In 1984 Pedro Sanjuan was appointed by then–Vice President Bush to a high-ranking position in the UN Secretariat. His mission was to keep an eye on the nearly 400 Soviet agents—including many KGB and GRU operatives—in strategic positions throughout the UN bureaucracy. Sanjuan quickly discovered that blatant espionage was only one of many transgressions thriving at the international organization. Moreover, although U.S. law enforcement authorities were well aware of the rampant corruption, abuse of diplomatic immunity, and even criminal malfeasance, they did nothing to curb it.In a series of wryly entertaining and highly instructive anecdotes, Sanjuan exposes the shockingly unprincipled culture of the UN Secretariat. His cast of characters includes every secretary-general from Kurt Waldheim to Kofi Annan and a large number of bureaucratic incompetents, scoundrels, and rogues. His accounts provide ample evidence that the oil-for–food scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. Startling and disturbing, they reveal:• The use of UN information centers around the world to disseminate anti-U.S. and pro-PLO propaganda• Rigged bidding on major UN contracts for travel, accounting, and other services• Systematic theft at UN facilities in East Africa, unconstrained graft at the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes in Vienna, and staff ties to organized crime in Russia and Japan• A business set up by KGB agents after the fall of the USSR, which sold guns and beryllium (used in nuclear weapons) directly out of the UN building• That Muslim extremists, under the cover of conducting religious services, used the UN employee lounge to map anti-Israeli and anti-U.S. strategies, and may even have been involved in the planning for 9/11Unchecked by internal oversight, its deceptions and dishonesty inexplicably tolerated by the U.S. government, the UN has become the focal point of glo... Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All