Since MedMech was asking about shredders..... - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

mikemover · #1 07-17-2005, 06:28 PM

Oil-for-Food Paper Shredder Still Shredding
Friday, July 15, 2005

UNITED NATIONS — The man who abruptly retired as Kofi Annan's cabinet chief after shredding papers related to the Oil-for-Food program has been shredding still more documents at the United Nations, an eyewitness told FOX News.

Iqbal Riza , who has been working on a $1-a-year salary as a special advisor to Annan, has been shredding large quantities of unknown documents in his new 10th-floor U.N. office across the street from the U.N. Secretariat building, the source said.

According to the eyewitness, a U.N. staffer who works on the same floor as Riza, the retired cabinet chief arrived within days of leaving his old job, loaded down with many cartons of papers and files.

Riza was not in his new office daily, but every day he appeared, he would put large numbers of material through an office shredder located in a public area.

"It became the office joke," said the eyewitness, who did not wish to be identified for fear of reprisals from superiors. No one knew what the documents were, the eyewitness said.

Annan's office would neither confirm nor deny the fresh round of destruction. A spokesman for the secretary-general told FOX News that Riza was now working as a special adviser on a newly launched project to foster dialogue between the Islamic and Western worlds.

"As part of his work on the Alliance of Civilizations ... he may have had to routinely destroy documents related to that project," the spokesman said.

The spokesman said that all material previously in Riza's possession related to Oil-for-Food remained in Annan's office.

Riza has not returned calls to FOX News for comment. A U.N. spokesman said he was out of the country.

Before becoming Annan's top aide, Riza was a Pakistani diplomat who had worked at the United Nations for more than 25 years.

On Dec. 22, Annan announced that Riza would be retiring from his position effective Jan. 15. Annan said he agreed to Riza's departure "with very mixed emotions," saying "he ... has always provided me with wise and trusted counsel."

One fact undisclosed at the time of Annan's announcement was that it came on the same day Riza admitted to investigators with the Independent Inquiry Committee into the Oil-for-Food program that he had destroyed documents related to the program.

Two days before, when first interviewed by investigators for IIC Chairman Paul Volcker, he did not tell them that he approved the destruction of three years worth of documents. But when he did admit to shredding documents, he described them as being duplicates — a point the IIC would eventually dispute in a March 29 report.

"The committee does not find persuasive Mr. Riza's suggestion that his 'chron' files [chronological records] were only duplicates of files maintained elsewhere at the United Nations," the IIC report states.

Volcker's panel was commissioned by Annan to investigate the multi-billion-dollar program, which aimed to relieve Iraqi civilians from some effects of the sanctions imposed on Iraq after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.

Saddam allegedly gave former government officials, activists, journalists and U.N. officials vouchers for Iraqi oil that could be resold. Investigators claim the former Iraqi regime may have illegally made more than $21 billion by cheating the program and through other sanctions-busting schemes.

Among those accused of asking Saddam's regime for vouchers worth millions is Benon Sevan, hand-picked by Annan to run the entire Oil-for-Food program.

_________________________

Gotta' love the UN!

The fact that they have left Kofi Annan STILL in charge of that joke of an organization has just put the last nail in the UN's coffin, as far as I'm concerned.

Any shred of hope I had that the UN could ever turn itself around and be legit, relevant, and useful is gone.

Mike

#2 07-17-2005, 06:32 PM

If Bush isn't doing it why would they care?

mikemover · #3 07-17-2005, 06:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MedMech

If Bush isn't doing it why would they care?

Exactly my point.

Mike

Botnst · #4 07-17-2005, 09:11 PM

If you dig deep enough, I'm sure you'll find that Karl Rove is involved.

If he isn't involved, then he should have been. Suspicion is the same as guilt, so I think Bush should ask for Rove's resignation. It's for the children.

boneheaddoctor · #5 07-17-2005, 10:24 PM

I think Clinton is behind the whole thing......

mikemover · #6 07-18-2005, 12:07 AM

Didn't you know?.... It's the vast Neo-con Republotarianazi Fascist Anti-Semantic conspiracy!

Nothing is the the UN's fault. It's ALL our fault. I feel so guilty.

Mike

#7 07-18-2005, 04:08 PM

It seems like Roves alleged leak is more important.

mikemover · #8 07-18-2005, 04:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MedMech

It seems like Roves alleged leak is more important.

Yep.

I wonder where all of our regular UN cheerleaders are? None of them have bitten on this one... Hmmm...

I wonder if it's because they KNOW that this one really does stink of cover-up..... Or do they just not care because they're busy circling like vultures around the Rove story?....

Mike

boneheaddoctor · #9 07-18-2005, 06:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikemover

Yep.

I wonder where all of our regular UN cheerleaders are? None of them have bitten on this one... Hmmm...

I wonder if it's because they KNOW that this one really does stink of cover-up..... Or do they just not care because they're busy circling like vultures around the Rove story?....

