UNcensored 4: UN Threw Press Into Street 1 Year Ago, BuzzFeed Chimed In, Of Gallach & Cholera

By Matthew Russell Lee, 4th in a Series

UNITED NATIONS, February 10 – It was Ban Ki-moon's UN which used eight security officers to throw me onto First Avenue, without resistance, and break my laptop. But it was Ban's head of communications who had signed the letter. So I decided that I needed to try to speak with her. 

   But being Banned from the UN, how to do it? I'd noticed an email from UNESCO, some event in the lobby with Irina Bokova, Ban's wannabe successor. I RSVP-ed then walked from the 26th Street NY Public Library to the UN at dusk.

  At the entrance stood a woman from UNESCO. A UN security officer came closer. They checked the list: there was my name, Matthew Russell Lee. The security officer shrugged. 

I went through the metal detector and on into the lobby, with its checkerboard floor and  and table stacked high with crackers, cheese and fruit. Bokova was a no-show. But I saw Gallach talking with Edmond Mulet, Ban's chief of staff who had overseen the UN's introduction of cholera to Haiti while Ban's envoy there, and had denied it since. It was time to make my move.

 “Ms Gallach,” I began. “I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

   She gave a fake-seeming smile, gesturing for her factotum Darrin Farrant to come over. Him, I knew: he'd been in my meetings with Gallach's predecessor Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal, including when Launsky, out of character, ordered me to remove from the door to my office the Free UN Coalition for Access sign. This didn't bode well.

   With Darrin Farrant as a witness, Gallach said “there are rules and they have to be followed.”

“What rule did I break?”

This seemed to stump her. You know, she said, I'm sure you know.

But I don't. I was just trying to cover a meeting in the UN Press Briefing Room--

I know, Gallach cut in, just like you stood outside the UNCA ball down on Wall Street in December.

Now I remembered seeing her there, even exchanging a few lines. “You see?,” I told her. “It's nothing new. I think UNCA is involved in the UN corruption scandal.”

Gallach rolled her eyes. I felt even my chance to plead slipping away.

Look, I'm a simple person, I told her. I'm willing to do penance, physical penance. I could clean the UN basement, or move furniture around. I just need full access back to do my job.

You should have thought of that before, she said smugly.

“When?” I asked. “Before I went into the UN Press Briefing Room?”

Mulet came back over and shepherded Gallach away. I went to where I'd set up my laptop and searched again on line. The BuzzFeed piecewas up, quoting unnamed UNCA officials that I'd tried to spy on their meeting. Spying on journalists? In the UN Press Briefing Room? It still seemed so absurd to me that I still thought it could quickly be turned around. But that was not to be. The reporting on corruption hit a nerve. And now they would strike back with impunity. There is no law at the UN. The First Amendment stops at First Avenue.

UNcensored 3: Banned From All UN Premises, Watching Scam Briefing From the Park

By Matthew Russell Lee, Series started here

UNITED NATIONS, February 8 – After being thrown out of the UN by eight Security officers for trying to cover an event in the UN Press Briefing Room, I was back on First Avenue first thing Monday morning, to try to get signed into the UN as a guest by another correspondent.

 But at the door for the pass and sign-in office, one Security officer told us he'd been asked to be on the look-out for just this.

  “You can wait inside,” the guard said. “But I have to call my supervisor.” It was nearing 10 am, when the Security Council meeting would start. I looked in my notebook for Spokesman Stephane Dujarric's phone number and dialed it: voice mail.  I left a message, I am being blocked from even entering as a guest.

  Then the officer's supervisor showed up, Matthew Sullivan was his name. I'd written about him before, not unsympathetically, after he got a rib broken by Turkey's Erdogan's bodyguards out of control. (Ban Ki-moon ended up apologizing to Erdogan for the incident, and putting Sullivan on paid leave, another of Ban's profiles in courage.)

  But Sullivan was in a fighting mood today.  “C'mon Matty,” he told me. “You know you can't be in here. You're banned from all UN premises.” Audio here.

  Actually, I didn't know that. I told him all I wanted to do at that point was try to cover the Security Council meeting by watching the webcast, could I do it in here?

   “No, you have to leave,” Sullivan said. Next thing I knew I was out on First Avenue again. Yet another UN correspondent called me and I told him what was happening.

  “I always thought they'd do this to you,” he said. “I wonder why it took them so long.”

   I got to the park on 43rd Street right across from the UN, Ralph Bunche Park, they call it, and I set up shop on the base of a metal monument there. The UN's wi-fi didn't even reach out to the street, so I used my cell phone's hotspot. I uploaded the audio of Sullivan saying, “You're banned from all UN premises;” I tried to listen to and live-tweet the Security Council meeting on Syria.

  Finally I watched the day's noon briefing. Dujarric from his mushroom-like wooden podium called on a seemingly eternal United Nations Correspondents Association board member, Masood Haider of Pakistan's Daily Dawn.

