing the United Nations Secretariat and other specialized UN agencies with its favorite neocon ideological soul mates. Even as its former unconfirmed ambassador to the UN John Bolton was trying to tear down the UN system put into place during and following World War II by Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, with the assistance of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Bolton and the neocons, including Israeli UN ambassador Dan Gillerman, an ardent Israeli expansionist and war hawk, were busy infiltrating their allies into the top levels of the United Nations. Their situation was made much easier after the Bush administration and its allies denied a second term to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and paved the way for Ban Ki-moon, South Korea�s pro-U.S. Foreign Minister, to take over as secretary general.

Bolton led the charge, along with his friend Gillerman, to prevent Annan from appointing any UN officials to terms beyond his own term which ended on December 31, 2006. There was one exception, a former managing editor for the Sun Myung Moon-owned Washington Times.

The first indication of infiltration of the UN by neocons was the appointment by Annan of ex-Washington Times editor Josette Sheeran Shiner as executive director of the World Food Program in November 2006. Suspiciously, Shiner�s appointment came after Annan consulted with his successor Ban Ki-moon. Ban�s own relationship with Sun Myung Moon�s Unification Church has come under scrutiny, although the two are not related. 

Sheeran, as Shiner is now known after her divorce, had previously served as U.S. Undersecretary of State for economics, business and agricultural affairs and Deputy U.S. Trade Representative under George W. Bush. President Bush, according to the French and Swiss media, personally lobbied UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director General Jacques Diouf to appoint Shiner. Bush�s father, George H. W. Bush, has accepted lucrative speaking fees from Sun Myung Moon since he left office in 1991. Sheeran now insists, including in an email to this editor, that all her contacts with the Unification Church have ceased and that she is now an Episcopalian. The Bush White House leaned on a number of media organizations not to mention Sheeran�s past Moonie links when she was appointed as head of the World Food Program.

On March 1, 2007, Lynn Pascoe, a career U.S. Foreign Service officer with reported neocon leanings, was appointed by Ban Ki-moon as the UN�s powerful under-secretary for Political Affairs. Pascoe, who speaks Mandarin Chinese, was posted as U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, Malaysia, and as top diplomat at the US diplomatic office in Taiwan. He was posted to Bangkok, Beijing, and Moscow. In his present position, Pascoe has wide authority on the appointments of pro-neocon ideologues to top UN posts even as the John McCain campaign has embraced the neocon ideology of creating a �League of Democracies� to eclipse and eventually replace the UN.

One such appointment that bodes ill for the UN is the reported next Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and UN Legal Counsel Peter Taks�e-Jensen, currently head of legal affairs for the Danish Foreign Ministry and due to replace Nicolas Michel as top UN lawyer. Taks�e-Jensen has been an ally for the neocons in the Danish government, having written the legal justification for the Iraq war presented to the Danish parliament even though the authority for the war was not sanctioned by the UN Security Council. He also coordinated a Danish government attack on the Danmarks Radio for broadcasting a TV documentary, called �The Secret War,� that provided evidence that the Danish government knew of the torture and mistreatment of prisoners in Afghanistan. Taks�e-Jensen also stood in the way of an investigation of Danish businessmen and politicians involved in the UN �Oil-for-Food� scandal. He has also been the Danish legal point man on a diplomatic row with Canada over Hans Island, a small speck of land between Greenland and Canada�s Ellesmere Island. As the Arctic ice pack melts and countries stake claims to potential lucrative oil resources, Taks�e-Jensen will be in a position at the UN to look for the interests of Denmark and the United States in the polar scramble involving Russia, Canada, Denmark, the United States, Norway, and potentially other countries.

John Bolton once said someone could take off the top 10 floors of the UN Secretariat Building with no resulting effect. It appears the neocons will just stack the top 10 floors and others with others of their ilk.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright � 2008 WayneMadenReport.com