By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, May 7 -- It was inside the UN, but there was no sign on the door. In Conference Room E of the Temporary North Lawn Building, Inner City Press was told, Henry Kissinger was speaking.
Having covered, in the time of Occupy Wall Street, a mock award ceremony for Henry Kissinger held in front of a midtown Manhattan hotel (video here), Inner City Press had a sense there could be news: Kissinger in the UN! Again!
And so Inner City Press set up shop at a Cafe Austria table in front of Conference Room E. The electronic blue sign which usually announced what's taking place in a UN meeting room -- the Law of the Sea, even sometimes, "Questions about Information" -- was blank.
There was a paper sign on the door itself, DPI-NGO, but that event (which Inner City Press also covered, in the context of an internship with an NGO inside the UN being auctioned off for $26,000) was over.
A UN Security medical officer arrived, to unfold and man a wheelchair, along with two bodyguards. Two of the three looked skeptically at Inner City Press. But it is an open area.
After several false alarms, the moment came. Henry Kissinger came out of Conference Room E. But he said, even before he was out, "no pictures of me in a wheelchair."
Well.
There have been other sightings by Inner City Press in the UN this year: Judith Miller of Iraq and New York Times fame, here in the time of Syria and chemical weapons, on April Fool's Day no less.
Beyonce, for whom photographers were ordered to turn over their memory cards and have them erased. (Meanwhile, the UN took photos while raiding Inner City Press' office on March 18, then shared them and had them leaked on March 21 once the UN was asked about the raid.)
There are many orders in the UN, usually by the UN or its allies, on what to publish. This one, we will respect. What remains is a picture of the wheelchair sans Kissinger, here. Watch this site.
