AMERICA/Conor O'Clery: After a lull, the post-election shake-up in the Bush administration has got under way again in earnest. Out is Tom Ridge, the amiable head of the Department of Homeland Security, who promoted the threat-level colour code and the sale of duct tape.
Out, too, is Tommy Thompson, the health secretary and a frequent visitor to Ireland, who was, as they say, "eager to move on". John Snow, the Treasury Secretary, who was recently in Ireland reaffirming the strong dollar policy with a straight face, may be next to move on, whether eager or not, according to Washington insiders. There have now been eight resignations from the cabinet since George W. Bush was re-elected on November 2nd. And it is not over yet.
Bush's nomination yesterday of Bernard Kerik as the new head of Homeland Security is causing some consternation at the department, which is responsible for securing the country's borders, coasts and airports and incorporates the immigration service, the Secret Service and the Coast Guard. Compared to Tom Ridge, who got on with everyone, Kerik is known as a tough and sometimes coarse official who likes to shake things up. He is a protégé of former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who is said to have pleaded passionately with Bush to give him the job.
Kerik was police chief at the time of the 9/11 attacks and has since thrown in his lot with the Republicans. He paid his political dues during the election campaign, telling the New York Daily News that if John Kerry got to the White House, another terrorist attack was likely. I also heard him say, at a rally for Dick Cheney in New Jersey, that if Kerry were elected, America would lose the war on terror.
In his biography, The Lost Son, Kerik reveals that his mother was a prostitute who abandoned him when he was two, and died a violent death. He dropped out of high school to join the army, fathered a child in South Korea, worked as a security expert in Saudi Arabia and a prison guard in New York, and then became a New York cop. He cultivated a pony tail and diamond earrings to work undercover as a narcotics detective and during this time he was declared personally bankrupt.
Kerik became a sidekick of Giuliani during the mayor's election campaign and was rewarded with promotion to head of the NYPD. During his last year in office, crime dropped and relations with minority communities, abysmal during Giuliani's early term, improved.
Kerik left the police to join Giuliani's crisis-management consulting firm where he made millions of dollars giving speeches and advice, and has since cashed in $6 million of stock in a taser gun company that sponsored lucrative appearances around the country. Bush sent him to Iraq for six months to set up a police force and there he learned, he said, how much hatred there was for America.
The resignation of John Danforth as US ambassador to the United Nations this week was more than a surprise: it stunned members of his own staff. The 68-year-old diplomat had been in the post for only six months and was rumoured as a replacement for Colin Powell as secretary of state, a post which went to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Danforth cited a desire to spend more time with his wife, Sally, who is recovering from a broken ankle. He has, however, acknowledged that he often felt frustrated by the State Department's insistence on giving strict guidance on policy matters, and by the bureaucratic way of the United Nations. He expressed his exasperation with the UN in an unusually forceful manner on November 23rd, the day after he sent his resignation letter to President Bush, castigating a South Africa move blocking a vote that would have criticised human rights violations in Sudan.
The message from the General Assembly was, "You may be suffering but we can't be bothered," he said. Complaining about Security Council reluctance to impose sanctions on Sudan for genocidal killings in Darfur he asked: "Why have this building? What's it all about?"
The resignation of the US ambassador further roils the United Nations at a time when it is under assault from American politicians and commentators over the oil-for-food scandal. A leading Republican senator called on Wednesday for the resignation of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose term expires in December 2006. Next day President Bush pointedly declined to join Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany and dozens of other countries in expressing confidence in Annan. Senator Norm Coleman, one of five members of a Congressional inquiry into the affair, said Annan should resign because "the most extensive fraud in the history of the UN occurred on his watch".
Under the 1966 oil-for-food programme designed to prevent starvation in Iraq because of UN sanctions, Saddam Hussein was allowed to sell unlimited quantities of oil to buy food and medicines. Coleman's committee claims it has uncovered evidence that Saddam raised more than $21.3 billion in illegal revenue by subverting UN sanctions and that there was widespread corruption involving foreign companies and UN officials.
Annan appointed former US Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker to conduct an independent inquiry and an interim report will be made public in January. The UN chief angered Washington by calling the US-led invasion of Iraq "illegal" and for refusing to send a large team to assist Iraq elections. Critics of the US assaults on Annan emphasise that America was a member of the Security Council which authorised the oil-for-food programme, and claim that there is a witch-hunt against him.
An exception may be Colin Powell, who yesterday told Reuters Annan was a "good man" and that it was the programme, not the UN Secretary General, that was being investigated. But Powell is on his way out.
Kofi Annan has, however, been acutely embarrassed by the involvement of his son in the oil-for-food scandal and internal UN rows over personnel. US Congressional investigators claimed on Thursday that Kojo Annan (29) received $50,000 in consultancy fees from a Swiss company under investigation for fraud in the oil-for-food programme, on top of other remuneration.
Also in an about-face yesterday, the UN said it would reconsider the controversial pardon by Kofi Annan of a top UN watchdog, Dileep Nair, on corruption charges, a decision that had provoked derision from UN ranks.
The UN staff union passed a motion two weeks ago claiming that UN management had "further eroded the trust" of employees by clearing Nair, a Singapore national. Many UN staff were also infuriated recently by Annan's decision to pardon UN refugee chief Ruud Lubbers on charges of sexual harassment.