tv Key Capitol Hill Hearings CSPAN June 16, 2014 6:00pm-8:01pm EDT
6:00 pm
john birch society. he has gotten further from that. they are the sorts of associations -- remember, for a moment the church barack obama went to almost took him out. no, really. there will be problems with the way he deals with certain questions. who knows what will come up that he could fumble? i remember a time when we were covering rick perry's 20-point lead in the presidential primary and he blew four questions and it destroyed him. i think there is a bigger donor class that believes in these things, and the rising millennial vote, when you are asking them if government can't hack it, they have seen government as post-9/11 and obamacare.
6:01 pm
if they are not a necessarily pure republican vote, their vote is sympathetic to someone who makes the rand paul case. >> michael, final word, ? >> i think the issue that will come out is rand paul has a base that he picked up from his father and it was heavily subscribed to by younger people at universities and colleges and it was reminiscent of how barry goldwater was so well received received when the young americans for freedom was created in the 1960's and help propel him through 1964. younger people are far more idealistic. they do not have the patience for the current republican party. when you finally hit social security, you can be chairman of the party.
6:02 pm
ron paul did this as a congressman and his son is doing it. this is what helped to propel goldwater, who was a minority view in the republican party, so the minority view captured the party and became the majority. that is the plan that has to be looked at. it might be too soon and 2016, but change the time and he could make a difference. >> you just made me remember that hillary was a goldwater girl when she was in her 20's. we will keep talking with your questions. >> we now have time to take questions from all of you. there are two of us with microphones. we are recording this. it will be on the website first thing tomorrow morning. we are asking that you say your first and last name. c-span is also here. tonya has the first question right here. >> well, it is not exactly a question. it is a statement in a way.
6:03 pm
my father, he ran against barry goldwater many years ago, and one of the most striking things about goldwater was how amazing he could be so accepting of someone with opposite political views. my father was way to the left, he was way to the right. yet they had these wonderful discussions. he was really a terrific man even my views and his were different. when he ran for, all you had to do was be a republican, so i not know why my father decided to run. >> that is one of the more interesting parts of goldwater
6:04 pm
running in 1964. he was hoping to run against jack kennedy. >> goldwater and kennedy knew each other very well and they were friends. it was a different time. it was like an extended family. people knew each other. one thing that united all of these folks was the central arizona project, which was the major activity of a bipartisan nature, and this is where goldwater was effective. he might have been a showhorse but you needed that showhorse. goldwater was helping to make that thing work, and that is exactly the type of culture from which your father -- that you were describing. >> next question in the front. >> my name is roy miller, and my question has to do with the word "libertarian."
6:05 pm
i am myself a libertarian, but i remember many years ago the word "liberal" had a free-market connotation to it and it was taken over, and now most of us that believe in small government did not like the word "liberal," so i am wondering if this new word "libertarian" will last and you think it will be consistently be represented by a limited government viewpoint? >> i do, and to sum up -- classical liberal philosophy from john stuart mills and john locke and others did carry the "liberal" term, and around the rest of the world, it still does. "neoliberal" in most of the world describe someone who has a free-market orientation. i think "libertarianism" will stick as a political identifier
6:06 pm
in american politics because it represents a conservatism that is at least distinct from and often in conflict with social conservatism. so i now believe the conservative movement has split in a way that was not true during the days of the historically important barry goldwater, and, therefore, there is a utility in the name to describe a point of view that has some distinction. >> i would just add quickly that one of the great surprises of republican politics of the last 10 years is that it was ron paul paul who made libertarianism more popular. that was not seen by the circles i travel in in washington, the libertarian circles, he was not seen as the best vessel to bring that forward. the kochs had spent 30 years funding institutes. a person at the cato institute were worried that "libertarian" sounded crazy.
6:07 pm
the fact that ron paul ran for president and built a following against the iraq war and drafted countless young libertarians, that really surprised people. he is a very flawed politician in the ways we were talking around before. given the ways ron paul built the ranks, as long as there is an external threat like america feels, yes, libertarianism. >> i have a question about goldwater, the civil rights act, and the recent conflict we had in arizona. goldwater famously voted against a 1964 act because he did not like the federal government
6:08 pm
imposing nondiscrimination requirements on private does this, but he had supported civil rights act deviously, including in 1963. is there a tension in that? in arizona there was a bill proposed that would allow discrimination based on religious views by private businesses which resulted in a lot of conflict. is that a tension with goldwater, with libertarianism? is there some way goldwater speaks to how the two will get through those conflicts? >> i think it represents a losing argument by libertarians. the point of view that goldwater expressed, which is there is nothing in the constitution that gives the federal government the authority to tell someone who owns a private business whom he has to serve and prevent him from making decisions as to whom he serves is a purebred libertarian point of view.
6:09 pm
it's lost. the field of commerce is universally regarded, in some respects, as public space, and that government can, indeed, regulate the kind of interactions people have in that public space, including prohibiting what is considered invidious discrimination in commerce, and the reaction to senate bill 1062 reflects the fact that the libertarians have simply lost that argument. >> next question in the front. >> my name is albert. there are two big trends in the 21st century. i think one of them is, of course, terrorism, and the other one is the massive data collection by the united states government of data from private individuals and corporations. how do you think barry goldwater would approach these issues?
6:10 pm
>> i will jump on that. first, on the terrorism, he would say we will win the war because it was consistent with how he viewed the war against communism, which was not to contain it, but to basically defeat it as the greatest enemy on earth. he would probably say that the terrorist threat is similar. they attacked us. secondly, on the metadata collection, he would probably say the government has no business snooping. and he would have been tortured, probably, but probably taking the more libertarian thread he would have said we do not need to have a government spying on you and knowing every last thing about you. that was one thing that flavored his rhetoric when he was running for president, and we have that earlier goldwater who was so self-righteous and he would have felt uncomfortable with the government snooping around
6:11 pm
finding out everything there was to know about anybody, including who they were calling on a telephone. >> next question on your >> next question on your upper right. >> my name is john warren. i have been a registered republican for three decades and a voting national delegate for ron paul in 2012. given that the republican party, for the first time, is outnumbered in the state of arizona by independents, rather than asking whether goldwater libertarianism is dead, i would like to post if the republican party is dead without libertarianism? >> let's see, in some states, i think, they cannot win, basically the entire northeast i do not think a republican who is not libertarian on social issues, they should not even bother running.
