UN GATE, September 1 – One year and five days after banning Inner City Press for life without appeal from the UN, on August 22now gone UN Global Communicator Alison Smale held an ill-attended a press conference about her last hurrah in Salt Lake City. In the press conference, the second of only three questions was from one of the correspondents she gives office space to and who said that France's Macron "made love" to US President Donald J. Trump. Smale said nothing. Video here.
The UN has refused to answer questions from Inner City Press which Smale banned about when her final day was. Her replacement Melissa Fleming, corrupted, refused to answer question and on August 30 is responsible for denying Inner City Press access to UNGA week which they grant to hundreds of dictator promoting state media.
And now, back in the news before she disappears after a career culminating in censorship, this: "“American Media Dodging U.N. Surveillance Story.” Why hadn’t the paper of record covered it, Solomon asked Alison Smale, then a deputy foreign editor at the New York Times. “It’s not that we haven’t been interested,” Smale told him. The problem was that “we could get no confirmation or comment” about the NSA email from U.S. officials. But “we are still definitely looking into it,” said Smale. “It’s not that we’re not.” The Times never mentioned Gun until January 2004, 10 months later."
So Smale was a cover up article even then. Or she was a "serious journalist" who thought nothing could or should be written without getting confirmation or denial from an institution. Then while at the UN she banned the banned Inner City Press and lied that its written questions would be written. We will continue to cover her - her Twitter profile as of September 1 still says "moved to New York for exciting UN job .. still with Russian pianist-composer Sergei Dreznin daughter Lucy in UK ...retweets not endorsements..." Yeah, and reputation entirely false or destroyed. Part of her "legacy" - past 4 pm on Friday, August 30 the UN issued a denial of accreditation with no reasoning other than that accreditation had previously been revoked:
"From: malu
Date: Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 4:23 PM
Subject: U.N. eAccreditation request for Matthew Lee Ref # M5413398 has been declined
Date: Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 4:23 PM
Subject: U.N. eAccreditation request for Matthew Lee Ref # M5413398 has been declined
To: Inner City Press:
Greetings Matthew Lee from Inner City Press, Your media accreditation request, with reference no: M5413398, has been declined for the following reason: Media accreditation was withdrawn on 17 August 2018."
This is Kafka-esque, and corrupt. We will have more, much more, on this.
Smale disgraced her former role with for example the New York Times. She never once even spoke to Inner City Press before banning it; she used its questioning of diplomats at the Delegates Entrance as a basis for her Kakfa-esque order.
Her pianist husband memorably told Inner City Press that to avoid this fate it should wear a suit and tie. Because of course that is the litmus test for journalism. She didn't disclose her outside activities, she delayed in filing the minimal public financial disclosure. She made claims about Inner City Press that were entirely false while allowing no opportunity for rebuttal. She was and is a censor.
Here for her Salt Lake City scam is the her schedule: The 68th United Nations Civil Society Conference will be held under the theme ‘Building Inclusive and Sustainable Cities and Communities’ in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA from 26 to 28 August 2019. Organized in cooperation with the NGO/DPI Executive Committee, Salt Lake City’s Mayor’s office and chaired by civil society representative Maruxa Cardama, Secretary General at SLoCaT Partnership on Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport, this will be the first time a major UN conference will be held in the United States of America, outside of New York... What: 68th United Nations Civil Society Conference When: 26 to 28 August 2019 Where: Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA Media Highlights Monday, 26 August 2019 10:00 – 11:30 Opening Plenary 11:30 – 11:45 Press Briefing Tuesday, 27 August 2019 TBD Wednesday, 28 August 2019 15:00 – 16:30 Closing Plenary (Adoption of Conference Outcome & Youth Declaration) 16:30 – 16:45 Press Briefing."
We'll have more on this - and on Smale's replacement, who is on the clock to end the censorship prior to and for the upcoming UN General Assembly high level week, to be apply for on August 24 before September 5, a UNGA high level week Inner City Press covered in depth from in the UN like 1000s of others until the arrival of the secretive censor Antonio Guterres. But who owns the United Nations - Guterres? Is it a dictatorship with no due process of appeals rights? Watch this site.
