WFP to Allow Donor Nations to Review Confidential Audit Documents

The nations that pay the bills of the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) are getting the chance for a better look into the workings of the huge food aid agency—but not a lot better.

More than a year after a WFP administrative document revealed that the agency’s internal auditors had discovered “numerous” irregularities in the way the program reported its multimillion-dollar financial and commodity management in North Korea, WFP’s 36-country supervisory Executive Board is about to allow curious nation-states—including those, like the U.S., that are its biggest donors --to look at similar confidential audit documents for the very first time.

But only if they ask precise questions and promise to behave once access is granted.

And as for any internal WFP audits from the past—including those that itemized WFP’s “lapses,” “anomalies” and inconsistencies in reporting what happened to food aid and financial management in dictatorial North Korea—they will remain secret forever, so far as the food agency is concerned.

Nonetheless, WFP itself is hailing the action as an affirmation of its “commitment to transparency and accountability in all its activities and decision-making.”

That transparency, however, is still notably lacking in the case of North Korea, a habitually belligerent country that has been under international financial and other sanctions for years in a bid to stop, or at least slow down, its illegal nuclear weapons program. Only relief supplies for the neediest of North Korea’s starving millions of people have been trickling in.

Those efforts at financial pressure have not been far successful. Even as WFP’s Executive Board prepared to approve its new and still limited disclosure policy at a four-day meeting that starts Nov. 8, press reports have indicated North Korea is preparing for a third illicit nuclear weapons test.

WFP’s circumspection about its internal audit documents has been longstanding. But it reached a crescendo of sorts in September, after Fox News revealed the highlights of an internal audit that found “inconsistent data and unreliable information systems” and “numerous anomalies” in reporting management of WFP relief supplies in the country.

WFP claimed that there were only “a small number of inconsistencies in commodity accounting that have subsequently been addressed.” But the document uncovered by Fox News strongly suggested otherwise. Click here to read more on this from Foxnews.com.

The agency regards the audits as management tools—as do many other U.N. agencies and programs. Even powerful contributors like the U.S., which traditionally provides at least 22 per cent of WFP funds, WERE barred from viewing them.

According to the guidelines WFP’s Executive Board is about to approve, curious nations must apply in writing, and name the specific report they wish to read. They must also supply their reasons for wanting to look, and promise to keep anything they read confidential. Just to be sure, they won’t get a copy. They will instead be allowed to read one only in the office of WFP’s inspector general. No copying or note-taking is allowed during what the rules call a “consultation.”

Even that scrutiny may take a long while. Before agreeing to make a copy of any report available, WFP will notify any government specifically singled out in the audit, giving them a chance to read it as well, and comment. The new disclosure period says that reaction can take a “reasonable time,” without spelling out what’s reasonable. And if the report is deemed sensitive enough, it can be redacted--or even withheld entirely.

CLICK HERE FOR THE PROPOSED POLICY

Adding to the potential complexity is that fact that some of WFP’s biggest food aid recipients are also on its Executive Board—a circumstance that any bureaucrat might consider very sensitive.

Among them: Sudan, the strife-torn area where WFP conducts a program that it says is its largest in the world; Democratic Republic of Congo, where WFP spent $259 million last year and, according to its website, wants to spend $198 million in 2010; Burkina Faso, one of the world’s poorest nations; and battered Haiti.

Three of those countries—Haiti, Congo and Sudan, in that order, are listed among the worst on Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index; Burkina Faso sits back in the middle of the international pack at Number 98.

George Russell is Executive Editor of Fox News

View the original article here

Unsealed California Church Documents Show Sexual Abuse Allegations

SAN DIEGO -- Attorneys for nearly 150 people who claim sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests made nearly 10,000 pages of previously sealed internal church documents public Sunday, revealing at least one previously unknown decades-old case in which a priest under police investigation was allowed to leave the U.S. after the Diocese of San Diego intervened.