6:12 pm
they are so conservatives they cannot win. i keep mentioning the chamber of commerce because they spend a lot of money and they are a good overarching example of what you would call rockefeller republicans. they are not trying to moderate republican party. they are going along with libertarian demands, resolutely for the repeal of obamacare, resolutely anti-tax. the differences they have, or they are more into speaking for businesses and they always will be because they are the chamber of commerce. i do not think you are wrong. the problem republicans have is one demographic, and in a state like this, you look at how close the senate race was on the presidential race in 2012, that shocked them, and that was because hispanic voters were turning against them in massive numbers here, colorado, states
6:13 pm
they did not think about, and young people who are not socially conservative and they do not care about rent speaking. i do not disagree with you, it is just what part of the libertarianism they decide into the party. mitt romney is actually is blamed when he loses a race he thought he could win. i do not think it is so much that he was a bad candidate, but he completely failed to reach out to people who if they always voted for republicans, they cannot win again. it is more to the cato style libertarianism on immigration reform. that will be more appealing than what mitt romney ran on. it did not work for john mccain,
6:14 pm
but he did better than. that is a struggle, not what republicans ran on. >> we have time for another question, but i want to say thank you to all of the panelists for taking the time and our co-presenters, arizona state university and c-span for joining us and recording tonight's event, and lastly to all of you for coming and joining us tonight. also, our reception -- happy hour will start momentarily. it will be straight behind the exit sign behind you at the patio. please join us for a drink and you can speak further with our guests. now the last question. >> you spoke a lot about what goldwater felt about the expansion of government and the nsa, but what about corporations? the first thing twitter asks me is where are you. that and campaign finance
6:15 pm
donations that come in, donors will vote this way. speak to that. >> in "conscience of a conservative," goldwater inveighs vigorously against the union movement, and actually advocates federal laws restricting unions' political activities, and among the things that he says in that book is that neither unions nor corporations should be permitted to donate or participate in political activities, that they are intended as economic organizations, and should not be exercising political rights. he also speaks approvingly of antitrust laws. now, the extent to which that was genuine or just a way to
6:16 pm
make his anti-union screed more broadly palatable, i am not sure. he was very friendly, an icon of the arizona business community before he became a politician. he was comfortable with large businesses. the general libertarian economic position is that threats of entry are sufficient to guard against trusts and restraints against trade and are suspicious of antitrust laws, and, i think certainly the point of view that corporations have protected free speech rights is now pretty standard fare in libertarian and conservative philosophies. so my guess is he would not be
6:17 pm
as quick to put restraints on business in terms of its collection of data and its use of data as he would the federal government. >> and with that, thank you so much. we will see you outside. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> president obama has nominated the secretaryto of hud. there will be a confirmation
6:18 pm
hearing tomorrow at 10:00 eastern live on c-span3. week, the ceo of houseoes before a subcommittee. that hearing is wednesday at 10:00 eastern on c-span3. on facebookh in and twitter. on thursday house republicans will vote for a new majority leader, to replace eric cantor. whip kevinajority mccarthy is in line to replace cantor. if he wins the race, his current
6:19 pm
post will become vacant. >> for over 35 years c-span tongs events from washington you, putting you in the room at congressional hearings, briefings, and conferences, and offering complete coverage of the u.s. house, all as a public service of private industry. we are c-span, created by the cable tv industry 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. watch us in hd, like us on book, or follow us on twitter. kerry today called for a comprehensive global strategy to protect oceans from pollution. speaking at a state department conference, secretary kerry said climate change is the theest threat to oceans and
6:20 pm
planet. his remarks are just over 20 minutes. [applause] >> cathy, thank you very, very much. welcome, everybody, distinguished guests, all. we have many government leaders, many people, as cathy mentioned, from foundations, from ngo's, from various interested entities. we are really delighted to have such an extraordinary expert, concerned group come together to discuss this really critical issue. and i am personally very, very grateful to the leadership of our terrific undersecretary for economic growth, energy, and the environment -- it's a big package, obviously -- who has been working diligently to put this together.
6:21 pm
you can tell from the surroundings this will be interactive. there will be a lot of visual input to digest and a great deal of science to document what we are talking about here over the course of these next couple of days. but i'm really grateful to my team here at the state department that has worked overtime under cathy's leadership to help bring everybody together here today, and i thank you all for coming. i welcome you to the state department, to the loy henderson conference room, particularly those of you who are representing countries from around the world, the private sector, civil society, academia, as well as many, many people joining us online via livestream through state.gov. and i hope many more people will join us over the course of the next two days.
6:22 pm
as many of you know, convening a conference like this has been a priority of mine for some period of time. i really started thinking about this when i was still in the senate and we wanted to try to pull it together. and then last year we did, and as you know, we had a political moment here in washington -- that's polite diplomatic-ese -- which prevented us from going forward at that time. but candidly, i think it's worked for the better because it gave us more time to think about how to make this conference perhaps even more effective and how to maximize what we're doing here. a commitment to protecting the ocean, which we all share, has really been a priority of mine for a long time, as cathy mentioned a moment ago, literally from the time i was growing up as a child in massachusetts when i first dipped my toes into the mud off
6:23 pm
woods hole oceanographic in that area of buzzards bay and the cape and was introduced to clamming and to fishing and all of those great joys of the ocean. i have had this enormous love and respect for what the ocean means to us. i went into the navy partly through that, and i had the pleasure of crossing the pacific both ways on a ship and passing through many different parts of the pacific ocean region. it's sort of in my dna. my mother's family was involved way, way, way back in the early days of trade through the oceans. and indeed my father was a passionate sailor who, in his retirement, found a way to sail across the ocean several times. so i learned very early on to appreciate this vast expanse of
6:24 pm
the ocean, so vast that 3/4 of our planet is really ocean. someone might have called our planet ocean, not earth, if it was based on that, but obviously it is not. stewardship of our ocean is not a one-person event. it's a nation event, it's a country event, it's a universal requirement all across this planet. and i tried very hard when i was in the senate as chairman of the senate oceans and fisheries subcommittee where we rewrote our magnuson fishery laws on several different occasions, created the stellwagen bank sanctuary, the coastal zone management act, enforcement, flood insurance, rethinking it -- all these things that have to do with development and runoff and non-point source pollution and all of the things that concern us as we come here today. and that is the concern that i bring to this effort as secretary of state now. the reason for that is really
6:25 pm
very, very simple. and for anyone who questions why are we here when there are so many areas of conflict and so many issues of vital concern as there are -- and regrettably, because of that, i will not be at every part of this conference because we have much to do with respect to iraq and other emergencies that we face. but no one should mistake that the protection of our oceans is a vital international security issue. it's a vital security issue involving the movement of people, the livelihood of people, the capacity of people to exist and live where they live today. the ocean today supports the livelihoods of up to 12% of the world's population. but it is also essential to maintaining the environment in which we all live. it's responsible for recycling
6:26 pm
things like water, carbon, nutrients throughout our planet, throughout the ecosystem -- "system" is an important word -- so that we have air to breathe, water to drink. and it is home to literally millions of species. protecting our ocean is also a great necessity for global food security, given that more than 3 billion people -- 50% of the people on this planet -- in every corner of the world depend on fish as a significant source of protein. the connection between a healthy ocean and life itself for every single person on earth cannot be overstated. and we will hear from scientists who will talk about that relationship in the course of the next hours and days. the fact is we as human beings share nothing so completely as the ocean that covers nearly
6:27 pm
3/4 of our planet. and i remember the first time i really grasped that notion. it was in the early 1970's when the first color pictures of earth from space were released, the famous blue marble photographs. and when you look at those images, you don't see borders or markers separating one nation from another. you just see big masses of green and sometimes brown surrounded by blue. for me, that image shaped the realization that what has become cliched and perhaps even taken for granted -- not perhaps, is taken for granted -- is the degree to which we all share one planet, one ocean. and because we share nothing so completely as our ocean, each of us also shares the
6:28 pm
responsibility to protect it. and you can look at any scripture of any religion, any life philosophy, and you will draw from it that sense of responsibility. i think most people want their children and their grandchildren to benefit from a healthy ocean the same way that we've been privileged to. and they want to do their part to be able to ensure that that is the case. but here's the problem -- when anybody looks out at the ocean -- we're all sort of guilty of it one time or another -- when you stand on a beach and you look out at the tide rolling in, you feel somehow that the ocean is larger than life, that it's an endless resource impossible to destroy. so most people underestimate the enormous damage that we as human beings are inflicting on our ocean every single day. when people order seafood from a
6:29 pm
restaurant, most of the time they don't realize that a third of the world's fish stocks are overexploited, too much money chasing too few fish, and nearly all the rest are being fished at or near their absolute maximum sustainable level on a level on planet that has 6 billion people and will rise to 9 billion over the next 30, 40, 50 years. most people aren't aware of something called bycatch, where up to 1/2 or 2/3 of the fish in a particular catch are not actually what the fisher was looking for and they're simply thrown overboard. and when people go swimming or surfing along the coast, often they don't realize that pollution has led to more than 500 dead zones in the ocean, areas where life simply cannot exist, and that together those dead zones add up to an area roughly the size of the state of michigan here in the united states. when people walk through an
6:30 pm
aquarium and they see and learn about the marine world, they usually don't realize that because of climate change, the basic chemistry of our ocean is changing faster than it has ever changed in the history of the planet. and if it continues much longer, a significant chunk of marine life may simply die out because it can no longer live, no longer survive in the ocean's waters. the bottom line is that most people don't realize that if the entire world doesn't come together to try to change course and protect the ocean from unsustainable fishing practices, unprecedented pollution, or the devastating effects of climate change, then we run the risk of fundamentally breaking entire ecosystems. and as you'll hear throughout the course of this conference, that will translate into a
6:31 pm
serious consequence for the health and the economies and the future of all of us. the good news is that at this point we know what we need to do to address the threats facing the ocean. it's not a mystery. it's not beyond our capacity. everyone in this room is aware of the effective steps that people are taking already, both large and small around the world. in latin america, ngo's like paso pacifico are helping fishers to improve their sustainability by engaging those fishers both in monitoring their catches and in the process of selecting new marine-protected areas. in africa, local volunteers -- volunteers -- take it on themselves to collect the trash that floods from the streets to the beaches during the periods of intense rain. there's an amazing group of
6:32 pm
volunteers in guinea who call themselves "les sacs bleus" after the blue trash bags that they use to collect the garbage, an incredible self-spontaneous combustion effort to be responsible. in the asia pacific, half a dozen nations have come together with u.s. support to protect the coral triangle, a part of the ocean that has been called the amazon of the seas because of its incredible biodiversity. the coral triangle initiative has led to improved management of a marine area that's almost the size of one of our states, north dakota, and it has inspired more than 90 policies, regulations, laws, and agreements to protect the local coastal and marine resources. here in the united states, we have taken very significant strides to end overfishing in u.s. fisheries.