Back on 23 August 2018 Smale held a faux press conference from which the Press was banned to announce the UN will spend the public's money in Salt Lake City. Minutes before she began, there were three journalists in the UN Press Briefing Room, if you include the personal friend of Smale's she channeled unedited into her banning letter. The room suddenly filled up with non journalists - a supposed no no, but Smale's Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit did not enforce that rule (or, one hopes, lure any unsuspecting correspondent into "behavior" that Smale could uses as a pretext for punishment. Having to cover this from the UN bus stop made it hard to hear, but Smale was seen stepping off the podium before the end. The other speakers seemed fine and we hope to have more on and from them - Smale makes it difficult, with her outright censorship. It was moderated byanother of the complainants Smale channeled, Maher Nasser, who blocked Inner City Press on Twitter after it asked about the placement of sexual exploitation and abuse on aPeacekeeping website he was promoting, and about rules. This is today's DPI, and UN. Utah, Smale seems to think, should make her censorshipacceptable, she appears to think. There no way to know, because despite Smale's assurance in her no due process banning letter, of the ten questions Inner City Press asked by email on August 23, not a single one was answered, including the reiterated question, "This is again a request to be informed of the reason on the SG's Public Financial Disclosure page USG Smale is not listed, while Natalia Gherman who was named to her position later than USG Smale is listed and has made public disclosure - and for an explanation why Smale did not recuse herself as was clearly called for from banning me.(There was also August 23-10: In terms of USG Smale's letter banning me for life please state who she says was disparaged, when, and in what medium / in person or not. Please provide the UN's version, and any UN video, of the June 19 private use of briefing room for Al Jazeera and critique afterward. Please immediately provide all UN video of the June 22 ouster and July 3 roughing up and ouster, and the names and nationalities of all involved officers.")
If Smale doesn't make the minimal public financial disclosure, and it is not explained despite being asked repeatedly after she was accused by whistleblowers in her own Department of diverting funds allocated for Swahili services to English language social media promotion of Antonio Guterres, what about this spending in Salt Lake? Below is from the UN's press release, embargoed until 6 pm when we publish it, fifteen minutes before the press conference regarding which we asked Smale's Department: "request, as a journalist who has covered the UN for 12 years and is still covering it today, to be allowed to attend and ask questions at the 6:15 press conference by USG Smale who never spoke to me once before purporting to ban me for life." While not directly answered, the effect was of course no: more Smale censorship, a Press-less press conference.
If Smale doesn't make the minimal public financial disclosure, and it is not explained despite being asked repeatedly after she was accused by whistleblowers in her own Department of diverting funds allocated for Swahili services to English language social media promotion of Antonio Guterres, what about this spending in Salt Lake? Below is from the UN's press release, embargoed until 6 pm when we publish it, fifteen minutes before the press conference regarding which we asked Smale's Department: "request, as a journalist who has covered the UN for 12 years and is still covering it today, to be allowed to attend and ask questions at the 6:15 press conference by USG Smale who never spoke to me once before purporting to ban me for life." While not directly answered, the effect was of course no: more Smale censorship, a Press-less press conference.
At 4 pm on Friday August 17, 2018 Inner City Press got a four page letter from Under Secretary General Alison Smale, formerly the New York Times' Berlin bureau chief. We've put the letter on Scribd here, Patreon download here.
The letter informed me, without a single opportunity to be heard and offer rebuttal, that “your accreditation is hereby withdrawn pursuant to the Guidelines.” It cited what it called three previous warnings. But on further inspection there is no there, there. And Grand Inquisitor Alison Smale didn't even consider, or acknowledge, that Inner City Press had responded to the spurious complaints...
As part of its coverage in the UN Inner City Press heard from whistleblowers in Smale's then Department of Public Information that she diverted funds intended for Swahiliprogramming to her avowed focused, getting better coverage for Guterres particularly on social media.But Smale did not recuse herself, and Guterres who refused my polite question to him on July 20 why this censorship was taking place and why he had been so silent as Cameroon killed Anglophones in the North-West and South-West regions of the country, did not make her recuse. Nor did he recuse himself, despite my timely request that the President of the General Assembly, and not the obviously conflicted Guterres and Smale, take charge of any review deemed necessary.
What is most troubling about the UN's August 17 dis-accreditation letter is how vague it is, and inaccurate the few times it gets specific.
The UN claims that on 3 July 2018 I “attempted to gain unauthorized access to a locked area of the UN.” But as I reported at the the time, and my Periscope video subsequently used by Fox News and The UK Independentshows, I was in the UN's much traveled Vienna Cafe. (Guterres' Assistant Secretary General Christian Saunders, whose involvement in aUN procurement scandal I previously reported, was also there: he oversaw the assault and the next day told me he doesn't like my articles.)
On July 3, 2018 I was staking out -- that is, standing outside of - the UN Budget Committee meetings. In fact, I had been informed of the meetings by UN personnel and diplomats had invited me down in order to tell me, as a reported, what was going on.
Ironically it was with Cameroon's Ambassador Tommo Monthe that I had just spoken when UN Lieutenant Ronald E. Dobbins and another officer who had still been identified by the UN approached me from behind, grabbed and twisted my arm, grabbed and damaged my laptop computer and tore my shirt. I recoiled and said, loudly, “I am a journalist, covering a meeting!” To Smale, this is incivility, enough to be permanently banned from the UN for.
Next, at the top of page 3 of the letter, Smale runs through a litany of supposed violations without providing any details, nor acknowledging that other correspondents more friendly to Guterres and her are allowed to do these things routinely. Smale pillories my “presence on UN premises outside authorized time periods as stipulated in the Guidelines.”