After a three-year legal battle over the Diocese of San Diego's internal records, a retired San Diego Superior Court judge ruled late Friday that they could be made public. The records are from the personnel files of 48 priests who were either credibly accused or convicted of sexual abuse or were named in a civil lawsuit.

The 144 plaintiffs settled with the diocese in 2007 for nearly $200 million, but the agreement stipulated that an independent judge would review the priests' sealed personnel records and determine what could be made public.

The files show what the diocese knew about abusive priests, starting decades before any allegations became public, and that some church leaders shuffled priests from parish to parish or overseas despite credible complaints against them.

"We encourage all Catholics, all members of the community, to look for these documents," attorney Anthony DeMarco said at a news conference. "These documents demonstrate years and years and decades of concerted action that has allowed this community's children to be victimized, and it is not until the community looks at these documents that this cycle is ever going to be ended."

At least one of the priests, Gustavo Benson, is still in active ministry in the Diocese of Ensenada in Mexico, DeMarco said. In a 2002 interview with The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Benson said he ministered to children there but had not done anything inappropriate. It wasn't immediately known what Benson's position at the diocese is now.

Donna Daly, a spokeswoman for the diocese, did not immediately return a call on Sunday and no one answered at the main diocese number. Maria Roberts, an attorney for the diocese, did not immediately respond to a message left with her office on Sunday.

In at least one instance, the files included documented abuse by a priest whose name had not before surfaced in any lawsuit or criminal case, the Rev. Luis Eugene de Francisco, who was originally from Colombia. Police investigated de Francisco for allegedly abusing children, but the diocese convinced authorities to drop the case if the priest would return immediately to his Colombian diocese and never return to the U.S.

"In early August 1963, Father was placed under arrest by the civil police of the City of San Diego for violation of the State Penal Code," then-Bishop Charles F. Buddy wrote the Colombian bishop in the Diocese of Cali. "At that time, arrangements were made between this Chancery and the civil authorities of San Diego in which, if Father left the United States with the promise never to return, the charges against Father would be set aside by Civil Law."

Buddy wrote that de Francisco had crossed the border at Tijuana, Mexico, and was "directed to return directly to the Diocese of Cali."

DeMarco said the papers in the files were the first time attorneys became aware of de Francisco. No one filed a lawsuit, the church never revealed the complaints and it's unclear what happened to the priest or if he is still alive, he said.

Church files indicate he also served in Florida and Texas before arriving in the San Diego diocese, where he worked with migrant workers in the Coachella Valley about 150 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

"You have won a reputation as a zealous worker and devoted to the poor," Bishop Buddy wrote the priest in a December 1962 letter.

"On the other hand, the 'incidents' at Indio were more serious than first presented to me, especially inasmuch as the police have made a record of them. You know how word gets around, so that you be certain that the police here will be on your trail. ... It will be more prudent and more secure for you to return to your own diocese."

Another case outlined in the files involves the Rev. Robert Nikliborc, who was sent to a psychiatric treatment facility in the 1950s after the diocese received complaints, then became director of a Roman Catholic residential facility for troubled boys called Boystown of the Desert in Banning, Calif.

Boys who lived there filed lawsuits against Nikliborc and were part of the 2007 settlement, DeMarco said. The priest died while litigation was under way.

In a 1956 letter written to Nikliborc while he was at a "special retreat," Buddy referred to two incidents involving the priest without describing them, and said Nikliborc must decide whether to stand with God or against him.

"The fact is that your defects on both occasions were reported by lay people, who gave absolute proof which you could not gloss over or deny," Buddy wrote. Still, he held out the possibility that Nikliborc could again celebrate Mass.

The papers also contain documents from the files of Rev. Anthony Rodrigue. In 1976, a group of parents at Rodrigue's parish in Heber, California, complained he had molested their children, according to court documents.

The priest was sent to a psychiatric facility in Massachusetts for treatment but was put back in ministry despite the recommendations of those who treated him.