6:33 pm
we've rebuilt a record number of fish stocks back from depleted levels, and at the same time promoted and increased the economic viability of our fisheries, trying hard to actually give meaning to the word "sustainable fisheries." these are just a few examples of a great deal of work that you're all familiar with, that many of you have created that is taking place around the world. but so far, all of these efforts have only been applied on a relatively small scale and only applied in one region or another. if we want to honor -- if we are going to be able to honor our shared responsibility to protect the ocean, the ad hoc approach we have today with each nation and community pursuing its own independent policy simply will not suffice.
6:34 pm
that is not how the ocean works. we're not going to meet this challenge unless the community of nations comes together around a single, comprehensive, global ocean strategy. that is the only way that we can clean up our ocean today and make sure that it remains what it needs to be for generations to come. that is what this conference is all about. over the past few years, even over the past few months, there have been an encouraging number of reports, summits, meetings, even conventions convened to examine the various threats of our ocean and -- are facing and potential ways to address those threats. and many of you here have been part of those meetings. i hope you have found them as valuable as we have. they've been instructive and
6:35 pm
they're critical, but now is the time for us to build on this groundwork of these past years. now is the time to build on the knowledge-base that we have created through these meetings, and that is why we have invited you here now, not just to have an important conversation, but to reach important conclusions, to try to put together a plan of action. i want us to walk away from this conference with more than ideas. i want us to walk away from here with a plan, a plan that puts an end to overfishing through new rules based on the best available science. and may i add one of the things that ted stevens -- senator ted stevens of alaska who teamed up with me on the commerce committee in the senate -- one of the things we always were fighting was getting more, better science so that we could
6:36 pm
convince fishermen and convince countries, governments of the imperative of making decisions. too often we hear, "well, we don't really see that," or, "we don't really feel that," or i'd hear from captains of the boats, "when i go out and fish, i see plenty of stocks out there. there's no reason to be restricted." we need science, and globally we could put our heads together and our governments together and come up with both the budget and the capacity to be able to do what we need to be able to help convince people of the urgency of this. we need a plan that requires fisheries to use gear and techniques that dramatically reduce the amount of fish and other species that are caught by accident and discarded. a plan that ends subsidies to fisheries, which only serves to promote overfishing. a plan that makes it near impossible for illegally-caught fish to actually come to the market anywhere, whether you're
6:37 pm
in boston or beijing or barcelona or brasilia or any other city that doesn't begin with a b. let's develop a plan that protects more marine habitats, and we will have an announcement regarding that. i believe president obama will make such an announcement. today, less than 2 percent of our ocean is considered a marine protected area, where there are some restrictions on human activity in order to prevent contaminating the ecosystem, less than 2 percent of the entire ocean. there isn't anybody here who doesn't believe we can't do better than that. so let's start by finding a way to perhaps bring that number up to 10 percent or more as soon as possible. and let's develop a plan that does more to reduce the flow of plastic and other debris from entering into the ocean. everybody's seen that massive array of garbage in the pacific and elsewhere.
6:38 pm
we need a plan that helps cut down the nutrient pollution, that runs off of land and is miles from the shore, and that contributes to the dead zones that i mentioned earlier. i learned about that back when i was running for president out in iowa and minnesota and the mississippi and missouri rivers, and you learn about the flow of these nutrients that go down the mississippi out into the gulf, and we have a great, big dead zone as a result. we need to develop a plan that gives us a better understanding of the acidification effect that carbon pollution is having on our ocean, that we know that in the antarctic, for instance, there was a regurgitation of carbon dioxide. have we reached a saturation point? i don't know. but i know that it's a question that is critical to our capacity to deal with climate change and to maintain the oceans. we ought to be able to know where it's happening, how quickly it's happening so we can find the best way to slow it down. and we need to push harder, all of us, for a un agreement to
6:39 pm
fight carbon pollution in the first place because the science proves that's the only way we'll have a chance of reducing the impact of climate change, which is one of the greatest threats facing not just our ocean, but our entire planet. finally we need to develop a plan that not only lays out the policies we need to protect our ocean, but that also considers how we are going to enforce those policies on a global scale. because without enforcement, any plan we create will only take us so far. i think it was back in the 1990's, if i recall correctly, that ted stevens and i joined forces to take driftnet fishing to the united states. and we had become aware of literally tens of thousands of miles of monofilament netting that was dragged behind a boat that would literally strip-mine
6:40 pm
the ocean with vast proportions of the catch thrown away and clearly not sustainable. so senator stevens and i managed to go to the un. ultimately it was banned by the un. but guess what? there are still some rogue vessels using driftnets to strip-mine the ocean because they get more money, it's faster, and there's nobody out there to enforce out -- no one out there to enforce it. so we need to change this. that's our charge here, all of us. over the next two days, let's put our heads together and work on a plan for how we can preserve fish stocks, manage coastlines, and protect ecosystems, a way for us to try to preserve fisheries, a way for us to come to a common understanding of our common interests and find a consensus that we could take to the un --
6:41 pm
take this plan to the un, take it to other international organizations. all of us begin talking the same language off the same page about the same objective, and if we make this a plan that all countries must follow by helping all of them to understand that no country can afford not to, whether you're on the ocean or not on the ocean. i know all of this sounds pretty ambitious. it's meant to be. i know that some of you are probably thinking, "well, what did i get myself into here?" but look around the room. every one of you is here for a reason. we have government leaders from around the world at the highest levels, including three heads of state. we have experts from international organizations, world bank president jim yong kim, others. we have private sector leaders who are committed to our ocean'' future, people like chris lischewski from bumble bee foods.
6:42 pm
the best ocean scientists in the world are here. all of us can come together and each can help the other to ensure that every solution that we discuss is directly tied to the best science available. and ask yourself -- if this group can't create a serious plan to protect the ocean for future generations, then who can and who will? we cannot afford to put this global challenge on hold for another day. it's our ocean. it's our responsibility. so i hope that over these next two days, we will maximize the time we are here. i am really delighted that you all came to be part of this. and i hope this will be a new beginning, a new effort to unify and to create a concerted pressure which is necessary to make a difference. of the international
6:43 pm
monetary fund, christine lagarde , said today that the u.s. economy is growing slower than expected. here is a look at some of her comments. >> madam director, in the downward revision for growth in 2014, it looks like the weather played a big role. what does that tell us about the ofbility and the resilience the u.s. economy given that outside impact? >> i think it says two things. q1 is we believe that this result was a temporary occurrence. with temporary outcomes that will be mitigated by stronger q3,th going forward in q2, and hopefully ongoing. noted,, as you will have
6:44 pm
we have revised down our forecast for growth trends in the united states to 2%. so we are facing this aging population issue. we are facing this relatively low productivity issue, which is why we are recommending various long-term policy reforms to address aging and productivity. but it tells us another thing, which is that extreme weather occurrences have a serious effect on the economy. occurrenceseather much moreted frequently in the last 20 years than they have in the previous century. i think that is a valid reason changeer about climate
6:45 pm
and how to deal with it. definitely one of the top recommendations that we put in this report, dealing with carbon tax. >> thank you very much, madam lagardere -- lagarde. >> the wall street journal reports that the iraq government lost control of another city to the extremists. they defeated one of iraq's top generals, undermining the fragility of the government and raising questions. and your message to congress on iraq. you can offer your thoughts on facebook. promised to end that war by giving the date of our pullout."
