by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack
UN GATE, May 11 – How corrupt are United Nations officials and the correspondents who cover (up for) them today?
On May 9, a long-time UN insider named Colum Lynch, who has bounced from the Washington Post to Foreign Policy and beyond, ran a belatedly rip-off piece about the UN Mission in Western Sahara, based off "a political problem... cited in news reports about the disputed territory."
While Lynch, as is his M.O., refused to name or credit the "news reports," he named and used the problem: "a Russian national named Alexander Ivanko, was involved in a romantic relationship with a local Moroccan woman."
There is a major problem: Inner City Press in 2021 first published this information, and has remained banned by the UN until this day. For example, Inner City Press in December 2021 published, available then as now in Google:
"Inner City Press has been contacted by UN whistleblowers outraged at what they say is already a pro-Morocco scandal at MINURO under - literally - Ivanko. They tell Inner City Press, none of whose questions the UN will answer even to confirm or deny, that Ivanko has struck up a predatory relationship with a Moroccan woman who was recruited into MINURSO by now-rewarded predator Colin Stewart.
Inner City Press on the morning of December 20 put this question and another - about UNRWA and Afghanistan - to all UN spokespeople... Inner City Press has the victim's name but, as it does in the current US v. Ghislaine Maxwell case on which Guterres refuses to answer why he had a representative, Amir Dossal, on Maxwell's Terramar project board, it is not publish the name - in the case of the UN, for now). The whistleblowers also telling recount that given his lack of commitment to decolonization, Guterres told Grandi - subject now of an Afghanistan and UNRWA scoop - to keep UNHCR's Western Sahara work "sleeping" for now. Forever, as things stand. The UN under Guterres is less and less accountable, less and less transparent."
Its press corpse, too. Colum Lynch has previously ripped off Inner City Press, while it was still in the UN.
And when UNSG Antonio Guterres and his spokesman Stephane Dujarric - quoted as "Mister" by Lynch - had Inner City Press roughed up and thrown out of the UN, it was covered by the Columbia Journalism Review and The Independent, for example, but not a word from Lynch or Foreign Policy or his other employers.
Lynch also lets off the hook and covers up for many others in (and left out) of this story. But that's a story for another day. We cover the SDNY now, most recently Carroll v. Trump (booklet here) - but this type of journalistic theft and collusion cannot and will not go unremarked.
Inner City Press has appealed to re-enter the UN and will not rest. Watch this site.
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