Rodrigue later admitted he had molested between four to five children a year over a span of 22 years, said Irwin Zalkin, an attorney for the plaintiffs. About 30 people filed lawsuits against the diocese alleging sexual abuse against the priest, who died within the last year, he said.

"He was probably one of the most prolific abusers in this diocese. ... And they knew about this guy from his days in the seminary but kept him in ministry," Zalkin said.

Attorneys are still trying for the release of an additional 2,000 pages of documents.

The release of records is biggest so far in a U.S. church case, said Terry McKiernan, founder of the website Bishop Accountability.org. The website collects and publishes internal church papers that have been released as the result of litigation on clergy abuse nationwide.

"I think as we absorb this, it will shed a lot of light on these issues. It's amazingly rich," McKiernan said. "These documents are providing a window into the California experience that we haven't had before."

Lawyers for plaintiffs have been trying to get similar internal church documents from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for years, but have not had success. That diocese settled with more than 500 plaintiffs in 2007 for a record-breaking $660 million in a settlement agreement that also called for the disclosure of priests' files.

The only other release of church files in California came after a 2005 settlement between plaintiffs and the Diocese of Orange. About 4,000 pages were made public.

View the original article here

WikiLeaks Near Release of Secret U.S. War Documents

LONDON -- The WikiLeaks website is poised to release what the Pentagon fears is the largest cache of secret U.S. documents in history -- hundreds of thousands of intelligence reports that could amount to a classified history of the war in Iraq.

U.S. officials said Friday they were racing to contain the damage from the imminent release, while NATO's top official told reporters he feared that lives could be put at risk by the mammoth disclosure.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said any release would create "a very unfortunate situation."

"I can't comment on the details of the exact impact on security, but in general I can tell you that such leaks ... may have a very negative security impact for people involved," he told reporters Friday in Berlin following a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In a posting to Twitter, the secret-spilling website said there would be a "major WikiLeaks announcement in Europe" at 5 a.m. EDT Saturday. The group has revealed almost nothing publicly about the nature of the announcement.

Meanwhile, a team of more than a hundred analysts from across the U.S. military, led by the Defense Intelligence Agency, has been combing through the Iraq documents they think will be released in anticipation of the leak.

Called the Information Review Task Force, its analysts have pored over the documents and used word searches to try to pull out names and other issues that would be particularly sensitive, officials have said.

The task force has informed U.S. Central Command of some of the names of Iraqis and allies and other information they believe might be released that could present a danger, officials have said, noting that -- unlike the WikiLeaks previous disclosure of some 77,000 documents from Afghanistan -- in this case they had advance notice that names may be exposed.

Once officials see what is publicly released, the command "can quickly push the information down" to forces in Iraq, Marine Corps Col. Dave Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, said Friday in Washington.

"Centcom can jump into action and take whatever mitigating steps" might be needed, Lapan said.
While the latest WikiLeaks revelations may not change public perceptions of the Iraq war -- it has been extremely unpopular in Europe and divides opinion in the United States -- they could provide new insight about a conflict that seemed headed for success after the invasion in 2003 before descending into a yearslong, blood-soaked struggle.

The documents could shed light on the root causes of the insurgency, for instance, or the growth of sectarian violence that blighted Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. It may also give a behind-the-scenes glimpse at some of the major episodes of the war -- like the manhunt for insurgent chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, or the killing of U.S. security contractors on March 31, 2004, by a mob in Fallujah, an incident which ultimately led to the U.S. assault on the Iraqi city.

Wikileaks' previous release in July of secret war documents from Iraq and Afghanistan outraged the Pentagon, which accused the group of being irresponsible. Fogh Rasmussen said Friday that leaks of this nature "may put soldiers as well as civilians at risk."

It appears that those fears -- which the military has invoked in its appeal to WikiLeaks and the media not to publish the documents -- have yet to materialize. A Pentagon letter obtained by The Associated Press reported that no U.S. intelligence sources or practices were compromised by the Afghan war logs' disclosure.