6:46 pm
wanda wrote -- >> cable in the 1990's did have over 90% of the market. today, the cable industry has around 50%. so the business is mature. you have to lower costs, keep your margins good, or find new sources of revenue. they are testing both of those things. on the revenue side, looking for new ways to delight old consumers. if you look at comcast, if you can make the video-on-demand more attractive, easier to use, the interface is more web-like and delightful. number one, do not lose what you have. you also see them taking advantage of broadband.
6:47 pm
of new a blessed source business opportunity for our industry. it is growing much faster. market. has a huge it has good economics and it is a good business. >> the rapid change in telecommunications, technology advances, and the future of the cable industry with michael 8:00 p.m.ight at eastern on "the communicators" on c-span 2. >> according to the associated press, the united nations has failed to pursue trafficking allegations against u.n. workers. former officials spoke at the heritage foundation today in a discussion about the allegations. this is one hour and 10 minutes.
6:48 pm
>> good afternoon. in the auditorium, we welcome those joining us on our heritage.org website and those joining us today via c-span. we would ask everyone here in the house to make sure their cell phones have been called off as a beginning courtesy to our program and we'll post the program on our heritage home page for everyone's future reference. hosting our discussion today is brett shafer, r.j.k. research fellow in the international regulatory affairs, part of the margaret thatcher center for freedom. he analyzes a range of foreign policy issues focusing primarily on the united nations and affiliated funds and programs and frequently speaks and publishes issues related on the world body and its activities. in 2009, he edited the book "conundrum, the search for alternatives" which features several experts examining an array
6:49 pm
of international activities and responsibilities conducted by the u.n. he is a frequent visitor to the sub-saharan africa as well and has written extensively on economic development, peace and security issues in that region. he first joined us here at heritage in 1995 from march 2003 to 2004 he worked at the pentagon as an assistant for international criminal court policy before returning here to heritage. please join me in welcoming brett schaefer. brett? [applause] >> good afternoon. welcome to the heritage foundation. as we noted on the flyer, in recent years, there have been a number of various stories, reports, and other sources revealing a troubling number of scandals, mishaps, misappropriations by the united nations and its affiliated organizations, and i'll go through a few of them to give you a sense for what we've seen. earlier this year the associated press reported the united
6:50 pm
nations office of internal oversight services failed to pursue cases of corruption over the last five years, including major cases inherited from the procurement task force that was disbanded in 2008. over the past few years, francis scurry, director of wipo, have been accused of overtly authorizing the transfer of dual use technology to iran and north korea and acting illegally in an effort to identify the author of anonymous letters accusing of sexual harassment and improprieties and was recently elected to be general director of wipo. in late 2013 the u.n. dispute tribunal ruled two missile blowers retaliated against for exposing evidence tampering by a top u.n. official charged with investigating corruption were themselves retaliated against and -- by that top official who was their superior.
6:51 pm
the former spokesperson for the u.n. mission in darfur recently revealed in an interview to "foreign policy magazine" the u.n. has routinely denied, concealed, or refused to report evidence that attacks on civilians in order to make the situation in darfur appear more -- to appear better or more stable than it actually it. all this happened while u.s. secretary-general ban ki-moon repeatedly said his goal is to make the u.n. more accountable and effective. today we have three speakers, two in person and one that, unfortunately, is going to have to appear via skype due to personal reasons. and each of them have come at the issue of transparency and accountability in the united nations from a different perspective. first we have edward patrick flaherty, an american lawyer and senior partner in a swiss law firm of schwab, flaherty and
6:52 pm
associates in geneva and focuses on representing whistle blowers, staff members and third party working for or injured by international organizations such as the u.n., wipo, the world health organization and international labor organization, james wasserstrom is a u.s. diplomat that serves as a anti-corruption embassy in kabul, afghanistan. when assigned to the u.s.a. peacekeeping program in cose, -- kosovo, he blew the whistle on a conspiracy to pay $500 million in kickbacks to senior kosovo officials. he identified the process for dealing with whistle blower retaliation first hand and can offer insights to its strengths and peculiarities and how it compares to the u.s. in similar procedures. finally, roger appleton was an attorney with the u.s. department of justice before being asked to serve as deputy chief legal council for the independent inquiry committee for investigation to the u.n. for oil food scandal. his distinguished service in
6:53 pm
that role led to him being named the chairman of the u.n. security task force charged for investigating fraud in the u.s. peacekeeping operations. until earlier this year, bob was director of investigations and senior legal counsel for the global fund. he recently joined dave pitney l.l.p. as a partner and due to unexpected events, as i mentioned earlier, he'll be appearing by skype. following presentation, we'll have time for a few questions and answers from the audience. and before we begin, i also want to note we invited the u.n. to provide a panelist for this event. unfortunately, they were not able to provide one. so without any further adieu, ed, would you lead us off here? >> sure. thank you. welcome, everyone. thanks, brett. i just want to thank you and the heritage foundation for inviting me today. i followed brett's work from afar for a long time, as with james and bob, and i feel a bit like the piper here given the distinguished backgrounds of the
6:54 pm
two other panelists, i'm just a toiling lawyer trying to help some people in the field. but unlike jim and bob, i also never worked for the u.n. i did try to get a job when i first moved to geneva 20 years ago and after i had a lunch with the i.l.o. legal advisor, he told me if i was 10 years younger, he might have hired me. of course i was only 35 at the time but that was a bit of the problem, i think. the international labor office is not supposed to discriminate on the basis of age but what they often say is that a lot of their standards don't apply to them or any of the other international organizations, which is also part of the problem. but as brett said, i represented a number of staff members and staff associations during the 20 years i've been in geneva and brought a number of cases, both internally and also in u.s. courts and the european court of human rights. one of several of my more notable cases was the case of cynthia berzak vs. lubbers and others,
6:55 pm
he was the high commissioner of refugees in geneva who was accused of sexually assaulting ms. berzak. the case was investigated by iois, the u.n. internal investigation office and they found her reports credible but kofi annan decided it wasn't credible for some unknown reason and put the report in the trash bucket and never sent it to ms. berzak and exonerated mr. lubbers. she came to me because really had no remedy in the internal system, nor could we really bring any case in geneva. the assault happened in geneva, by the way. so we then tried to bring a case in u.s. federal district court and we did bring the case and was dismissed because of the immunity of u.n. and went to the second circuit and challenged the immunity of the u.n. as
6:56 pm
unconstitutional. unfortunately, although we did get argument didn't get very much consideration in the decision but i still personally believe that the immunity of international organizations and the u.n. is unconstitutional in u.s. law and think eventually it will be overturned, whether hopefully in my lifetime or my client's lifetime but that remains to be seen. i'm also working on -- well, i'm preparing an amicus brief for a case now brought in manhattan brought by a number of haitian survivors and victims of a cholera epidemic, where the cholera was allegedly introduced into haiti after the earthquake by u.n. peacekeepers which caused approximate 8,000 deaths and 750,000 illnesses or sickness. people were hospitalized and whatnot. the u.n. has refused to impanel the dispute resolution body
6:57 pm
which is set up in the general convention on privileged and immunities and so the haitians have been left to bring an action in u.s. district court. so i'm right now the case is at the district court level. the u.n. has challenged the case on the basis of the immunity. i expect the case will be dismissed and then it will be appealed presumably to the second circuit and i will probably be writing an amicus for several years ago i founded an n.g.o. called the center for accountability of international organizations in geneva and on behalf of that n.g.o., or presuming that the case is dismissed, which based on the jurisprudence of u.s. law to this point, i think will probably happen. brett asked me to just open briefly about what some of the problems are for u.n. staff members, whistle blowers and
6:58 pm
whatnot. as a practitioner, the big problem is you have a system of immunity where the international organizations are not subject to local laws at all, whether you're sitting in new york or geneva, nairobi, anywhere, doesn't matter. you're subject only to the u.n. internal rules and regulations and that obviously creates a problem, particularly if you have criminal activity because the u.n. doesn't have any criminal code. so if in the case of lubbers, a staff member, high commissioner of refugees commits an alleged criminal act, the only recourse of the victim is either internally or to try to go to the local courts, but then because of the immunity, it has to be lifted by, in this case, it would have been by the secretary-general. but that very rarely happens. so what you have is you have a case of -- with the internal system, this internal justice system set up in all these international organizations, the
6:59 pm
defendant is also the judge in a sense. they run it, they fund it and create the rules. so it's not a very fair system, as many have said, there's absolutely no accordion of arms whatsoever in this system. so you have perverse outcomes. what's happened recently in many of my cases, i mostly litigate before the u.n. appeals tribunal which deals with most of the u.n. organizations, the u.n. proper, and then the international abor office administrative and often you bring a case on behalf of a whistle blower or a disgruntled staff member, injured staff member, injured third party, and you win on the merits, whether it's an employment case or whether it's an injury case, but you then get pending damages.