But those Guidelines, even as selectively quoted by Smale at the top of page 2 of her letter, make clear that I was permitted past 7 pm to cover an advised meeting - such as the July 3 UN Budget Committee meeting considering a $6.7 billion expenditure of public funds or the June 22 event in the UN General Assembly lobby featuring a speech in which Guterres bragged about fasting in Mali.
On June 22, not mentioned in Smale's August 17 letter but alleged as a “repeat violation” by Guterres' deputy spokesman Farhan Haq in a July 5 article, the same Lieutenant Dobbins and four Emergency Response Unit officers he summoned and then told not to give their names, pushed me out of the UN even as other non resident correspondents were allowed to remain in. There is video, here.
Days before that first roughing up of Inner City Press by UN Security but clearly green-lighted from higher up, Guterres' lead spokesman Stephane Dujarric told a person who tried to speak with him on my behalf to get the UN to stop requiring me to have a minder or escort as they have since February 2016 that things would be getting worse for me. It seems clearDujarric knew about or had already ordered the physical targeting of Inner City Press any time after 7 pm, even if an advised meeting or Guterres speech was taking place.
But a telling omission in Smale's letter is that as recently as June 26 dozens of non resident correspondents were allowed to stay in the UN past 7 pm drinking with Guterres on the North Lawn, ghoulishly in the name of press freedom with Smale. The event was not advised in the UN Media Alert, and I know that UN Security could not have been given a list of approved non resident correspondents since my timely RSVP to cover the event which had yet another canned Guterres speech was never answered. I was told by the organizer of that pro-Guterres event that the RSVP was ignored because it was open to all correspondents. Again, there is video in my contemporaneous coverage.Maybe this is why Smale and Guterres - and Dujarric - say livestreaming is a problem to be solved with Security violence and banning.
Since as Smale says there are thousands of those, many of whom write few articles and ask fewer questions, there is no way UN Security had a list of non resident correspondent to NOT beat up after 7 pm. They just decided / were told to start roughing up critical Inner City Press, sometime between June 22 until the July 3 assault which I reported on July 4 to the NYPD and was told, while a report was taken, that the UN asserts immunity. (That's the problem.)
Guterres' Spokesman Stephane Dujarric repeatedly used profanity, specifically the F-word, in the briefing room including telling me, “Matthew that's a stupid f*cking question.” Even more dispositively a former president of the UN Correspondents Association, Giampaoli Pioli who had ordered me to remove from the Internet an article about him arranging a UN screening for the Sri Lanka Ambassador of a film denying his country's war crimes after having had the Ambassador as his paying tenant in one of his many Manhattan apartment - the reason I quit UNCA - once called me an “assh*le” at the UN Security Council stakeout, during an advised meeting.
It happened at the Security Council stakeout so it was recorded, audio here. But DPI did nothing about this profanity and “derogatory assertion” by the president of UNCA, become their UN Censorship Alliance. So there is no rule, less enough of one to ban me for life.
There is another vague reference to refusing to obey UN Security officers, impossible to respond to and troubling in light of the video of Lt Dobbins and his colleague pulling me, and tearing my shirt. Is one not allowed to say, “I am a journalist?” What would Smale do?
Guterres did not act on Inner City Press' 25 June 2018 letter to alleging nepotism in the handing of the management of the Security Council's website to the photographer husband of the chief of staff of the Department of Political Affairs, nor on Inner City Press now ironic request that he provide protect to the Press being target. It was Guterres, it turns out, who was and is behind the targeting.
Most Orwellian, halfway through page 3 Smale attempts to use questions I have had to ask at the UN Delegates Entrance since she and Guterres banned me from the UN Security Council stakeout from July 3 on. At that new stakeout, I have interviewed among others outgoing Human Rights Commissioner Prince Zeid (whose abuse of whistleblowers I have also reported) and Permanent Representatives such as those from Kazakhstan and even Burundi. So which unnamed member states is Smale claiming have complained to her and Guterres: Cameroon? The United Kingdom? France? Morocco?
In fact, one of the three specific (now in retrospect devious) warning letter Smale cites involved the Moroccan delegation falsely claiming I could not take photographs or record and live-stream at the UN Security Council stakeout. But the Guidelines permit that.
The DPI staff who passed along the Morocco complaint were orally apologetic but that's now for naught. The Kafkaesque file was being built.
Smale claimed in a July 19, 2018 response to the DC-based whistleblower protection group Government Accountability Project that Dujarric and the four other spokespeople his office would be answering my e-mailed question in respect to what she called my “journalistic endeavour.” This was repeated today to BuzzFeed's Hayes Brown, here. But they answer less than 20% of the questions - one a day, the easiest of the five I ask - and I am being banned from covering the UN Security Council, whose mishandling ofYemen and Myanmar, and non-handling or worse of Cameroon I have a right to cover and Inner City Press' audience have a right to follow online including in live-streams. Most pressingly, Guterres and Smale want to block me from covering member states in the UN General Assembly high level week in late September, the deadline for accreditation for which is September. A conflicted Secretariat has no right to ban a well-read media from covering this diplomatic dance of nations.
