By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, October 28, updated -- The UN's incremental spin of its bed bug problem grew wider and more surreal on Thursday.
Inner City Press, which was the first to break the story of UN bed bugs, in a 46th Street building in September 2009 and May 2010 and on October 25 in the Capital Master Plan office in the UN headquarters, now asked UN spokesman Martin Nesirky to make full disclosure of all UN locations in which bed bugs have been found.
Nesirky began listing further locations, the 1st, 2nd, 15th 19th and 20th floors of UN Headquarters and some outside of UN Headquarters, including the 11th and 25th floors of the UN DC-2 building across First Avenue, four floors of the UN Federal Credit Union building in Queens and, as Inner City Press had predicted and then reported, under the UN's new North Lawn building.
But when Pressed, Nesirky said that these were locations which had been tested by bed bug testing dogs. This seemed incorrect, as least as to UN Headquarters.
On October 27, Inner City Press directly reached and asked Andrew Nye of the UN Facilities Management Service, who said that bed bugs had been found in Headquarters on the the 1st, 2nd and 15th floors, beyond those admitted to that time by Nesirky.
So Inner City Press asked Nesirky to confirm that bed bugs had been found in the locations he'd listed -- if it were only testing, why test only the 1st and 3rd floors of the UN Library building, and not the 2nd floor where the Press is?
Update: on the afternoon of October 28, the request was made.
Nesirky replied that tests are made “on request,” and then depending on resources.
But some of the Headquarters locations he listed are empty, the staff already removed. Who then made the request? Inner City Press asked if the UN would be making full disclosure of its findings. Even to this, the answer wasn't clear. Watch this site.