7:00 pm
and you have no other recourse. that's the problem. what i tried to do more recently is challenge the u.n.'s immunity before the european court of human rights. and actually, there seems to be more room for potential success there than i've had in the u.s. courts because in a more recent case, the european court found that a employee of the kuwaiti embassy in paris who had been fired and then tried to sue in the local labor courts in paris and had his claim denied because of the sovereign immunity of kuwait, the european court found he could in fact bring his claim. because he was not performing any sovereign functions, that they couldn't deny him his civil rights to bring his employment claim. now, in the united states, in
7:01 pm
the u.s. courts, the u.s. courts have viewed employment matters as protected by the sovereign immunity. so i think there is some room, some potential to use that case by analogy for staff members who work for international organizations, at least within the jurisdiction of the european court which covers some 37 to 38 european countries, including russia and ukraine, that they in fact may apply that and we might be able to get around the immunity in hose courts. what the problem is you have is no one guarding the guardians, the proverbial problem of who is going to be in charge, who is providing the oversight. in theory, it's the diplomats. it's the member states that are supposed to be providing the oversight and accountability for the organizations, but diplomats make terrible overseers. in geneva particularly, in many international organizations, the children, spouses,
7:02 pm
relatives of ambassadors have been hired as interns or staff members or consultants by these international organizations and in fact, many ambassadors after they finish their term then go to work for these international organizations. this also creates obviously a clear conflict of interest. no one wants to upset the apple cart and they foresee when i'm done with my ambassadorial career i can go work for the u.n. somewhere so i don't want to change anything that might make me the skunk at the garden party. this also happens, i find also quite a revolving door between state department, foreign ministry officials who again are there to be the overseers of the organizations but ltimately end up working for the organizations. so there really is -- there is no effective oversight, and the internal legal systems, and this is what jim can speak to in much greater detail about his own experience, just provide no real justice because
7:03 pm
it's a system that's set up by the defendant, it's controlled by the defendant, run by the defendant. so i find that very, very difficult. occasionally you do get a win for a client but for the most part, statistically, just for example, the i.l.o. administrative tribunal staff members win less than 30% of the time. so it's not a very effective system. there's no effective system of discovery. as a lawyer, you want to have -- i mean, you're dealing in administrative law, many things are done on paper. and to prove your case, you want to see the documents, you want to see communications. to get those document is virtually impossible. it's worse than pulling teeth. and whenever i ask for -- in every judgment i ever get, particularly from the iloat, they always admonish me for my fishing expeditions because i'm asking for documents that are pertinent but they still continue to claim that well, you know, if you don't have the documents, you haven't proven your case so that's the end of it.
7:04 pm
just very quickly, what can be one? i think the immunity in my view is the major problem. there are times when the u.n. and other coercions should have the immunity. if they're in congo in a war zone, no doubt about it. but in terms of claims that arise in new york or geneva or vienna, there's no need for it and they're developing countries can functional legal systems that more than adequately can address many of the claims that arise in these organizations, whether it's sexual assault or sexual harassment or termination, things of that nature. how that will happen is many different ways. the problem is the now the u.n. immunity arises out of the organization promulgated in 1945 and ratified by the u.s.
7:05 pm
senate in 1971, i think. so in one way it gives the u.n., i should say, absolute immunity and that was the issue in the lubbers case where we tried to attack the action saying how can sexual assault be a part of the mandate of the u.n. high commission for efugees? and the judge in the second circuit very plainly said i agree with you, but look at this convention? it's absolute. there's nothing we can do. so there are several ways to address it. one is perhaps applying the torte and commercial protections of the foreign sovereign immunities act which applies only to sovereign countries right now to the u.n. where there are specific exceptions to sovereign immunity, country immunity if you're engaged in government activity and commit a torte and something to do with real estate.
7:06 pm
the other is simply, at least in the u.s., we obviously can't do this worldwide but to make the immunity of the u.n. and other international organizations an affirmative defense where instead of being an absolute bar to any claim, that instead if the immunity is applicable and appropriate, you can raise it as an affirmative defense and the judge at that oint should dismiss. right now you never get to discovery, you never get to the heart of the matter in a case brought in the u.s. court in many courts nationwide because you filed the claim and the u.n. says we have absolute immunity, judge, dismiss the case and the judges do that because that's what the urisprudence says. two other very quick solutions i have, one is to promulgate a u.n. fraud claims act similar to the federal flawed claims act which is the federal flawed claims act turns individual whistle blowers into private attorneys general where they can bring actions on behalf of international -- on behalf of the federal government to recover fraudulent obtained funds.
7:07 pm
i think there's room for something like that in the u.n. another important thing would be a freedom of information act for the u.n. right now getting information out of the u.n., as i said, is worse than pulling teeth. and how do you enforce those? one way to do it is to set up a special tribunal that assuming you keep the immunity in place, which if you can't get rid of the immunity, this is an alternative and is any award made to the tribunal pursuant to the u.n. fraud claims act or freedom of information act is to reduce any of those awards from the amounts that have been allocated by congress to the u.n. which i think brett recently wrote something saying the direction assessles are $4 billion a year where i think the -- all u.n. is double that at least.
7:08 pm
that's another aspect. so i can go on. you can ask me to tell war stories and it's hard to shut him up. but i think that sort of gives a general overview of what the problem is. for me it really is the immunity. and today in the 21st century, here's no reason for the u.n. and other international organizations to enjoy an absolute immunity that sort of harkens back to the day of kings and queens. you know, no government today enjoys absolute immunity. the prevailing theory in international discourse is a restricted theory of immunity, except with the u.n. so i think you have to address that at the root of it. only then can you have effective oversight and accountability of these organizations, and as i said, the diplomats haven't done it and never will be able to do it. it's up to people like jim and bob when he worked at oios to
7:09 pm
try to bring these organizations to heal and to bring them into the 21st century. thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> well, it's hard to follow indict and learned ewe tation by -- air indict and learned presentation by someone who doesn't have that kind of learning. but as you know, my name is jim wassertrom. i'm a u.n. whistle blower in the flesh. what i'm about to talk about has absolutely nothing to do with my current position or the u.s. government or the u.s. government's position or vis-a-vis the u.n. this is my personal experience, not my personal tale. i worked for the u.n. for 28 years.
7:10 pm
and for the last six of those, i was attached to the u.n. peacekeeping operation in kosovo. and part of my responsibilities at the time was oversight of the public utilities. and in the course of my duties, i discovered that -- well, there's an allegation that my colleagues in the u.n., as well as some of the senior ministers in the kosovo government were up to no good and were in the process of just fixing a bid that might have generated a $500 million kickback. i tried to confirm it and i couldn't. i turned it over to the inspector general of the u.n. at the time, and she and i agreed that i would cooperate in an undercover investigation, which we did for several months. in the meantime, my colleagues found out about my cooperation with oios and they engaged in egregious retaliation, and they trumped
7:11 pm
up charges against me. since we were administering a province at the time, they controlled the police justice system. so they -- on a weekend after i'd been accused of all kinds of wrongdoing and i was defending myself in higher circles of the u.n. operation there, they blocked me from leaving. they arrested me at the port and brought me back to my apartment and did an illegal search of my apartment, confiscated materials and in the end i was put under investigation for a year. there were in actual fact five investigations that went on simultaneously. three against me criminally or administratively. one was an investigation that i was working on with the -- with o.i.o.s. and one was an investigation that i asked for and was granted on retaliation because i viewed all this as retaliation.