  “I want to know about that blogger Matthew Lee,” Masood said. “He is spewing all kinds of allegations on the Internet, some of them not true. What is his status?” Video here.

  Dujarric welcomed this question, this colloquy, and replied, “Matthew should come back in and remove his belongings.”  I sat in the park across the street, now shouting at my laptop. I was told I couldn't enter the UN. How could they use the UN noon briefing to talk about my accreditation status, without any right of reply?

  There was, of course, Twitter and I used it. Soon my phone was out of power and my hotspot growing weak. I had to find another place to work and headed inland. The public library on 46th Street had a second floor with children's book and some raised tables looking across the street at a restaurant called Aretsky's Patroon. I plugged in my laptop and kept plugging. This would not be a short fight, it was starting to dawn on me. Like Pakistan's Daily Dawn.

  From the public library branch on 46th Street I started writing to all the UN officials I knew. To be continued...

UNcensored 2: Physically Ousted from UN, First Amendment Stops at 1st Avenue

By Matthew Russell Lee, Series started here

UNITED NATIONS, February 7 – For the Syria stakeout in front of the UN Security Council on February 19, 2016, seemingly my last one, I tried to blend in. It wasn't easy with a UN Security officer following my every move. 

  But I stood typing and tweeting, and stepped up to the stakeout railing each time someone came to speak on the microphone. I put two questions to Turkey's ambassador, who always traveled with a bodyguard himself, then returned to my laptop to transcribe them.

  By then most of the other reporters had left. A UN Security supervisor came and and told me, “So you'll be leaving, eh?”

  “I don't agree with any of it,” I told him. “But I'm trying to arrange for a van to move some of my stuff from my office. Just the most important stuff. Not because I accept being thrown out, but because I don't trust this place anymore.”

  “Alright then,” the supervisor said. “So you'll get yourself a van.”  He walked away.

   I did send out some emails, including to Jose Ramos Horta, who beyond the UN job he had was a Nobel Peace Prize winner. I told him I was being thrown out, and to email Cristina Gallach, who had signed the letter. To my surprise he wrote back quickly and said he would.

   By then two other UN Security officer came over.  “Look,” one of them told me, “don't make trouble. I say this as your friend. They have fifteen of us on this. So just pack up and live to fight another day.”

  I nodded. I was wondering how Gallach could do this, if a Nobel Peace Prize winner was asking her about it. Just to be sure, I plugged in my phone and put it on the riser next to me, filming and live streaming the scene and the replica of Picasso's Guernica to the side of the Security Council stakeout.

    Ramos Horta wrote back, saying that Gallach told him I would still have the same access as a reporter, only not an office anymore. He forwarded me her response and said I could use it:

“Dear mr Ramos-Horta,

Many thanks for your message which allows me to inform you about the decision I have taken on the type of accreditation that Mr Lee has and will have in the future.

Recently mr Lee openly broke the rules that guide all the resident correspondents. After careful consideration of the internal report elevated to me, I decided to continue providing him with a press pass that allows him to work without any impediment at the UN, as the vast majority of journalists. What the UN cannot do is to let him use an space exclusively for  him, after the mentioned events.

As you can see, mr Lee will have a valid press card as soon as he presents himself to the accreditation premises.

Rest assured that I am the first person to be interested in ensuring totally free and safe reporting from the UN HQ and about the UN. This is what mr. Lee will be able to do.”

  Just then the Security supervisor came back, this time with eight other officers.

  “That's it,” the supervisor said. “Party's over.”

  One of the guards grabbed my phone, yanked it off the wire and pushed all the buttons, trying to get it to stop filming. Video here.
  “Hey don't touch my phone!” I said.

  “It's over,” the supervisor said. He grabbed the ID badge around my neck and tore it off. “You're a trespasser now. If you resist we'll hand you over to NYPD.”

  “I'm a journalist here ten years,” I started to say.

  “WERE a journalist,” the supervisor said. “C'mon, we're leaving.”

  Another guard had grabbed my laptop. “Let me go upstairs and get my passport,” I said. “And my coat.”

   The guards were pushing me toward the escalator, the one heading down, not up. One flight down in in the lobby I saw two members of the board of the United Nations Correspondents Association, which I'd quit two years before after being ordered by the UN Correspondents Assocaition's president to take an article off-line.  “Great job,” I yelled at them. “You're the UN's Censorship Alliance.”

   “More walking, less talking,” the supervisor said. I decided I should at least know his name. So I asked. Three times.

 “I'm the Deputy Chief,” he said.

  “You're not going to give your name?” I asked him. “Even NYPD has to do that.”

  He paused. “McNulty,” he finally said. Audio here. Then again the pushing, out onto the traffic circle, toward the guard booth at the front which checked the cars coming into the UN garage.

