Kofi: Looking More Guilty Every Day

Don't expect to see this on the tv, but it appears that Volcker's commission is now scrambling to investigate allegations that Annan is more directly linked to the Oil for Food Scandal than previously reported.

Paul Volcker says he and his U.N. Oil-for-Food gumshoes are "urgently investigating" new evidence that Secretary-General Kofi Annan knew a lot more than he's let on about the lucrative contract awarded to a company, Cotecna, that had retained his son Kojo.

We can understand Volcker's sense of urgency — because if a newly uncovered memo is accurate, it completely undercuts the most important finding of his Independent Inquiry Committee report three months ago.

The Volcker group said that no evidence linked Annan to the U.N.'s multimillion-dollar deal with Cotecna. But the memo, first disclosed by The New York Times, looks to be just that.

It's dated Dec. 4, 1998 — one week before the firm got the contract. In it, Cotecna Vice President Michael Wilson — a friend of both Kofi Annan and his son Kojo — writes that he'd recently had "brief discussions with the SG and his entourage" about the contract. And that Kofi & Co. advised him that "we could count on their support."

To be sure, Cotecna has admitted that its officials held at least two private meetings with Kofi Annan before the contract was awarded. But both the secretary-general and Cotecna's chairman, Elie Massey, claimed that the company's interest in joining the Oil-for-Food program was never raised.

The 1998 memo says otherwise.

Moreover, part of the memo suggests strongly that Kojo Annan was present at the summit of Francophone leaders where the meeting with his father took place, although it does not say whether he was at the meeting. And Kofi Annan has denied knowing that his son was employed by Cotecna.

I would love to see the media reaction if Kofi is found guilty. They would likely be as shocked as they were when Bush was re-elected.