7:12 pm
so after a year i was cleared of any wrongdoing, and the investigation that i had cooperated in, the report vanished. we don't know what happened to it. never saw the outcome. and for me personally, the retaliation investigation -- the investigators at iois came back with a finding that there was absolutely no retaliation involved. despite the fact that, yes, i was arrested and yes, there was an illegal search and cease -- seizure and all the things that i said happened, had in fact happened. there was no retaliation. this was random act by rogue actors. i found that, of course, further retaliation. so in 2008, my sole practitioner attorney, in manhattan and i filed a claim in the tribunal and was one of the first whistle blowers to take the ethics office that was responsible for protecting me and i felt had done a horrendous job in protecting
7:13 pm
me, took them to the u.n. district tribunal. and after four years and the u.n. ignoring six orders of the court to turn over documents which goes to ed's point about the lack of access of information in the u.n. system, so this was their own tribunal ordering the secretary-general to turn over documents on six occasions, and he didn't do o. eventually a judge turned the documents over to my attorney and me and in my view, those documents supported my claim. so in 2012, the dispute tribunal in new york ruled in my favor. that was a very important victory for me personally. and i think for other whistle blowers because it was the first case of a whistle blower actually winning in the u.n. dispute tribunal courtroom. the judge in the case decided he would separate the liability
7:14 pm
judgment from the damages judgment, so in this case he found egregious and appalling behavior of the secretary-general and a variety of other actors. all of this is a matter of public record now. and he decided to have a separate trial on damages at a later date. but after several months, the judge changed his mind and decided not to have a separate trial and he said he had sufficient evidence. and we provided evidence of the damages i had suffered, and in 2013, he issued a judgment which gave me roughly 2% of my stimated losses. those losses were calculated by professionals, not by me, and they were uncontested by the u.n. so in the face of absolutely no contraverting evidence, nothing to contradict put forward, the judge decided this was only 2% of what i had estimated. he essentially knocked out anything that had to do with my
7:15 pm
losses in terms of finances and award for small amount in what they call moral injury which is a catch-all phrase for stress and damage to reputation and efamation and so on. during this period, the u.n. was continuing to defame me. they had violated their own rules and procedures on not speaking publicly about ongoing investigations but they did o. and in the end, i got this very, very small award. and the point in all of this to me, and i want to be very clear about that, was never about compensation. this was always about truth and justice. and i know that may sound cliche or somehow corny, but that is what it really was for
7:16 pm
me. i was violated. my career was irreparably damaged. my name was blasted out in dozens of countries as a corrupt u.n. official caught while attempting to flee for a couple years and the u.n. supported that. quietly or maybe not so quietly. and to have that very small award was a terrible message to send to other whistle blowers who might want to come forward and that's really what it became for me was why would anyone come forward to suffer what i had suffered if in the end you don't get truth and you don't get justice. so we decided to appeal this judgment and to ask for intervention by the u.s. government to put pressure on the u.n. and earlier this year in january, with the support of congress, the 2014 consolidated appropriations bill was signed y the president.
7:17 pm
nd in that there is a section, 7048 a-1-b, that i do know, in which there is a -- which refers specifically to transparency and accountability in u.n. agencies, and it requires that each and every u.n. agency adhere to whistle blower best practices. now, there may be some debate as to what those are. i don't think there is any debate really, but maybe one could argue it. but we very specifically put in five provisions, five very pointed enumerated best practices. and i refer to only a few here. please feel free to look it up hould you be interested. one is that the u.n. must have -- the u.n. staff who are whistle blowers must have access to independent djudication.
7:18 pm
external -- some sort of body that isn't controlled by the secretary-general. secondly, that whistle blowers should -- victims -- whistle blowers who are victims of proven retaliation should have the consequences that retaliation completely mitigated for direct or indirect or future consequences f their whistle blowing. in other words, we shouldn't suffer any consequences for whistle blowing and being victims of proven retaliation, direct or indirect or for those in the future. and the third, i think this is very important, is that those who engage in retaliation should suffer some consequences. because in my case, there were no consequences for anybody but me. all of those who engaged in retaliation and who were named in various reports went on to have great lives with no impact on them, so i was the only one
7:19 pm
who suffered any onsequences. so those are three of the areas that are highlighted in this section of u.s. law. my view on what's wrong in the u.n. system, having been one of them for 28 years, the accountability institutions of the u.n., there are three of them essentially. there's the ethics office which is the guardian of the faith when it comes to us whistle blower protection, there's the office of internal oversight services, oios, which is the inspector general and the third is the justice system. is broken some some way. for the ethics office, if we just look at the evidence, the numbers, and i get these from the government accountability project which is representing me in terms of advocacy here in
7:20 pm
washington and elsewhere, and we have the present of the g.a.p. in the audience today. there have been, since the establishment of the ethics office in 2006, as i -- until at least 2013, there have been more than 300 whistle blowers, or those who have inquired about whistle blowing, have come forward to the ethics office. of those, the ethics office reviewed 99 and found retaliation in only two cases. two. mine is not one of those two. they turned down my case of retaliation. but that's an astonishingly low percentage. .2% or .5% depending on your denominator. but it's a very, very low percentage. this is a shame, profoundly.
7:21 pm
second, in oios, there are cases of -- that ed has referred to and brett has referred to that indicate witness tampering, evidence tampering, lack of commitment to getting their job done, free of political interference because clearly there is political interference. i won't get into the details of what we discovered in terms of the evidence in my case that they used to say there was no retaliation but when we looked at it, it was absolutely clear they chose to set aside evidence they had in their possession to find there was no retaliation and i don't know he explanation for that. third is the justice system. as ed has mentioned, they are not independent. we would like them to be. and there are some very, very courageous judges on both the dispute tribunal and the appeals tribunal, and -- but they have complained about tampering with the statute, the
7:22 pm
organic statute, the statute which defines their domain as well as the limits to how their case law can be applied to expanding the statute for whistle blower protection. so that is harmful to whistle blower protection. in my own case , we will be have our appeal heard at vienna in the u.n. appeals tribunal on hursday. i will be going, and ed has provided me with much discouragement this morning, as have many others, but i am not iscouraged, again, because i am here for the pursuit of -- i feel i've got the truth out. i think people now feel they understand what happened, that i was not a corrupt official fleeing my alleged wrongdoing but in fact i was blowing the
7:23 pm
whistle of wrongdoing of my senior colleagues and kosovo officials. and the final judgment in my case, we have been told, will be rendered in oral pronouncement eight days later on june 27. so at long last, more than seven years after all this happened, i may be at the end of this long and winding and very tortured road, which i don't believe will be the end, because i think with the new u.s. law in place now, which, as i mentioned, required each and every u.n. agency to adhere to whistle blower best practices, or face an automatic withholding of 15% of their u.s. contribution, and that is substantial amount of money in ost cases. the u.n. is under pressure to change its ways.
7:24 pm
and as far as ed's point about immunity, i would add to that, and i know this because i was once one of them in the culture of impunity, so it's both immunity and impunity and has a nice ring to it but actually is the case that people at the top don't feel any real commitment to cleaning up internal corruption to protecting whistle blowers, to reform, which we hear about over and over again in the u.n. system, so that is a grieveous shortcoming. and one of my suggestions would be to have some sort of external body that is as independent as one can get with funding and staffing, which is independent of u.n. mechanisms but which has some sort of authority to make binding judgments on those in the secretariat.