 “You know why they're doing this,” I said to the officer next to me, or all the officers. “It's become of corruption. A guy's been indicted for paying bribes in the UN and when I asked if Ban Ki-moon's involved, suddenly he's having you throw me out.”

  “Enough, enough,” McNulty said. We had arrived at the guard booth, and one of the guards opened the metal gate out to First Avenue.

 “I'm not leaving without my phone,” I said. My mind was swimming. Audio here.

  “We'll give that to you once you're out,” McNulty said. And with that, pushed me out the gate. I saw my backpack thrown on the ground, with my laptop on it. Someone handed me my phone and suddenly the gate was locked. To the side I saw the Voice of America which as they tried earlier to get me out of the UN I'd told that to use US taxpayers' money to try to get an American investigative journalist thrown out of the UN might be a problem.

  “That's a threat,” she told me.

  “It's just a statement of the law,” I'd told her. “It's in the First Amendment.”

  But the First Amendment, I'd found, ends at First Avenue.

UN Overspent by $7M on Afghan Police, "Intentional Overriding," ICP Shows, 9th in Series

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive, 9th in Series

UNITED NATIONS, July 14 -- UN system officials talk about Afghanistan without addressing the System's demonstrated corruption there.

  But this ninth installment of Inner City Press' exclusive series shows that the UN Development Program's Law & Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan overspent by over $7 million on "police remuneration" and $4 million on "procurement of non-lethal equipments."

  For the UN's credibility, however, these unrebutted internal audit may well be lethal. Click here to view "Observation #9," which blames the overruns on "intentional overriding of internal controls and or human error."

  Who is being held accountable for these errors / "intentional overridings of internal controls"?

   While these questions go unanswered, at its July 13 noon briefing the UN asked for more money and speechified:

"The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says Afghans are facing an uncertain future, despite improvements in education, health care and political participation over the past decade. The departure of foreign troops will reduce economic activity, State revenues and foreign aid, putting the development gains of the last decade at risk and exacerbating humanitarian needs in one of the poorest countries in the world. The Office notes that the current consolidated appeal for Afghanistan for this year calls for $448 million to implement 165 projects across the country. Halfway through the year, this appeal is only 30 per cent funded."

  Could the UN's unaddressed corruption have something to do with this resistance to give it more money? And for Michele Bachellet, spokesman Martin Nesirky read out that

"Afghanistan has been witnessing cases of extreme abuse and appalling violence against women. These actions have sparked national and international outrage, and have once again focused attention on the continuing and urgent need to protect women's and girls' rights as the world redefines its role in Afghanistan, and as the Government of Afghanistan moves forward in transition."

  Bachelet is reputed to get things done -- maybe SHE should oversee the UN's response to and clean up of Afghanistan operations, now that she has spoken about the country.

  As noted in the first and second installments of this series LOTFA purports to be about training and "building capacity" of Afghan police. But it is essentially a money transfer and payroll service, with a sideline as a travel agency.

  But even its payroll service is mismanaged.  As Inner City Press has exclusively reported and UNDP has not addressed, in "Observation # 6" the auditors said that

"We observed differences between number of police personnel as per HR record maintained by MOI and EPS records. We noted that EPS record was showing excess number of police personnel than the number of police personnel appearing in the HR record... Differences in personnel records between HR and EPS may have following impacts/risks: Salaries may be paid to persons who are not actually on the payroll; Double payments of salaries may be made to staff members."

 As published by Inner City Press, this internal audit shows that in in Asmayi Region, the excess staff number was over 1000.

  In Kunar it was 429; in Badakhshan it was 219. "We're talking real money on these phantom Afghan police," as one whistleblower exclusively said to Inner City Press.

   Back on the afternoon of June 22, Inner City Press asked UNDP, among other things:

"Please describe expenses for Ms. Grynspan's trip to Afghanistan, including leasing (from UNAMA) of plane for flight from Dubai, and the redeployment / hiding of armored vehicles during her visit."

  On June 27, UNDP answered thusly:

"The UN Under Secretary-General and UNDP Associate Administrator Ms. Rebeca Grynspan flew, as recommended by UN operations, on Dubai-Kabul-Dubai flights made available on 12 and 14 July by UNAMA, on UN operated planes, as they were the most suitable and secure options. UNDP uses armoured vehicles to ensure the safety of staff, including for high level officials who come on mission."

  As Inner City Press reported in its first story in this series, whistleblowers complained to it that UNDP leased a Lear Jet for Grynspan, while "the SRSG flies commercial" for much less money. 

   Given the non-responsiveness of UNDP, Inner City Press asked Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson's office, which referred the questions back to UNDP, beyond providing a canned statement from SRSG Jan Kubis. 

  As to UNDP, one would think the agency would have to answer this specific: "the date on which each of Basnyet, Sandeep Kumar and Ubadallah Sahibzada became aware of the irregularities and of the attached audits." Watch this site.