Mike

no they are characteristicly blaming innocent republicans for doing stuff they didn't do to try to take peoples attention away from the important stuff like this one...they believe it will go away if they ignore it.

mikemover · #10 07-18-2005, 06:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by narwhal

Oh wait a minute Mike, you think this INTERNATIONAL FRAUD stealing food from the mouths of a dictator's own people (that we subsequently deposed) is bigger than the unproven allusions to a major HALLIBURTON scandel involving our own leaders?

Those guys don't even waste their time with this stuff--they are too busy trying to make themselves feel better about Kerry losing the election. Way too many 'shrub' jokes to read and disseminate than read this crap

Yeah.... silly 'ol me. What was I thinking?... There's FAR more important things than worldwide fraud perpetrated by what is supposedly the most important international organization in the history of man.

Mike

mikemover · #11 07-18-2005, 06:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boneheaddoctor

...they believe it will go away if they ignore it.

Unfortunately..... it will. It seems that people's memories are astoundingly short when it comes to this stuff.

Mike

MTI · #12 07-18-2005, 07:21 PM

The two that really put "shredding" in the political lexicon . .

The History of Shredders
It is somewhat surprising that paper shredding took as long as it did to become widespread. There’s little doubt that destroying confidential documents has long been considered high priority, at least for governments and spies. But, until the celebrated Watergate incident of 1972 the public knew little of paper shredders.

The Inventor
As near as we can piece together (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun), the inventor of the paper shredder was A. A. Low. During his lifetime, he was second only to Thomas Edison in the number of patents issued. His “Waste Paper Receptacle” was issued a patent in 1908. The design included a feeder and blades on rollers that shredded the paper with either a hand crank or an electric motor. Clearly, Low was ahead of his time.

Unfortunately, follow through on his inventions was not a strong point and he never marketed the device nor received credit for it. That credit goes to Adolf Ehinger, a simple, hard-working German who patented his invention in 1936. The inspiration came from the common kitchen pasta maker, the hand-cranked device for turning sheets of dough into strips. He also spent some of his spare time writing anti-Nazi material (maybe his real source of inspiration was the desire to destroy evidence that the Gestapo would have looked on most unfavorably. Sheer speculation on my part).

Ehinger marketed his invention and found buyers during the fear and paranoia of the 1940’s wartime. He built a company around his invention, EBA Maschinenfabrik, and by 1956 had a number of customers in numerous countries, primarily governments and financial institutions. The first cross-cut shredder (cutting the paper both horizontally and vertically) appears to have been introduced by EBA in 1959. Long strips of vertically cut paper by strip-cut machines are easy enough to reassemble and this helped solve that problem (see shred size).

Ehinger’s business prospered and was eventually turned over to his son who ran the company until it was sold to a competitor, Krug & Priester, in 1998. The inventor lived to age 86 and passed on in 1984, long enough to see the popularity of shredders established (due in no small part to the Watergate scandal – G. Gordon Liddy used a Shredmaster 400 to dispose of evidence pertaining to the 1972 break-in at National Democractic Party headquarters.)

Shredding in the News
In 1979 when the American Embassy in Tehran was seized by Iranian militants some top-secret documents that were in the process of being shredded were pieced back together with the assistance of Iranian women skilled at weaving Persian carpets. Apparently the shredder being used was a low-tech, vertical-only cutter. The government learned a lesson from that security leak and upgraded shredding standards. Thus the birth of high security shredders that reduce documents to DOD standards (which have been updated to even more stringent requirements, due in no small part to the 9/11 terrorist attacks).

Oliver North was another famous shredder. While employed by the National Security Council he and his secretary, Fawn Hall, shredded documents relating to the Iran-Contra scandal. The destruction of that evidence didn’t ruin North (he’s enjoyed a popular radio career), but it did seem to further taint the image of shredders. The recent Enron accounting scandal hasn’t done much to improve that image, but it’s a bum rap. Shredders today are well-made, efficient and imminently practical. Their primary purpose is not to cover up for the guilty, but rather to protect the innocent. Legislation like the HIPAA and GLBA were passed to guard against private health and financial information of common citizens falling into the wrong hands.

Shredding is Good
Shredding is good for the environment (shredded paper is often used in recycling or packaging material), protects your “garbage” from becoming the identity thief’s “treasure” and holds accountable financial, health and governmental agencies from improper disposal of sensitive material. Shredding is now big business and machines are marketed for every part of the consumer spectrum, from home user to the captains of industry.

Botnst · #13 07-18-2005, 07:46 PM

"Start shredding the news...".

boneheaddoctor · #14 07-18-2005, 08:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikemover

Unfortunately..... it will. It seems that people's memories are astoundingly short when it comes to this stuff.

Mike

sad to say you are right...if they can get enough people to ignore it long enough..........thank god Fox news, Rush and Hannity won't let them pull it off completely.

mikemover · #15 07-18-2005, 08:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boneheaddoctor

sad to say you are right...if they can get enough people to ignore it long enough..........thank god Fox news, Rush and Hannity won't let them pull it off completely.

Well, those guys aren't exactly our most reliable sources of unbiased information.....

.... but at least they do serve to keep things like this in the news and on people's minds....

Mike

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