7:25 pm
i don't know how it can be done and shrink from the task of trying to take away immunity. i admire those who are pursuing it. because i think it is definitely unwanted in many cases. - unwarranted in many cases. but assuming that remains in place, these are -- this is one idea and i'm not a big fan of the u.n. ethics office. i think with that track record of two out of more than 300 that have come forward and the number keeps growing but the number of those approved as whistle blowers who have proven their case of retaliation remains more or less the ame. i think something must be done with the ethics office, perhaps ven getting rid of it. so with that, thanks, brett, and thank you all for coming and inviting me today. [applause]
7:26 pm
>> and bob, we're ready for you whenever you're ready. >> good afternoon. can you hear me? >> we can, though maybe we can get the volume up a little bit higher. >> ok. i was having a little bit of trouble in the last week or so, i hope i won't cover too much of the same ground. first i'd like to thank you, brett, very much for the opportunity to present here today. obviously it's a critical issue, critically important issues and of paramount. it's a testament you're keeping these issues at the forefront and it's so important. i think my remark would be that i would echo the sentiments and completely agree with just about everything the two previous speakers have alluded to, and i think i'm going to go over the same areas that were being raised and hope i won't be too repetitive but i think it's worth emphasizing what it is that's deficient in these
7:27 pm
different pieces to the u.n. administration of justice. but again, just to emphasize what was said, i think one of the major problems here is the privileges of immunities that have been granted to the u.n. as a way those p.i.'s have been interpreted by the organization. and i agree, i think maybe there's a misinterpretation of the expansiveness and the reach of privileges and immunities and it's causing wreaks of havoc that ripple throughout the administration of justice n the u.n. i would also offer that that hurts the lack of a true immunity function and framework urts accountability. and what you're seeing are examples, especially what you
7:28 pm
identified, a series of instances which demonstrate lack of accountability which, quite frankly, are really something that is nacceptable. you know, when i first came into the u.n., i first came in with the putin investigation with the welker panel and was tasked with my group leading the investigation of the secretary-general at the time and his son, and the committee was an independent entity which was not bound by the rules of the u.n. and was able to do a little bit more of an independent investigation, i think, had an opportunity to be a little bit more accurate, horough, and relevant. after that when i became chairman of the task force, it was an offshoot and it was within -- excuse me. we operated within the u.n. system and the u.n. rules and
7:29 pm
oios' rules and the dynamic hanged considerably. and what we saw develop was -- if you didn't know any better, you thought the world was upside down because the investigator became the subject, and the subject became he victim. and so many cases, in one case we proved very clearly that a procurement official had steered over $100 million in contracts to a telecommunications firm that hailed from the same country hat he was from. the case was pretty well done. the evidence was very solid. it was referred to the national authorities in the southern district in the u.s. who prosecuted the case, and had convicted the staff member of fraud and unlawful steering of contracts and illegal
7:30 pm
gratuities and got 8 1/2 years in jail for that. now, i think as was pointed out earlier in the conversation, in order for a criminal case to work, in order for a criminal code to be applied to a u.n. staff member, the secretary-general has to weigh the privileges and immunities of the organization. so if the secretary-general does not choose to wave those p&i's, the person can go completely scot-free with anything and everything he has done because there's no effective system to truly address the wrongdoing. so this is a major flaw. and this reverts back to the immunity issue. if you look at the successful episodes of where there has been some accountabilities, mostly in the nation states, in this context, and where the nation
7:31 pm
states pick up the criminal cases on their own. so it would happen to -- what happens with all our other cases that didn't go the route of the national body where they -- national authority that was going to pursue them, they went into the black hole. there are cases that have not been followed up on. there's staff members that were identified as having misused, misappropriated funds, embezzled funds that had not been identified, that have not been held accountable. the big question is well, why is that? why could that ever happen in the world's most arguably advanced international organization? i think you need to perhaps look at some other things here that have not been identified to round out the nature and scope and the dynamic, which is the
7:32 pm
u.n. -- you would think would want a strong oversight presence. it does not. why does it not? well, cases of misconduct, cases of misappropriation, cases of malfeasance, cases of loss of taking taxpayer funds are perceived in the u.n. as very bad press, very unwelcomed news and also types of messaging that can jeopardize the very existence of the organization. the view of many in the organization is that the u.n., which it is dependent on donor contributions, is going to run into problems if donors see large headlines of corruption and loss of funds and then there will be a cessation of donations to the organization, thereby ending the organization. so what you really have is a
7:33 pm
very strong self-preservation ideal that permeates the organization and i'm not saying everyone, but i'm saying certainly those in positions of power who are responsible for their administration, or the many u.n. employees who are making a career out of the u.n., you know, and those who hope -- just have to hope and pray they never become a subject of a case which is wrongly, or even rightly, pursued because it could not end up -- may not end up in their interests with this kind of dynamic and a framework. but with this kind of a system and with this kind of reality, it does not promote sound and effective administration of justice.
7:34 pm
and i think what was pointed out earlier, was the example of diplomats -- who is the real overseer? the real overseers are the diplomats and what is that? what one said earlier was it presents a significant and profound conflict of interest to have those who stand in interested positions reviewing and overseeing and judging oversight and dysfunction from where they sit. i think what you need is a truly professional independent body that is truly professional and not beholden to the administration, not beholden to the organization, that can review and identify those actions and cases that have taken place and where there are challenges and claims that there have been errors and misconduct
7:35 pm
and also lack of justice. if you read the last case that came out of the undt tribunal about, i think was mentioned earlier, brett, in your opening remarks, the case is actually about two investigators within oias that had been retaliated against, doing their jobs by a senior member of that office. and to date, there has been no accountability and there's been no repercussion to that senior officer despite the fact that the findings of the dispute tribunal judge were extremely strong, extremely clear, and hardly profoundly challenged. yet you have two whistleblowers who have been victimized and suffered severe consequences to
7:36 pm
their career, and you can have the perpetuator who is unaffected. so the role is completely reversed, and that kind of result send a very sour message to the rest of the organization and the rest of the folks, not only the oversight body, but also throughout the administration and the organization of how can we count on, you know, this organization in the end, especially the oversight body, to, you know, effectively mete out sound and proper investigations, yet you have results that are occurring like that where you have no accountability and victims, even after being identified as victims, even being found to be victims, and even being found to have been wrong, have still been given minimal to no recourse and there's been no accountability to the wrongdoer.
7:37 pm
so it screams that this kind of a situation needs a complete and utter overhaul from anumerative respects andus also the findings that the immunities that have been put forth by the organization don't reach to the level insofar as they claim they do is a significant start, but there also needs to be a more structured reconstruction of the accountability and oversight mechanisms in the organizations to make them truly fair, truly accountable, truly free of conflict, and truly a way in which good cases and base cases that have basis in fact are being able to be brought to the system. i think the previous speaker was identifying how the ethics office has not found any significant or very few significant retaliation cases. retaliation is one of the
7:38 pm
hardest things to prove. and it's clear many national contexts, retaliation can be proved by circumstantial evidence and can be derived through interferences of existing fact. and i think without an acknowledgement of that, as many national authorities have, you never are going to have an effective ethics office of retaliation claims until they can realize and recognize that these cases are difficult to prove and then have to know what to look for in the certain indices that are commonly present in such cases because without a strong whistleblower program where confidence can be built upon it, this sort of circumstance will not change and there will be little to no incentive in the future for people to report wrongdoing and misconduct in the organization. and especially when they don't
7:39 pm
see a level of accountability when cases are not handled to fruition and to conclusion, when there aren't final dispositions that are fair and just, when there isn't the proper voice and a mechanism and assurity that complainants will not be harmed and when there is a mistake made that it can be corrected, whether it be in the judicial forum or during the investigative process. and there's so many different ways and aspects in which these cases can be derailed through errors, even innocent errors, not just intentional malfeasance where these cases can go off the
7:40 pm
tracks and there have been profound circumstances as you have real live and real careers that become ruined as a result of it. >> thank you, bob. before we go to q&a, i wonder if you could just briefly describe some of the successes of the procurement task force, what made it different than the oios, and where those cases are right now. >> you want me to answer that? >> yes, please. >> well, the task force in 2006 took over more than 300 cases from the oios investigation division which involved procurement, fraud, financial malfeasance, financial fraud, and also took over cases of eight senior staff members being accused of misconduct. and in the three years, you can imagine, there's no way we could complete the entire inventory of the cases. we completed approximate -- i
7:41 pm
don't have my numbers in front of me, but about 200 -- a little over 200 cases, and we found more than 26 significant fraud and corruption schemes, some of them we concluded and some which we hadn't and needed to be followed up. and certainly some with significant financial loss, others where there has been pretty harsh mismanagement and misuse of u.n. funds and misuse of u.n. positions. when we disbanded at the end of december 2008, these cases for the most part went into a black hole. cases that were reported on we heard nothing of, cases -- many cases which we thought were sufficient to reach at least the administration of justice were not taken there. cases in which it was clear
7:42 pm
further work needed to be done seemed not to have any further work, at least there wasn't any publicity or any kind of disclosure of any significant further work to be done. and cases in which individuals in missions that identified, at least that have been found -- alleged to have been found to engage in misconduct worthy of cases in the administration of justice within the organization, not even outside it, were not taken up. at least certainly that's the appearance that's being provided and nothing seems to have been done for some time, which dovetails into this perception that there really isn't an incentive to make these cases because when you make cases, you make -- you sometimes can make enemies, especially if officials are in senior positions.