Still, the military feels any classified documents release can harm national security and raise fears for people who might consider cooperating with the U.S. in the future, Lapan said.
Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2007-08, said the disclosures would be more worrisome if the U.S. were still fully engaged in combat in Iraq -- but he still sees it as a major problem.

"I'd really be worried if -- as looks to be the case -- you have Iraqi political figures named in a context or a connection that can make them politically and physically vulnerable to their adversaries," he told a conference Friday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"That has an utterly chilling effect on the willingness of political figures to talk to us -- not just in Iraq but anywhere in the world," he said.

View the original article here

WikiLeaks Goes Through With Massive New Release of Classified War Documents

The self-proclaimed whistle-blower website WikiLeaks published nearly 400,000 pages of secret Defense Department documents on the Iraq war Friday evening, calling it "the largest classified military leak in history."

WikiLeaks said in a news release that the classified reports describe the Iraq war "as seen and hear by U.S. military troops" from Jan. 1, 2004 through Dec. 31, 2009.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell called document release "deplorable" and said he's concerned about "harm that could come to our forces."

According to WikiLeaks, the documents include previously undisclosed numbers of Iraqi civilian deaths, over 300 recorded reports of coalition forces committing torture and abuse of detainees, accounts of Iran meddling in the war and information suggesting there were 691 Iraqi civilians killed at U.S. military checkpoints.

It says analysis by the independent organization Iraq Body Count suggests the logs contain 15,000 civilian deaths that have not been previously disclosed publicly. The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq during the six years, including 66,081 identified as civilians.

A task force of 120 analysts within the Defense Department reviewed the documents ahead of time, studying everything they thought WikiLeaks may have had access to within the "Iraq Significant Activity" reports.

The Pentagon says these reports are similar to the 70,000 Afghan war documents released by WikiLeaks this summer, but this time on a much larger scale. Similar to the last time, Morrell said, locals who worked with the U.S. military are at risk of being killed after their names are made public. He said thousands of names could be revealed, and the Pentagon has started to reach out to just over 300 Iraqis it feels are at higher risk.

WikiLeaks claims it redacted the names and got no help in doing so from the Pentagon.

Either way, Morrell said, the enemy will try to take advantage of these files.

"Remember that in the aftermath of the Afghan document leak in July, our enemies stated publicly that they were going to mine this information and look for ways that they could take advantage of it and find vulnerabilities and then exploit them," Morrell said in an interview with Fox late Friday. "Our intelligence backs that up. This leak is potentially four times as large as the last one."

The documents also shed new light on Iran's role aiding militias and allegations of detainee abuse by Iraqi security forces, reportedly without objection from the U.S.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen described such a document release as "a very unfortunate situation."

"I can't comment on the details of the exact impact on security, but in general I can tell you that such leaks ... may have a very negative security impact for people involved," he told reporters earlier Friday in Berlin following a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Wikileaks' previous release in July of secret war documents from Iraq and Afghanistan outraged the Pentagon, which accused the group of being irresponsible. Fogh Rasmussen said Friday that leaks of this nature "may put soldiers as well as civilians at risk."

It appears that those fears -- which the military has invoked in its appeal to WikiLeaks and the media not to publish the documents -- have yet to materialize. A Pentagon letter obtained by The Associated Press reported that no U.S. intelligence sources or practices were compromised by the Afghan war logs' disclosure.

Still, the military feels any classified documents release can harm national security and raise fears for people who might consider cooperating with the U.S. in the future, Lapan said.

Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2007-08, said the disclosures would be more worrisome if the U.S. were still fully engaged in combat in Iraq -- but he still sees it as a major problem.

"I'd really be worried if -- as looks to be the case -- you have Iraqi political figures named in a context or a connection that can make them politically and physically vulnerable to their adversaries," he told a conference Friday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"That has an utterly chilling effect on the willingness of political figures to talk to us -- not just in Iraq but anywhere in the world," he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

View the original article here