Apr. 24 - Oil-for-food man quit on principle:

One of two investigators who resigned earlier this week from the commission probing fraud at the United Nations' oil-for-food program released a statement Saturday in which he disputed a report that he did so because his work was finished.

Instead, Robert Parton said in the statement, he resigned "on principle."

[...]

Parton and Miranda Duncan resigned from the panel headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker on Wednesday.

In an interview with CNN, a member of the Volcker panel, Richard Goldstone, discounted a media report that the two resigned to protest conclusions the panel had reached about U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

He said Parton and Duncan had completed their work and were already set to leave.

"Contrary to recent published reports, I resigned by position as senior investigative counsel for the IIC not because my work was complete, but on principle," Parton said in the statement. He declined further comment.

The question is: What specifically led them to decide that their principles would no longer allow them to be part of that Inquiry?

Maybe I'll hop over and ask Roger Simon. Bingo - not just one but two links! The goods are in the second:

Last night, in the most explicit criticism so far directed at the report, Robert Parton, one of the senior investigators, told a lawyer involved with the Volcker inquiry that he thought the committee was "engaging in a de facto cover-up, acting with good intentions but steered by ideology".

The lawyer, Adrian Gonzalez, told The Sunday Telegraph that he believed the committee, headed by Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was determined to protect the secretary-general.

According to Mr Gonzalez, Mr Parton felt that the committee had effectively divided the body of evidence relating to the oil-for-food scandal into testimony that it did want to hear, and testimony that it did not.

While the "field teams" led by Mr Parton and Miranda Duncan, who has also stepped down, were coming to one conclusion, he said, committee members appeared to want to draw a different conclusion to protect senior UN officials.

De facto or not, it isn't the crime that will bury them but the cover-up, and the revelations about Maurice Strong came uncomfortably close to the resignations of the two members of the inquiry, Adscam, and Martin's connection to his mentor Strong. Throw in Volcker's connection with Power Corp and thus to Total Oil, surmises that inquiry member Reid Morden tried to cover up the name of U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette, his protege, to shield her from criticism for blocking the submission of reports on the Oil-for-Food program to the UNSC and Kojo Annan's failure to report his continuing financial ties to Cotecna and ... I know I've forgotten something ... what-farking-ever, the Volcker Inquiry has zero credibility now, especially with the Iraqi people, who have to pay for their investigations and Benon Sevan's defence.

Fox News has a short item on the resignations and the recent State Dept. appraisal of Annan's fatuous claim to have been exonated here.

Funny, Richard Goldstone's lies attempt to spin the resignations of Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan backfired and brought the reasons for the resignations more out into the open. Now Americans have two U.N. cover-ups to contemplate and I expect constitutents will fire off letters to their representatives in Congress demanding that the bums be thrown out and all funding for the U.N. cease.

We hate cover-uppers and liars. That's why Oliver North is widely respected and the name Richard Nixon is synonymous with sleazeball.

Posted by: Debbye at 06:28 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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