7:43 pm
there is a disincentive unless the investigators are truly protected to move forward on those cases. there is a lot of work that seems to have not been pursued and others that have been dropped. there are cases that have not made their way to the justice system. >> thank you. we have time for a few questions and answers from the audience. i will go ahead and leave it off with one short question. considering be outlined circumstances established about the whistleblowers standards, do you think any organization meets the standards? >> no. >> no?
7:44 pm
>> absolutely not. >> do you think it would be surprising if any ever did meet those standards? >> whether they would be a different question if they did. >> the gentleman in the back? i do not see a microphone. >> my question -- the united nations, whose delegates come from different legal systems,
7:45 pm
most of the world is under civil law. common-law in the untries.speaking compan under which of those paradigms do these legal investigatory bodies work, and are the differences between the legal systems partly at fault for the impact of this? to what extent might there be extrajudicial political considerations that these adjudicatory bodies are not putting in reports such as this was necessary to get this
7:46 pm
country's cooperation in what we were doing? these people who are making a big deal about it may not know, and the investigators may not know, but the higher-ups might, what the consequences might the of the loopholes. so what surprises me is -- here is the settlement, a nondisclosure agreement, be quiet, and we will get back to that. >> the question is how does the u.n.'s judicial system and arbitration process base itself on common law, civil law, etc., and to what extent do the political circumstances of an incident may come into play in the decisions that come out?
7:47 pm
do you want to take that first? >> for the most part my experiences that it is a mixture of the common law and civil code. as to your second question, does that contribute to some of the problems, i think it does. my experiences within the u.n. system is that it is much more based on documents. they do not place great weight on witness testimonies, cross-examination. it is pretty much as in the civil code where the document is superior. as to the last part, is that a reason -- is there secrecy because there might be some underlying consideration? probably, but you are describing the star chamber as well, and we have moved beyond that. there are mechanisms that the governments already use to deal with sensitive issues.
7:48 pm
today in the u.n. system, there is no disclosure. i think the secrecy has to be dealt with other than just throw away. >> i would hate to see to see secrecy being used as inaction. i know many of the whistleblowers came forward and are still being retaliated against. there is nothing dramatic, mysterious, or secret in any of the cases and where the whistleblowers have come forward. i would not use that as an excuse for inaction. >> do you have any comments
7:49 pm
about the u.n. judicial system? did you find that secrecy came into the judgments that played out? >> on the second part, absolutely. to the first part, you have a series of rules in the u.n. that are based on the charter of the organization that form rules of conduct. it is in chapter one of the staff rules, so that comes out of the charter. it comes out of the seminal document when the u.n. was first called in the 1940's. you also have the second category which is the national laws of the particular country you're involved in, which sometimes you pay heed to as well.
7:50 pm
if in fact you're in a certain country where, for example, bribery is accepted. it is a good question because in those questions there is a tension between which law should be applied. should it be the western law that prohibits bribes, or the local law that sees it as a custom and a duty to do so? the other issue does dovetail into the secrecy piece and is when you have a critical need in a certain area, and your goods or services that have been procured corruptly, but it is critical that you get that item, good, medicine, food into that
7:51 pm
peacekeeping mission or into the location, otherwise people may suffer and die, which takes paramount importance there? you have to impose the system of law accountability, or are you going to put more importance on the item or the good? in the u.n., a lot of times the importance of the item or the good weighs out, and the issue that is underlying is the bribery and corruption but it is buried. >> let me add to that. i think those are exceptional cases and should be examined one by one. the other assumptions should be examined very carefully before making a leap of faith that this is the only way of getting those goods and services to people in need. that principle can be abused. >> ma'am? >> [indiscernible]
7:52 pm
7:53 pm
immunity. the withdraw of immunity, and i think our audience members can best address that. >> would you like to address how you would go after this particular issue if you were trying to circumscribe privileges to address this problem? >> one problem, on a case-by-case basis, there was an example that he gave in his opening about whitehub. it derives most of its funds from application fees, which
7:54 pm
50% of which came from american patent applicants. the u.s. government pays a very small amount of money to them. in my opinion they do not comply with this law. it is probably not going to make any difference because they do not get very much money from the u.s. and would not care if the u.s. cut off whatever contributions it is making. in my view they are one of the most corrupt organizations because of the lack of accountability. i applaud the working of jim is doing because you have to do something like that. it is a start, but it does not address the problem in a case like this. >> bob, would you like to comment? any other questions from the audience? yes, ma'am? >> [indiscernible]
7:55 pm
>> we are looking at that very seriously. they have circulated a questionnaire, where they are gathering statistics. the law does not talk about policy, we are talking about the implementation of policy. because the organization has policies, but it is really how that policy has been implemented. i think that they are taking it seriously, and we will see what they come up with in the end. i think it will be submitted to congress and it will be up to congress to decide whether or not these notifications and documentation that has been collected and facts that are presented are adequate. i think the accountability
7:56 pm
project and other organizations will be watching this very closely. >> i will conclude with a final question. do you get the sense that the united states is unique in its concern about these types of issues? or is the frustration with the treatment of whistleblowers within the u.n. system more widespread? >> one of the efforts i am trying to undertake is to internationalize this movement for whistleblower protection in the u.n. i am in touch with some organizations and governments, and with media in a variety of other countries. i am working closely with major donors in the u.n., and there is considerable interest, and the fact that the u.s. has taken this step has generated a lot of curiosity. particularly countries that have
7:57 pm
a strong rule of law, and a strong belief in whistleblower protection are taking a look at taking action themselves. whether that means withholding or political pressure, or other manifestations, i do not know. there is interest in it, and the media has picked the story up. that hopefully will generate pressure on the policies of the countries to do the same thing. >> i think the u.n. has to be treated in this type of question, they exercise many of the indicators of being a sovereign state, even though they are not a sovereign state. they get a pass. transparency international does
7:58 pm
not review the u.n. and i am not sure why. we need to come back and re-examine that as well, to make sure that if they are functioning as a quasi-state that they have the same accountability and oversight. whether they will, i am not sure. >> any final remarks? >> many of the important things we have said today, it has been brought to the floor. it all fits together for the administration of justice to have a viable protection program, to have a viable administration of justice, and a fair and equitable results in an investigation and the way it is
7:59 pm
treated properly in the way these things are addressed. the degree of exasperation in these things that i been going on for many years about there have been a lot casualties. and we need some real energy and enthusiasm to address it because those who have suffered, it would be a travesty to have them just fall by the wayside. and for this to continue. >> thank you very much. thank you for coming here today. i hope you enjoyed it. good-bye. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> tonight zbigniew brzezinski on the situation between the u.s. and ukraine. that is followed i christine
8:00 pm
lagarde explaining the change in the u.s. economic outlook. and then corruption and fraud at the united nations. lagarde tonight at 9:30. here is a look at her remarks. director, in the downward revision for growth in 2014, it looks like the weather played a big role. what does that tell us about the resilience of the u.s. economy given that impact? soothing. it is q1 is we believe that this results was a temporary occurrence, with temporary outcomes that will
72 Views
IN COLLECTIONS
CSPAN Television Archive The Chin Grimes TV News Archive Television Archive News Search ServiceUploaded by TV Archive on